EATMEWHILEIMHOT! – xAlbumx

Christopher Drew (or as he prefers to go by Christofer Drew) is one of the coolest teenagers on earth right now. What makes him so cool is how instead of just thinking about doing awesome and lofty things (like most teenagers do) he actually does them, and then takes it one crucial step further and makes a pretty good livelihood from his adolescent antics. He is different and thus kind of cooler than other famous teenagers, like Justin Bieber, because he is an artist’s artist. Which is to say, the dude is a little cuckoo. And that his priorities aren’t necessarily all about making mad bank and getting his dick wet. Dude writes poetry and distributes it via MySpace for goodness sake. Dude is an artist, the real McCoy.

The latest installment in the oeuvre of Christopher Drew is quite an addition, a new record via his screamo-heavy-metal side project EATMEWHILEIMHOT! called xALBUMx. It dropped yesterday on Loveway Records (Drew’s own imprint within the legendary Sire Records). The record, like the whole EATMEWHILEIMHOT! venture, is an inside joke between Drew and the rest of his band mates who are all childhood friends of his. It’s a parody, a kind of Lonely Island of the metal, screamo genre; if you will: “joke metalcore.”

All eight tracks begin and end with the letter x. There is, for instance, the skull-shattering opening track “xDESTORYx.” A tune all about death: setting shit ablaze, shooting people with shotguns, and cutting up rotting human carcasses with chainsaws. Then there is the Deftones-esque second track, “xSMWHOREx,” which, according to the bands Myspace, is about “eating whoreish ex-girlfriends in sandwiches.” Or, my personal favorite, the third track, “xPIZZIAx”, — a killer belch of noise all about getting high with one’s bros and wanting to eat pepperoni pizza, but being able too due to one’s one’s vegetarianism and vegan tendencies:

PEPPERONI! EXTRA CHEESE! GIVE ME!!!
I MIGHT BE A VEGETARIAN
BUT LORD I NEED TO EAT!

The rest of the album follows more or less the same pattern: vile, violent tunes with a very insular humor hidden within. There is nothing all that appealing about the record in and of itself. To a very select audience, it’s funny and even somewhat of an OK listen in that this is so bad it’s good kind of way, but that’s that. What makes the album worth talking about is, of course, that Christopher Drew is the voice, the organizer, the mover of this elaborate farce. Even if you don’t like his music, or him, it’s interesting to watch such a young artist experiment with different identities, showcase them, and then make it happen. And it’s made all the more interesting because unlike, Justin Bieber or Miley Cyrus, we know Christopher Drew is the one calling most of the shots.