The Bronx White Drugs Holiday Show Comes to Music Hall of Williamsburg
For more than a decade and a half, the Bronx (above, performing “New Noise”) have been making high-quality hardcore punk out of their home base in Los Angeles. (They’ve also managed to put out three albums of mariachi music under the name Mariachi El Bronx.) Despite interest from Island Def Jam after just playing a handful of shows, the Bronx—now founding member Matt Caughthran (vocals), Joby Ford (guitar and vocals), Ken Home (guitar and vocals), Brad Magers (bass and vocals) and Joey Castillo (drums)—opted to form their own label, White Drugs, to release their first several albums. Their fifth studio full-length, the aptly titled V (stream it here), came out in September last year. “It’s bands like the Bronx that still breathe life into a good old-fashioned ‘three chords and the truth’ full-pelt-brawler of a record, the sort of bands that resurface in timely fashion, just as guitar music begins to feel stale, delivering a fistful of rabble-rousing bangers that inexplicably still set the heart racing and the adrenaline pumping every time,” said Drowned in Sound. “The Bronx aren’t a rock and roll band, they are rock and roll—without any of the bullshit, or the rock star complexes, or the Spinal Tap pretension, or the unearned plaudits.” And that’s probably all you really need to know. Well, except for this: Long known for their blistering live performances—and just back from the U.K.—the Bronx bring their White Drugs Holiday Party to Music Hall of Williamsburg on Sunday night, their last show of the year.