Posted in Whathaveyou on February 27th, 2020 by JJ Koczan
Once upon a 20 years ago, a tiny baby power trio out of a well-populated New Jersey heavy rock scene came together and blew the doors off most of not all of their peers. It was The Atomic Bitchwax, who with the original lineup of bassist/vocalist Chris Kosnik, guitarist Ed Mundell and drummer Keith Ackerman, set in motion on their 1999 self-titled debut (discussed here) a whirlwind that continues unabated to this day. The faces have changed, but the mission remains largely true now to what it was then in terms of making heads spin with riffy acumen while forging an underlying groove that’s as much punk as classic rock, able to careen between pop and all-out thrust or even prog without a measure’s notice. They’ve got a new record in the can, by the way. Their first with Garrett Sweeny on guitar. It rules. It’ll be out this Spring.
Before then, you can grab the self-titled as a 20th anniversary LP reissue, and obviously you should. You already own the album? So what? You can’t possibly tell me you’re doing something better with that $18 than spending it to get The Bitchwax‘s The Bitchwax on clear purple vinyl.
They’re out with Weedeater soon ahead of the new release, so check those dates and more info below:
Tee Pee Records Announces 20th Anniversary Reissue of The Atomic Bitchwax Self-Titled Debut
On Tour in March
New Studio Album Coming in May
New Jersey’s The Atomic Bitchwax are celebrating their 20th anniversary with the re-release of 1999’s self-titled classic. Newly remastered, these CDs and LPs (pressed on clear purple vinyl) are available through the Tee Pee webstore and at TAB shows throughout this year. Order itHERE.
The Atomic Bitchwax will hit the road this March on tour with Weedeater and The Goddamn Gallows. Find a complete last of dates below.
The band has recently wrapped up recording their new album, which is set for release at the end of May. Stay tuned more details.
THE ATOMIC BITCHWAX W/ Weedeater and The Goddamn Gallows 3/3: Baltimore, MD @ Metro Gallery 3/4: Brooklyn, NY @ Elsewhere 3/6: Philadelphia, PA @ Underground Arts 3/7: Boston, MA @ Sonia 3/9: Youngstown, OH @ Westside Bowl 3/10: Cleveland, OH @ Grog Shop 3/11: Detroit, MI @ The Sanctuary 3/12: Iowa City, IA @ Wildwood 3/13: Chicago, IL @ Reggie’s
Posted in Bootleg Theater on September 21st, 2018 by JJ Koczan
The Atomic Bitchwax, The Atomic Bitchwax (1999)
I think it’s high time the ’90s era of heavy rock — the original run of stoner rock, that is — started to get tagged with the term classic. It’s been 20 years or more for most of it, after all. Think of bands like Monster Magnet, Kyuss, Acid King, Fu Manchu, Nebula, and so on, and to that list I would most definitely add New Jersey trio The Atomic Bitchwax. The band formed in 1993 but it would be six years before their self-titled debut came out on Tee Pee/MIA Records. It was kind of a side-project at first. Bassist/vocalist Chris Kosnik was at the time a member of Godspeed, who were signed to Atlantic during the same era that saw Core and a few others picked up in the wake of Monster Magnet‘s burgeoning wider success, and they made a run touring with Black Sabbath and appearing on the first Nativity in Black tribute to Sabbath with Bruce Dickinson sitting in on vocals. When Godspeed split, it was basically into The Atomic Bitchwax and Solace. Kosnik, guitarist Ed Mundell, also then of Monster Magnet, and drummer Keith Ackerman, who also played in and would later rejoin Solace for a stretch, set to work on their first record, and they came out with a scorcher.
The Atomic Bitchwax‘s The Atomic Bitchwax runs a deceptive 11 songs and 53 minutes. It’s deceptive because they trade back and forth between instrumentals like the opening “Stork Theme” — which also seems to nod at Sabbath with a beginning noise that reminds of “After Forever” — and “Crazed Fandango” and “Ain’t Nobody Gonna Hang Me in My Home,” “The Last of the V8 Interceptors” and 10-minute closer “The Formula” and hook-laden tracks like “Birth to the Earth,” “Hey Alright,” “Hope You Die,” “Gettin’ Old” and “Shit Kicker,” as well as their cover of Core‘s “Kiss the Sun,” which would be a staple in live sets for years to come. The two modes of working are interspersed throughout the tracklisting — they might most come together on the bluesier, throttled-back “Gettin’ Old” — and that helps the trio of Kosnik, Mundell and Ackerman keep the listener off-balance as they build a working momentum from front to back across the release. That, coupled with what has become a signature style of winding riffs, a decent amount of speed in their tempos, a couple samples at the start of “Last of the V8 Interceptors” and “Shit Kicker,” and the extra percussion in “Crazed Fandango” earlier, all give the record a sense of variety that, especially on first listen, can be hard to keep up with. The Atomic Bitchwax has for the most part been a band that dares its audience to hold their pace. On the self-titled, that true in terms of style as well as tempo.
Stoner band being stoner in the era of stoner? Yeah, maybe. But to my ears what makes The Atomic Bitchwax a classic album is the fact that the band are so tight and so loose at the same time. That The Atomic Bitchwax could conjure the sharp, head-spinning turns of “Stork Theme” and still be fuzzed-out and have an overarching groove in the process. Or that they could be so locked in on “Hope You Die” with Kosnik‘s bass comes forward in the hook and still toss out the lyric “Total. Freedom.,” and have it sound utterly natural. It’s not effortless, but it’s not intended to be. They remain the kind of band who should have someone walking through the crowd collecting tips while they play — “Hey folks, these guys are working hard up there” — but for the frenetic changes in “Ain’t Nobody Gonna Hang Me in My Home” and the MC5-worthy gallop of “Shit Kicker,” nothing The Atomic Bitchwax do on their first full-length takes precedent over the song itself. Even the instrumentals each have a personality of their own. Hell, “Ain’t Nobody Gonna Hang Me in My Home” is the centerpiece. Those tracks are crucial the mission of the record overall, right down to the touch of psychedelia worked into the midsection of “The Formula” at the end of the album. They not only highlight the prowess of the band technically, but complement the songwriting of “Birth to the Earth” and “Hey Alright,” etc., making the band a richer listening experience the whole way through, giving flashes of punk immediacy here and there, but ultimately ending up with an unquestionable place in heavy rock and roll.
That a record could be so laid back as it punches you in the face. That’s The Atomic Bitchwax. Still, almost 20 years later.
And quite a 20 years it’s (nearly) been. The Kosnik, Mundell, Ackerman lineup would follow the self-titled with II the next year, also on Tee Pee, and then have the Spit Blood EP on MeteorCity in 2002 before dissolving. Kosnik and Ackerman pressed forward by recruiting Core guitarist/vocalist Finn Ryan for the 2005 album, 3 (discussed here), and thereby embarking on a new era of the band. The Jack Endino-produced EP Boxriff followed — proud to say I did the liner notes for it — coupled with a live set recorded in Seattle, and after losing Ackerman on drums, Kosnik and Ryan welcomed Bob Pantella, also of Monster Magnet, on drums for 2008’s TAB4 (aka T4B), issued first by MeteorCity and then by Tee Pee, which The Atomic Bitchwax rejoined and on whose roster they remain. 2011 brought the all-instrumental, single-song LP, The Local Fuzz (review here), and with that out of their system and a resurgence as a touring act, 2015’s Gravitron (review here) and 2017’s Force Field (review here) marked not only a period of productivity, but a maturity of approach that somewhat ironically dipped back to the modus of their earliest work but made it tighter and even sharper in the delivery.
Speaking of irony, for a band that was so long considered a side-project because of Mundell‘s involvement in both groups — he of course relocated to the West Coast earlier this decade and embarked on The Ultra Electric Mega Galactic — the last several years have found Kosnik playing bass in Monster Magnet in the rhythm section with Pantella. I don’t think anyone’s calling them a side-project at this point though. Classic, maybe. I certainly think so.
As always, I hope you enjoy.
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We put the Little Dog Dio down on Monday. The pain from her bone cancer was becoming less and less manageable by the hour. We ended up giving her a percocet Monday morning and she ate nine string cheeses and some chicken after that and she got up to greet The Patient Mrs. when she and the baby got back from running an errand, but she was still clearly in agony, despite also being stoned out of her gourd.
I miss her. So much. I keep looking for her. Thinking about her in her places. The spots that were hers in the house. I’ve been telling Dio stories all week on Facebook. I have so many but I’ll probably do one more tomorrow and leave it there. It’s been hard.
We had a vet come and do it at the house. They do that now, apparently. I’ve had dogs my whole life and been a participant in two euthanasias prior to this one. Dio was different. Special. She woofed at the door when the vet came. She was healthy but for the cancer eating away at her. I figure we got robbed of at least two good years with her. I’d happily shave that time off my own lifespan if I could make a trade to get her back.
I brought her bed from the upstairs bedroom down to the kitchen and laid a sheet on it for her to be on while the vet administered the drugs. High dose of opiates, something else to knock her out, then the pink shit. Always the pink shit. The Patient Mrs. and I sat with her and cried — I’d spent the last four hours just petting her and telling her I loved her — and we were with her through the end. The vet was about to deliver the pink shit and I asked her to let me do it. She did. I did it. Me.
But you want to know the truth? The confession? I wouldn’t have done it on my own. The Patient Mrs. and I had talked it out and we both knew it was time, but even an hour before the vet came I was saying maybe we should call it off. And if she’d said okay, I would have. I wouldn’t have gone through with it. I’d have been selfish and kept my poor sweet Dio in pain just to have a couple more days with her. A little more time. I’m a terrible person.
I cried and cried and cried. When it was finally done, I wrapped her in the sheet and carried her out to the vet’s van, where a bag was waiting. She’ll be cremated and we’ll get her ashes back in the mail next week. I want to be buried with them when I go.
The rest of the last five days has been a blur of grief and baby feedings. I said goodnight to her pillow before I went to bed last night.
I have notes ready for next week front to back but I’m going to keep it to myself. It’s a cool week, busy, but I just don’t have it in me to run through it. Also, by way of a heads up, the next Quarterly Review begins Oct. 8. Nobody cares. I know.
If you get the chance though, I have a show debuting on www.gimmeradio.com this Sunday at 5PM Eastern. Prime time! It’s called “The Obelisk Show” and I host it and talk awkwardly about records and this and that. The Patient Mrs. and The Pecan both make a cameo. It turned out to be a lot of fun to put together and I promise it’s not sad. It’s free to sign up and there’s no subscription or anything, so if you get to check it out, I’d appreciate it. Here’s a poster they made.
That says it all, I guess. I’m just happy they spelled my name right. We’ll see if they let me do a second episode.
While you wait with bated breath for that to start, I hope you have a great and safe weekend. Hold your loved ones close, have fun, and please don’t forget to check out the forum and radio stream.
All fucking week. All week I was behind. On everything. Behind on work. Behind on work for my second job. Certainly behind on this shit. I never got caught up, either. It hit 4:30 this afternoon and I just had to say fuck it and leave the office. If I’m not going to get anything done, I might as well not be there. Been a while since I split out of work at rush hour. Did you know there’s traffic at 5 o’clock?
So in looking for something to end this miserable, frustrating, son of a bitch week, I went with The Atomic Bitchwax, not only because they’re from New Jersey like me, but because they’re pretty much the opposite. Not miserable or frustrated. Even the “Shit Kicker” is alright according to these guys. Probably I’d have gone with something more recent by them — 2005’s 3 was what I was going for — but their 1999 self-titled was the only full studio album I could find. Not at all a hardship. The trio of Chris Kosnik, Ed Mundell and Keith Ackerman had a good thing going right from the start, and Kosnik has always kept a piece of that original spirit in everything the band does, even with the lineup and aesthetic changes that the years since the debut have brought.
I’m a sucker for the Bitchwax, always, and since I was thinking just the other day about how it had been too long since I’d seen them live, here we are.
Because I have been so behind, my plan is to have a couple posts up this weekend. Some news about the new Windhand and Across Tundras records being done and coming out, maybe some other stuff. It might be Sunday before I get anything up though, as The Patient Mrs. is graduating and there are inevitable celebrations stemming from that. She’ll have her Ph.D. in hand, which since it’s seven years in the making strikes me as something worth celebrating. She’s brilliant. I’m a lucky dolt.
But anyway, when I can find a couple minutes I’ll get those posts up, if only because I don’t want to start next week as deep in the red as I’ve spent the last several days. And next week, the Kylesa and Cathedral reviews, an interview with Black Black Black, a look at a new tape by Purple Knights that just came in today’s mail, probably something about that new Queens of the Stone Age album if I can nail down who’s in the lineup on any given track, and so on and so forth. Rest assured, there will be posts, and probably more words than you’d ever have interest in reading.
Also, if you’ve emailed me in the last, well, month and I haven’t responded, I’ll be working on that this weekend as well. I’ve been in email transfer hell all week going from Thunderbird to Outlook. I don’t want to say it’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to me, because one time I cut my leg open and had to have 140 stitches, but it has certainly made the fucking list.
Until Monday then, if you’ve got a question you should ask it, from the cradle to the casket. Womb to the tomb. Birth to the earth.
Have a great and safe weekend. Check out these things that are also on this site and formatted like the links at the ends of reviews:
