After just its first album, awestruck critics started describing the seminal Los Angeles outfit X as "the band that matters." John Doe, Exene Cervenka, Billy Zoom and D.J. Bonebrake made their chords as poetically raw as their harmonies, giving the Southern California sound a bloody, red-eyed urgency. Back together after a hiatus that found Doe in the movies and Cervenka birthing actor Viggo Mortenson a son, the godparents of punk have given the old tour bus an overdue lube job. X fans categorize the world in two groups: those who worship the group and those who have never heard it.
