Oxe: Brazilian Swamp Rock, March 18th, SXSW 2009

I really didn’t want to go back out Wednesday night. My friends were cortex-deep into a murder mystery puzzle and I was a bit zonked. But since I had randomly run into my old school pal Brendan the day before at a Mexican joint in the south side of town, and he happened to have just flown into Austin all the way from Sao Paulo, Brazil, I felt obligated to see the band he co-produces.

Looking at CD he’d given me, with the band in evil-looking clown makeup, I was even less optimistic. A Brazilian Insane Clown Posse? Fuck, help. Brendan explained that the stage makeup had to do with Northeastern Brazilian folklore, but there’s something about the breed of ICP, Midwestern, sad fat loser kid rock-hip-hop that drives me up the freaking wall.  Regardless, I jumped on a bike and took the 15 minute ride down South Congress to The Rio to see Oxe (pronounced OH-she, I believe).

I was immediately impressed, and a little bit ashamed I lacked faith in the band. Not only was it not shitty rap-metal, they were fun, danceable and tight as a Brazilian drum. Oxe call their genre of music “swamp rock,” but it’s basically just hard rock, like Guns ‘n Roses meets Jane’s Addiction by way of classic Santana. Every lyric was sung in Portuguese so I couldn’t tell you what they were singing about, but the band absolutely floored the couple dozen record label folks gathered to check them out.

Oxe reminded me that at SXSW, and indeed anywhere, if you judge a book by its cover you might just miss out on the real shit. They were the real deal that night, and well worth the bike ride.

More Oxe photos after the jump.

Tags: brazilian folklore, clown makeup, cortex, couple dozen, genre of music, Guns N Roses, Insane Clown Posse, Kid Rock, loser kid, March 18th, murder mystery, mystery puzzle, Oxe: Brazilian Swamp Rock, rap metal, real shit, sao paulo brazil, school pal, south congress, stage makeup, swamp rock, SXSW, SXSW 2009, zonked