Holy fuckin’ rock n’ roll, does Rosetta West wipe the floor with all these wannabe white blues outfits clogging up the American soundscape these days. I mean, DESTROYS ‘em. They even make the Black Keys look like a cuppla dorks in dire need of a barber and some new records. The brainchild of guit-man and lead howler Joseph Demagore, this Illinois based power trio (throw an exclamation point of two after “power” for the maximum effect) have been deconstructing rock n’ roll since 1996, and they have finally reduced it down to it’s purest essence – a deep, rolling rumble of throaty laments and bad trouble. Listen, sometimes an acoustic guitar and a few hands for clapping is all you need to just wreck the joint, and RW do it here more than once. Well ok, throw a gong in, too, but “Descendant X” thrives on a minimal sort of creepy-crawl that makes damn sure you don’t get distracted by nothin’ else. This record sounds like a fucking GRAVEYARD TRAIN, man. The only contemporary comparison that makes any sense at all is Louisiana swamp lizards Santeria – Demagore is a deadringer, tone-wise, for Santeria frontman Dege Legge – but otherwise you gotta reach all the way back to CCR, Sabbath, and maybe Blind Willie Johnson to find exactly where they’re coming from. It’s psychedelic-tinged in places, completely acid-fried in others, and lonesome as a motherfucker, and the only reason this one wasn’t a big hit in the muddy trenches of the Mekong Delta is that these fuckers were only 5 years old at the time. Picks to click have gotta include the crunchy, Cream-y “Shine”, a late 60’s revolution-ready powerhouse that sounds like fellow Illinois native Nash Kato fronting a gang of long-gone mustache monsters, the startling, surging, seething, blooze-stomp of opener “Blue Honey” and the dark, haunting (natch) “Vampire Song”, which might be the first instance of delta-blues goth n’ roll on record. And, ya know, the rest of ‘em sound like Hendrix and the MC5, if Hendrix and the MC5 were deep, slashing wounds that left lasting scars. And they were.

“Descendant X" is heavy in every possible way, man. If this record doesn’t make a man out of you, nothin’ will.