Retox

Frustration with unchanging popular culture and a drive to disrupt the status quo prompted the formation of Retox, a hardcore outfit from California. Ex-Locust members Gabe Serbian and Justin Pearson joined Thor Dickey and Michael Crain to launch the project, whose sound fuses the unfiltered intensity of early hardcore with elaborate technical complexity and hints at the possibility of fulfilling ambitious aims. The group first appeared in 2011 via a self-titled EP, then aligned with Mike Patton’s Ipecac label, which issued the band’s initial full-length effort, Ugly Animals, later the same year. Epitaph followed with the second album, YPLL, in 2013. A split EP with Narrows surfaced on Pearson’s Three One G label in late 2014, after which the third album, Beneath California, arrived in early 2015. Gabe Serbian died on April 30, 2022 at the age of 44.