Pitchfork

When people come together to fuel a shared passion, either a band or a cult is formed. The X-Impossibles are five Georgians who have an awestruck love for the grimy proto-punk of underground Detroit, circa 1968. Their passion is to create and perform this loud, retro, visceral rock n' roll. So they choose "band."

The showmanship is flaunted. Singer Tim Lumley sounds like a taller Glen Danzig giving birth to the Reverend Horton Heat. Elvis' feral, lip-curled singing style is practiced and deft. The wash, rinse and spin churn of Bartel and Christian's twin Gibsons folds, spindles and mutilates eardrums. And musically, the group pours gasoline on the bonfire. White Knuckle Ride leaves the listener gasping for air. Hard, furious rock was never so primal and elementary-- at least not in Generation Dot-Com.

"Fire" leads off with some motorcycle revving sounds, a la "Leader of the Pack." Groan-worthy, to be sure, but suddenly Bo Diddley tears out a version of "Police Truck" by the Dead Kennedys. Or so you'd swear in court. On the follow-up jab, "Don't Tread," the Danzig impression Lumley's been cultivating comes to fruition. Throbbing bass begins the song, with tweeter-rending power chords tumbling into beat. A rip-it-up solo proudly wails, sloppy and ecstatic. But the song's finest moments comes with the outro, a rallying cry for those whose tattoos outnumber their fingers.

"Dead Horse" takes the Stooges and MC5 influences that, up to now, had merely been hinted at, and welds them into a fun, furious blast of Detroit-style rock like you haven't heard since the pansy-ass post-rock post-grads took the T-bird away. By the second chorus, you've dropped what you're doing to hand-clap away your pretentious conceptions about music.

By now, the X-Impossibles are clearly making their bid the saviors of fun, raw rock n' roll. And at this point, the challenge becomes merely living up to their own unreal standard they've set in just three songs. But eight tracks later, the ride through punk-rockabillyland is over, and the evidence shows that these four guys and one gal kept it up strong. And their encore-- a cover of the Dead Boys' "What Love Is"-- is a live-take, one-off purist's version, performed with a love and reverence that leaves little to be desired.

Of course, the nitpicker in me finds the second half of the disc bogged down in formula at times-- mostly during the repetitious, bipolarate intros to each number. Sure, a handful of songs are less stellar, but we can let that slide since each of the best six tracks pulls double duty. And when these guys nail it, they satiate with bulging steroid-rock, overbuilt and bursting at the seams, with titles like "Action Man," "Loaded," "Hot Wire." How can you go wrong?

Listening to the X-Impossibles turns me into an unforgiving, cocky, adrenaline addict. Rude. Selfish. So what do I ask of this frenetic quintet? Give me tinnitus, for starters. I want it. Then, give me decibel-clause eviction warnings and whale-bellied policemen waving "disturbing the peace" citations threateningly in the air. Give me Iggy Pop to point at, so I scream right into his guilty, weathered face: "This, you fucker, is where your roots were." And finally, give me a wide berth and step out of the way. This band is coming through.