Transplants

With high-profile gigs in Blink-182 and Boxcar Racer, Travis Barker has broken out as punk
rock's first superstar drummer. On this latest side project, Barker singlehandedly drags his
old-school-leaning band mates (singer Rob Aston and Rancid guitarist Tim Armstrong) into
the future with some timely percussive tricks, incorporating frantic jungle beats into
"Romper Stomper" and hip-hop rhythms on the wave-your-hands anthem "Tall Ca... More >

Power passion speed--there can't be any new way to configure those old saws around guitar-bass-drums, can there? Only then there is. Hardcore punk and hardcore ska join mook metal, hip hop criminal-mindedness, and the occasional rap element to form a music whose intense focus is absolutely punk and just about unprecedented. Rancid guitarist Tim Armstrong and Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker are the masterminds, previously unrecorded hanger-on Rob Aston the singer who added lyrics and meaning. Aston sounds like the young Shane MacGowan and writes as both a drug-dealing scumbag and a street person on a mission. He could be either, or both. He could have juiced a memorable one-off or a definitive classic. (Grade: A)