Live Reviews and Press Highlights

 El Paso seems to be a magnet for psychobilly.  This hybrid of rockabilly, punk and goth fits this town like a velvet glove cast in iron. It’s dangerous, dark and rock hard.  The band with the spooky moniker Concombre Zombi has captured the founding member, Mark Canepa, from the pioneer psycho band “Hayride To Hell” and assembled a cast featuring Destin Pledger on drums.  Destin serves up a fast and tight beat like a locomotive off the tracks.  Ralphy on upright bass adds a rock star
dimension to their dementia.  With a larger than life, tongue in cheek ego, he puts on one hell of a show with his dog house bass.  But this band has a lot more to offer than a handful of maniacs flailing that psychobilly beat with a misfit’s attitude.  It’s the songwriting that shines on their numerous releases that sets them apart.
Over the last several years, Concombre Zombi has been taking an Edgar Allen Poe style of prose and setting it on fire.  They also have strong elements of metal, death rock and even a tinge of classic rock to mold their unique and almost otherworldly rock and roll.  Like a cool curse, they have a hip hypnotic stage show with ghoulishly nightmarish music. Concombre Zombi – Lucky Devils, El Paso, 11/19/05
-Michael Devine

Rank and Revue, VOL. 1 Issue 24, January 2004
 

Concombre Zombi
Flamingo Cantina, Saturday, December 13, 2003

Ducktails and Creepers, chains and spikes, cuffed jeans and flame-painted leather, and dammit these rockabilly boys are so into their grooming that I’d swear they were all gay, if they weren’t so… cool. Hair-do’s like a shark sitting on your head. OW! This is not my scene, and I don’t know much about rocka/psycha-billy stuff, but here comes a band that turned my Metal head with a sound and style of their own concoction.

Concombre Zombi is a lean & mean psychobilly trio, all powerful and hard-hitting players, with one of the slammin’est stand-up bass players around – sometimes off-track from his drummer and sometimes upstaging him with his highly percussive finger slapping. It took a while to figure out where that bone-rattling rat-a-tat-tat was coming from – the bass slayer! His bass adds a unique element of style to the music, and also serves as a billboard for his commitment to the band, with fucked-up skulls and the band logo plastered all over it. Talented, vicious, and committed. CZ worked it hard, ripping through a fast-paced set for their dolled-up fans, who stood back and dug the show with some reserve. The too-cool crowd finally started slamming on the next-to-last song, “Buried Alive” – which I really dug.

Overall the show was not as exciting as the first time I saw them at Cucaracha, maybe because my expectations were higher this time than when I had just wandered in and heard this nasty Texas growl, looked up and seen these heavy dudes tearing it up all crazy! I was missing the Chris Issac cover, which they had done very heavy and ultra-cool; the song was a great vehicle for the [bassist's] vocal talent. Without that song the set lacked variety, but still tore it up full-throttle. Check these guys out!! -Bek Sabbath