Music For Adults opens with band vocalist Eugene Robinson standing on a small stage somewhere in Europe wearing nothing but an unbuttoned white shirt and black briefs, his microphone shoved straight down the front of them.

            What unfolds after that is nearly an hour of band and audience interviews accompanying well-shot concert footage in small venues with less-than-capacity crowds. These people stand in awe and absolute confusion of what they're witnessing. But they end up getting more involved than that.

            It hasn't been that long ago that Robinson wrote an essay for Vice on starting, winning, and losing a fight.  For example, it asserted, Want to survive one with your ego intact? According to his philosophy, it's all about breathing—and feeling passionate about the ass-kicking you think you can deliver.  My only question after reading that article, hearing the pulverizing roar of his band's album An Evil Heat, and now watching a live performance of  Robinson—who could be described as a horse of a man with arms and legs the size of tree trunks—is who would be dumb enough to think they could win a fight with him?

            It's during the DVD's performances one can understand that in spite of his bulk and energy why someone might try to pick a fight with the performer, a man who will without question be able to beat them senseless.  Oxbow's music is reactionary to the jeers of its audience, it's obnoxious but never guilty of being boring.

            Throughout the film fans wander up to the stage, poking and prodding Eugene Robinson.  There's little doubt most are drunk with some form of chemical courage but the underlying mission of each seems to see if the band's vocalist can back up the sort of muscle his on-stage persona exudes.  At one show a heckler is drug on stage, stripped, strangled and humiliated.  At another a heckler ends up stroking Robinson's cock from the front of the stage.

            "We decided early on that anybody that's wants to be a part of the show, we should gladly accommodate them instead of trying to make believe they don't exist," he explains.  "Our standing policy is, if anyone wants to be a part of the show, we'll make you a part of it."

            After watching Music For Adults there's little doubt that Robinson knows what he's talking about regarding conflict.  And if you've experienced any of the band's audio recordings, particularly Heat (Neurot Recordings), you also may suspect that you're not going to be dealing with a particularly sane and rational individual.

            Rock music is about fucking.  Fucking means "to strike against."  Fighting is as much a part of an Oxbow show as the musicians themselves are and fortunately director Christian Anthony documented a recent European tour with the band that allows us into their confrontational world. It was the late 80s when the group first came together as a recording project.

            "We wanted to bring together elements of three things," guitarist Niko Wenner explains in the film.  "Noise, blues and something else I can't even remember now.  It might have been rock and roll."

            With over ten releases now under the band's belt they have a lengthy discography, sometimes resonating with the spirit of prime Jesus Lizard and their bastard noise rock contemporaries with their otherworldly textural anarchy. Throughout the band's career they've paved some musical paths that are at times both refreshing and exciting.

            On the DVD we're allowed access to the band's daydreaming of a time when Oxbow might actually be palatable to the world at large.  The likelihood of that ever happening is undoubtedly small but the band's chemistry and off stage friendships make up for what fame has eluded them.

            It's like what Wenner says toward the end of the film, "All we do with money is shove it in a big hole, light it on fire, and call it Oxbow."