Talk about a meteoric rise. Three years ago, XCOMM didn’t exist. Today, the Venice Beach hardcore outfit has already opened for Foo Fighters, played The Punk Rock Museum’s third anniversary parking lot show, shared festival stages with Militarie Gun and Dethklok at California Chaos Fest, and recently added Warped Tour D.C. to its rapidly growing résumé. The most surprising part? Every member of the band is still a teenager.
“I was actually playing guitar,” shares drummer Revel Ian. “The easiest way to write songs and get them done was for me to play drums. I put out this flyer on my Instagram story and Michael replied saying he’d do it before anyone saw it. Then he came in the next day, and we rolled out three songs.”
That chemistry quickly carried over into the band’s debut album, Time to Burn, released via Blowed Out Records and produced by Ross Robinson (Korn, Slipknot, Glassjaw, At the Drive-In, The Cure). Ian still remembers the surreal moment he spotted Robinson standing in the crowd at one of their shows, unaware that it would soon lead to a collaboration.
“Revel and I work really well together,” explains frontman Michael Gatto. “Usually, there will be some sort of basis that we’ll build off of, and Revel is a multi-instrumentalist, so sharing ideas is not difficult at all. Once we got the skeleton down and got the band playing it, we brought in Ross, and things became stronger and stronger the longer we did it.”
Recording with Robinson was the band’s first experience making a record on that scale, and they approached it accordingly. Spending four months in the studio gave them time to refine every detail while learning from one of the producers whose records had inspired them to start making music in the first place.
“I’ve gone through many other bands, which are incredible, and they put me on to what it is to be in a band and that dynamic. Finally, I reached that point where I had found the band that I’m meant for. We made a record with Ross Robinson, who I grew up listening to his records that he produced, which influenced me to do this. It’s just a full circle moment and it’s everything I wanted to do.”
During the extended process, it allowed the band to open up, and harness emotions from the deepest parts of their brains. Before they even tracked the song, Robinson would sit them all down and ask what the song was about. That led to a fully collaborative unit, instead of individual thoughts and feelings.
“Having the initial conversations definitely pushed us to being a unit,” says Gatto. “I find that walking through it, with the whole band, the perspective changes. It depends on what the songs are, and it definitely changes depending on what’s going on in the listener’s life.”
While XCOMM’s ascent has been remarkably fast, neither Ian nor Gatto attributes it to careful planning. The band simply set out to make music they enjoyed and let everything else follow.
“We were just doing it for fun,” admits Ian. “I feel like for bands to go into it thinking you need to be successful, it never really works out. Just do it for fun. It could very much not work out, but you’d be surprised.”
“We put our demo tape and got signed,” adds Gatto. “It must have been out for a week or two, but we definitely did not expect to go (this far). I find that us being a band, and talking about the songs reinforces every aspect of this band.”
Time to Burn is out now from Blowed Out Records, and you can order it here. Follow XCOMM on Facebook and Instagram for future updates.
Featured photo by Giovanni Reda, all other photos by Ray Camacho
