REVIEW: Royal Bangs - Flux Outside

Royal Bangs - Flux Outside
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Where to even start with Flux Outside – there’s quite a bit to cover. Royal Bangs are a band that blare confidence and skirt genre classification, as evidenced by this, the band’s third full-length album. Whether it’s garage rock, blues, psych, punk, math rock, or even soul, Royal Bangs make it a point to cross-pollinate their core of rock ‘n’ roll with any and all genres and subgenres. Flux Outside is a title that seems, incidentally, to suggest that while everything around them is constantly changing, they are a band bold and confident enough to accept change and use it to their advantage.

From beginning to end, Flux Outside is an album that punches holes in expectations, the ones you may possibly hold for its direction. And while Royal Bangs are ambitious enough to experiment with their sound, they never truly lose any semblance of who they are. “Grass Helmet” sounds like garage rock on speed: an explosion of rattling guitars, the punchy, distorted growl of bass guitar, and a machine-gun hi-hat so sharp it could cut through anything. “Triccs” invokes the snarly, rock ‘n’ roll romp of the MC5 and the bare-bones blues howl of The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. “Dim Chamber” is a pensive, bluesy, soul-inflected song that builds, perfectly turning over into album closer “Slow Cathedral Melt”, a song that takes the soulful delivery of its predecessor, amps it up, and adds in support from distorted organ, classic rock guitar leads, and a warped set of strings.

It may not be possible to accurately classify Royal Bangs here, but that doesn’t always work to their advantage. In venturing out across different genres, the album feels less direct upon crossing the halfway point – not because the band is suffering from an identity crisis so much as they have already tried to pack a lot into just a few songs; it feels as though it could have used a bit of tightening. It’s not that the songs are bad by any means, but, overall, the album begins to pack less of a punch until the latter few songs. Everyone’s take of an album is different, and for some, this might just be something that takes a while to fully digest. In the end, this isn’t something that detracts from Royal Bangs clear – not to mention admirable – ambition to avoid the safety of a one-genre denominator.

Flux Outside is an assertive, adventurous, wildly fun, and well-executed effort. Overall, it may feel a bit longer than it actually is, but it’s definitely an album that proves Royal Bangs are incredibly talented musicians well-deserving of more ears. Singer/multi-instrumentalist Ryan Schaefer, guitarist Sam Stratton, and drummer Chris Rusk are so in sync with one another that Flux Outside, above all, showcases a collection of tight-knit performances. And with the assistance of acclaimed producer Dave Fridmann adding tasteful sonic embellishments (e.g. calculated feedback, manipulated vocals, etc.), Royal Bangs sound all the more attentive to detail. It’s refreshing to hear a band that doesn’t allow itself to become too comfortable with one particular sound. While change is something most avoid in life, Royal Bangs unabashedly embrace it as one of the primary ingredients for Flux Outside. This is an album that shows what experimental rock can be when properly practiced: twists and turns without losing a total sense of purpose and direction. At heart, Flux Outside is an album that aims – and nearly succeeds in its realization – to be a focused prism of styles that's just as timeless as it is invigoratingly fresh.

Flux Outside was released this past Tuesday on Glassnote. You can pick it up at your local record shop, Amazon, Amazon MP3, or iTunes.

Royal Bangs are tonight's musical guest on The Late Show with David Letterman. Check your local listings.