Album Review

Picture this. A dark club, late on a Saturday night. The thick fog of smoke hangs low over everyone’s head. The smell of beer and pot surround you, and the music is loud and intense. The smell and sounds engulf you and slowly you start to sway and bang your head. The music seeps into your every fiber and the rest of the world drops away. This is what it is to be young and to be alive. This was every Saturday I was in high school. This was the first thing that came to my mind as I listened to “You Should Just Shut Up,” the first track off RTX’s latest, JJ Got Live RaTX.

Reminiscent of the trademark LA sound that ruled the eighties, RTX kind of sounds like L.A. Guns amped to about 20. To some, that may be strange, to me its delicious. The entire album is a non-stop heart pumping head-banging thrill ride, with one of the toughest and underrated female vocalists in rock in the driver’s seat.

Jennifer Herrema can spit out the hard-core throaty vocals with as much balls as any guy fronting a metal band today. If not more. Tracks like “Rainbow High” and “Mr. Wall” would easily fool any listener who’s not in the know into thinking that it’s a guy singing. JJ Got Live RaTXjust gets harder and harder with every track. Though this is the third release from the band, JJ Got Live RaTX finds the band really coming into their own.

By the time your reach the final song you’ll feel as if you’d been privy to some bad-ass musical secret that you must share with someone else. And that, in the music industry, is what they call a buzz. Check out RTX’s latest, JJ Got Live RaTX and consider yourself officially buzzed.

JJ Got Live RaTX will be released on Drag City on October 21st.

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