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X-DRIVE
Get Your Rock On

Frontiers (2014)
Rating: 8.5/10

Get Your Rock On is the debut offering from Los Angeles-based project X-Drive, the brainchild of guitarist Jeremy Brunner.

Although Brunner is somewhat of an unknown quantity, he’s joined on this outing by vocalist Keith St. John (Montrose, Quite Riot, Burning Rain), bassist James LoMenzo (White Lion, Black Label Society, Megadeth) and drummer Fred Fischer (Midline), with the sound quality being rounded off by legendary producer Andy Johns, who sadly passed away in 2013 and before this work was published.

The album offers 12 tracks, beginning with the excellent ‘Love’s A Bitch’ which for some reason reminds me of The Cult. Featuring a hip-shaking melody and a cool, fluent vocal sassiness, the tune rolls along and is instant on the ears, and lyrically a touch clichéd yet poetry in motion as St. John roars that he’s “A shotgun of love, a picture of hope, a suicide creature at the end of my rope. I’m a boy, I’m a beast, I’m a king at a feast, I’m a man, I’m a mob and my time is diseased”, which leads into a cool fluid chorus too. St. John has that swaggering Ian Astbury style about his simple yet effective tones, and the track is an ideal way for the band to introduce itself.

Of course, there’s always that concern that with an album starting so well that it might just step onto the downward spiral, but thankfully that never happens with X-Drive. The title track is a sturdy, 80s style steaming lump of pounding melodic metal, which is so gloriously cool and in a way predictable, but with that hard bass, a deep throbbing vein of percussion and Brunner’s devilish riffs and devious solos, we could well be hearing a truly fantastic guitarist coming to fruition.

‘Steppin’ On The Rock’ continues with that 80s-styled rich vein of molten, harmonious metal, but this time there’s a sleazy edge wrenched from 1988, and St. John has the perfect voice to channel that attitude as he croons with such nonchalance and class.

There’s a waft of underlying darkness about this debut platter, giving us the serious nature of rock ’n’ roll that was often misunderstood in the 80s amidst the seas of cheese and hairspray. With nary a dull moment in sight, the hair metal-styled simmering nuances of ‘Baby, Bye, Bye’ rises out of the mist enriched by soaring soul, while ‘California’ has a mesmerising pop-tinged chug that nestles in the brain.

X-Drive finds it easy to cavort with styles which are incorporated into that melodic pomp lead by the cocksure moans and groans of St. John. ‘Lay Me Down’ lowers the tempo, while ‘Turn The Noize Down’ cranks up the power; featuring a swanky drum kick and sleazy, bubble-gum quality, the latter would have been a sure-fire hit three decades ago, but now it simply exists as another solid cog in the massive wheel of X-Drive.

With the likes of the driving ‘Rattlesnake Eyes’, the nodding ‘Just Can’t Stay’ and the acoustic shuffle of ‘Change Of Heart’ I think it’s time that the whole world got its rocks on to X-Drive. Combining several influences within the melodic rock scene, Get Your Rock On should appeal to anyone with a taste for just about every cool 80s rock band, ranging from Kik Tracee to White Lion, and Tyketto to The Cult. Andy Johns would be proud.

Neil Arnold

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