Update: RX Bandits Tonight (With Dredg & Zechs Marquise)

Another last-minuter — I’d been trying to write up the new RX Bandits album for the better part of a week, without much success, but I finally, at the last freaking second, managed to get it up there. Check out the review up here, if you feel like it.

Basically, I found myself enjoying the album, Mandala (out next week sometime, I believe), although like I said, it took me a while. I’ve liked the Bandits since first hearing “Overcome (The Recapitulation)” on the first Rock Against Bush comp — while it was/is a decent comp, theirs was one of the few truly thoughtful, truly catchy tracks on there, and one of the only songs on the disc that’s actually stuck with me over the years. It’s the only one of the bunch left on the iPod, which is kind of a telling thing, I think.

So I was curious to hear Mandala; at first listen, I was confused, wondering what the hell happened to the reggae/funk/ska/punk band I’d heard before. That reggae/ska influence is still in there, don’t worry, but it’s buried a lot deeper and blended in a lot better with the rest of what’s going on. This time out, the Bandits have revealed their true prog-rock colors, letting the guitars spiral and spark like they were yanked off an aMINIATURE or Edsel album or something, and on top of that they’ve thrown a serious Latin sound, with some truly Santana-esque moments. And while it sounds bizarre even to read back over those last few sentences, heck, it works. The whole thing is pretty captivating.

The reason for the rush, btw, is because the Bandits are playing in town tonight (Fri., July 17th), alongside Dredg (with whom they’ve apparently been trading off the headliner slot, so late-going RX Bandits fans beware…) and The Mars Volta splinter group Zechs Marquise, neither of whom I’m real familiar with at this point (only listened to about half of the new Zechs Marquise CD so far).

More on the way in a day or two, I promise…