Biography
Originating from West Virginia, hard rock outfit Bobaflex fuses classic rock & roll with nu-metal ingredients into a high-velocity style that continued to shift after the group’s first recordings. Brothers Shawn “Beaver” McCoy and Marty McCoy, direct descendants of the McCoy family tied to the 19th-century Hatfield-and-McCoy feud, launched the band; Shawn played lead guitar while Marty handled bass. They added drummer Ronnie Castro and co-lead singers Lutz and Drebbit, then made their live debut as a quintet on June 5, 1998, in Huntington, West Virginia, performing rap-inflected nu-metal rock. The group built a following across the tri-state region of West Virginia, Ohio, and Kentucky before self-releasing the album Bobaflex in August 1999. At one show they met Shifty Shellshock, lead singer of Crazy Town, who arranged a production deal and opened discussions with Columbia Records. Michael Steele joined on guitar in 2001. The Columbia arrangement ended when Lutz and Drebbit departed over musical differences, leaving Shawn, Marty, Castro, and Steele to keep the name and pursue a more mainstream rock direction. Marty switched to guitar, Shawn and Marty assumed vocal duties, and bass player Jerod Mankin was added. This lineup recorded the five-song EP Primitive Epic, issued independently in May 2002. Independent metal label Eclipse signed the band in March 2003; around the same time drummer Thomas Johnson replaced Castro. Bobaflex expanded Primitive Epic with new songs and remixes, releasing the completed full-length version on Eclipse in August 2003. The group next moved to TVT Records, where they issued Apologize for Nothing in 2003 and Tales from Dirt Town in 2007, before parting ways with the label after its 2009 bankruptcy filing. On their own BFX imprint they released the EP Chemical Valley in 2010, followed by Hell in My Heart in 2011, which contained the single “Bury Me with My Guns On,” and Charlatan’s Web in 2013, which featured “I’m Glad You’re Dead.” Anything That Moves appeared two years later. Their eighth album, Eloquent Demons, arrived in 2017.
Albums
