No barriers, big co-signs, David Lynch, and the essence of ZZ Top — inside XCOMM’s debut album
Los Angeles hardcore band XCOMM are moving fast. Formed in 2023, the young LA band have quickly built a reputation through a string of standout singles accompanied by chaotic, creative, and genuinely fun videos. Those visuals have helped establish XCOMM as a serious band that doesn’t take itself too seriously — young California hardcore kids doing exactly what they should be doing: having fun. Their debut album, Time To Burn, produced by legendary producer Ross Robinson, captures that same energy across eleven top-tier hardcore songs packed with urgency, frustration, and pure adrenaline.
The connection with Robinson happened organically after he showed up to one of the band’s early Hollywood shows and immediately connected with what they were doing. From there, the recording process became something deeper than simply making a hardcore record. In our interview, the band describe the experience as “a hardcore therapy session,” with Robinson pushing performances emotionally and physically. It worked, and they loved it.
That same intensity has already carried over into the band’s live reputation. In just the past year, XCOMM have gone from local DIY shows around Venice to supporting the Foo Fighters at the Kia Forum, landing spots on Warped Tour and Bumbershoot, and earning co-signs from everyone from Guy Picciotto to Tony Hawk.
Ahead of the release of Time To Burn, Good Call’s Justin Staple caught up with XCOMM to talk about the album, LA hardcore, David Lynch, all-ages shows, and how the essence of ZZ Top shows up in their debut. Time To Burn arrives Friday, May 22 via Blowed Out Records.
Good Call: I was listening to the album all morning. It’s sick. Congratulations. Let’s start with Ross Robinson. How did you connect with him? What was that experience like, and how did it all come together?
Michael: It came together through family friends. We were playing our demo release show — Roy Mayorga helped us record those five songs — and we were playing in Hollywood. We looked up, and Ross was there! In my mind, it was a miracle because he probably gets invited to a lot of shows and decided to come to ours. It happened really organically. He showed up, was stoked on it, and we ended up making a record with him, which is really cool.
Revel: The studio was pretty crazy. Probably one of the most fun times I’ve ever had musically. When Ross is next to you screaming, “Go faster,” you just go as hard as you possibly can. He gets the match and throws it into the gas in your heart. Before recording every song, we’d have these talks about what the song was about. It was very lyric-based. Everyone would share a story, then we’d get into it. It felt like a big hardcore therapy session with instruments involved. It came out really cool. It sounds brutal and heavy.
Good Call: I heard the story about him yelling at you while you were drumming to go faster. What a great experience! So how did the band come together in the beginning?
Revel: Michael and I both had bands. My band ended, and on my birthday in 2023, I started this punk cover band called Minor Jerk Brains — Minor Threat, Circle Jerks, and Bad Brains covers. We played a show at Corbin Bowl, and Michael came through. He was in a band called Two Dust and gave me a bunch of stickers. He was like, “That was sick. We should hang out sometime.” I made a mental note that he was really chill.
Later, when I started my own band again, I was hanging with my friend Aden, who plays bass in XCOMM. We were writing hardcore ideas — I was on guitar and he was on bass — but the easiest way to get the songs done was for me to play drums. So I hopped on drums, and we jammed a few times. Then I posted on my story that I was looking for a singer and guitar player for a new band, XCOMM. Michael immediately DM’d me and said, “I’m in.”
The next day we rehearsed and got down early skeletons of songs that are now on the album, like “Hot Pursuit,” “Time to Burn,” “Negativity,” and “Purity.” It came together really quickly.
Good Call: And you’re all from Venice, CA?
Michael: We’re all kind of West Side. I’m Venice born and raised. If you’ve got a beach close to you, I count it.
Revel: Aden lives in La Brea, and I live in Topanga, which is near Topanga Beach. So yeah, West Side in the heart, ha!
Good Call: Growing up around that area, with bands like Suicidal Tendencies coming out of there, how much did the local scene influence you guys?
Michael: During COVID, when everything shut down, there were still shows happening. I was amazed that on a Friday night we could still pull 200 people when there was literally nobody outside. Once the world started opening back up, there were a lot of LA DIY shows that definitely influenced how we thought about our band and how we approached doing demo shows and everything else.
There were also a lot of older bands around from 2020 to 2023 that shaped how we thought about our band and music. In Venice especially, everybody knows somebody connected to Suicidal Tendencies. You hear all these personal stories from people at shows, and that was really inspiring.
Good Call: When did you start working on Time to Burn?
Michael: Right away. We wrote “Time to Burn” during the first rehearsal.
Revel: It was our first song, and pretty much everything about it stayed the same.
We started pre-production with Ross in October 2024 after he came to our EP release show for our first demo. He came to that and it was that Ross thing where he’s standing on the side of the stage and couldn’t believe these kids were playing this music. He told me he would just laugh at how insane he thought the whole thing was. Pre-production was focused heavily on the drums, but also guitars, bass, and vocals. We worked on building endurance and stamina, and the songs sped up by like 20 BPM.
Then we started recording in December on Friday the 13th. The first song we recorded was “Borrowed Happiness.” We didn’t record everything in order — some songs that ended up later on the album were recorded first.
The last song we recorded was “Negativity,” which is probably my favorite song on the record. We recorded it the day David Lynch passed away, so there was this strange Lynchian energy in the studio. The lights were blue, and the song has these weird soundscapes and vibes that really fit that atmosphere.
Michael: I remember that day as well. That was definitely a defiant recording day.
Good Call: What an epic experience. What else did you learn through the process? It feels like a real coming-of-age experience for the band.
Michael: Ross reinforces why we do music and how music can spread a message. He pushes the intensity behind it and the purpose behind what we’re doing. Vocals were definitely difficult. Like Revel said, everyone shared stories behind the lyrics. Some of the stories I was talking about were hard to revisit, but then you get to scream it into a microphone and release it into the world. Ross really pushed us toward that, and I’m stoked he showed us how to do that shit.
Revel: For me, it was the most fun musical experience I’ve ever had.
Michael: I had the most fun ever too. It was amazing. I’d love to do another record with him.
Good Call: What’s the message behind the album?
Michael: Every song has a different meaning. We talked about why the lyrics were written, the experiences behind them, and how the songs made us feel once they were finished.
There are all these different ideas mashed into these fast-ass, two-minute-and-30-second songs. There are a lot of messages in there. People will pick up their own takeaways from it.
Good Call: Let’s talk about “Fake ID” and the video.
Michael: The video was amazing. We woke up super early and filmed at the Trading Post because we only had a short window before it opened. It was a peculiar day. It was raining, we were dressed in dresses with grandma masks on, and the song is about not being able to get into shows when you’re underage.
All of us have had situations where we had tickets in hand or were on the guest list and still got turned away because venues assumed we’d drink. It’s frustrating because we just want to see the music.
The whole concept of the video was us dressed as grandmas stealing alcohol, then not doing anything with it and eventually dropping the bottles on the beach and walking into the water. It was an amazing experience filming that video. I had a bunch of fun.
Revel: It was not a fun video to shoot, haha. I started school the next day, we woke up at 4AM, I was exhausted, it was raining, I had to wear a mask, and it was freezing cold.
Michael: At one point Revel was turning blue and I was like, “Run!”
Revel: In the video there are those shots of us walking toward the water, and we had to keep doing takes on the beach while wearing those masks, haha. But the video came out sick.
Michael: That was an amazing day. Lots of memories on the beach, cold as hell in a grandma dress with fake bottles of alcohol, thinking to myself, “This is a very funny image.” I was stoked on how it came out.
Good Call: Who directed the video?
Michael: Connor Elman did the “Fake ID” video. Connor killed that video. He’s phenomenal. Dean Carr did “Reasons,” “Hot Pursuit / “One And Nothing”. We love Uncle Deano. We also did two more videos with Darren Craig.
Good Call: Tell me about Blowed Out Records.
Michael: Blowed Out is the shit. Ross Robinson is involved, along with Bill Armstrong from SideOneDummy and Ghostemane. We’re really grateful to be working with them.
Good Call: You’ve got the Palladium shows coming up too.
Michael: We’re super stoked. We’ve been getting all our gear ready and rehearsing hard for those shows and definitely going hard. We’re opening for Dethklok at the Palladium and then again in San Diego.
We’re also doing Warped Tour in DC and Long Beach, which is insane for us. Then we’ve got Bumbershoot in Seattle and a few other things in the works.
Good Call: What’s an XCOMM show feel like?
Revel: I want every show to be crazy — stage dives, pits, no barricades. We were watching Terror recently and Scott Vogel was yelling, “The barricade is your enemy.” That’s the energy I want at our shows.
Good Call: You got a co-sign from Guy Picciotto from Fugazi right? What was that like?
Michael: That was surreal. Fugazi is number one.
Revel: He didn’t know Ross produced us, and Ross got a text from him saying he’d been listening to the songs all day. At that point we only had three songs out. Guy said something like he’d been listening and jumping through walls to the songs. Ross told him he produced the band and Guy freaked out. I still haven’t processed that he likes our music. It’s crazy.
Revel: We were just at Sick New World and Tony Hawk knew who we were. We went up to say hi to him and he was like, “Aren’t you guys in a band?” We were like, “Oh my god.”
Good Call: I wanted to ask about the Tres Hombres hat. Are you a ZZ Top fan?
Revel: Yeah. I’ve been wearing this for like the last four months. You can’t beat that album for that genre. That album has been around me my entire life. Then I watched the ZZ Top documentary and got really into them. You don’t hear it directly, but the essence of ZZ Top is in our album.
Good Call: Outside of music, what are you guys into?
Michael: Drinking Coke, eating cookies, and watching David Lynch movies.
Revel: Twin Peaks, The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Daredevil — all that stuff definitely influences us.
Good Call: Any other big dream plans leading up to the album?
Revel: I want to go to Europe! My dream is to have the audience singing our lyrics back at us. Once that happens, it’ll be like, wow.
Michael: Yes, that would be amazing.
Good Call: Any dream collaborations?
Revel: Tom Waits would be insane. Tom Waits over a hardcore song would be unbelievable. Trent Reznor and Josh Homme too!
Michael: I’d honestly love to collaborate with anybody that inspired me to start making music.
Good Call: Ross has such a legendary catalog. Did you guys grow up on those records?
Michael: All of them!
Revel: Absolutely. Slipknot was huge for me when I was younger. I saw them when I was 9. The first Slipknot record changed my life. Korn too. Being able to work with Ross on our first album is still crazy to me.
Michael: Glassjaw, At the Drive-In, The Blood Brothers — all those Ross records are huge for us.
Good Call: Well, congratulations again. The record is amazing.
Revel: Thank you.
Michael: We appreciate it.
Follow XCOMM on IG at @xcommpunx | Photo credit: Darren fucking Craig.
