!!! New album `Deface The Currency` out on Impulse! !!!

The distance between the underground rock scene and the genre-bending free jazz movement of the 1960s is shorter than it appears. On their second full-length collaboration, Deface the Currency, The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis have managed to erase that distance by uniting the post-punk precision of the Washington D.C hardcore scene with the high-octane energy of Detroit's revolutionary rock heritage. They then forge a powerful bond between "New Thing" avant-garde legends Pharoah Sanders and Sonny Sharrock with the high-energy intensity and passion of Detroit's MC5 and The Stooges, as well as Washington, D.C.'s Fugazi, Nation of Ulysses, and Faraquet. Make no mistake, while they successfully capture the spirit of both camps, the sound is entirely their own. Accomplishing this is no easy task. Still, the powerhouse lineup of the band, which includes ex-Fugazi members—bassist Joe Lally and Brendan Canty on drums—provides the telepathic rhythmic foundation that guitarist Anthony Pirog and tenor saxophonist James Brandon Lewis use to their advantage to craft piercing and aggressive lead lines that take the music wherever they want it to go, pushing each other into attack mode on the opening track, "Deface the Currency." Not just the title track, it also provides a mission statement for the band. Here, Lewis plays with a sense of urgency and aggression that his saxophone can barely contain; it shrieks and honks passionately, while also displaying a bluesy toughness one does not ordinarily hear him use in his more traditional quartet format. This toughness allows him to meet the Messthetics' powerful rhythmic engine head-on, a sonic explosion that pushes both to new heights.
(Kevin Poindexter, All About Jazz)