“Rev usually breaks everything,” Michael Gatto says with a sigh.
The singer of rising Los Angeles teenage hardcore crew XCOMM is talking about drummer Revel Ian, who apparently cannot not hit everything as hard as humanly possible. Case in point: at this year’s Louder Than Life festival, XCOMM were first up on their stage for the weekend, and two songs in, Ian promptly broke a kick pedal.
“The stage manager came up after and said, ‘Our backline really failed you,’ and I told him, ‘Yeah, it did,’” Ian says, laughing — fully aware he’s going to destroy whatever gear he’s given. “I saw videos on Instagram of other bands using the kit later that weekend, and oof.”
All that destruction comes from the same place as the band’s spark — a kind of restless, teenage combustion that tears things apart just as quickly as it creates, and one that feels destined to carry them onto much bigger stages.
Even if you haven’t witnessed XCOMM’s live carnage yet, you’ve likely seen their explosive video for “Reasons,” which shows the quintet playing at a frenetic, unyielding pace that feels way beyond their years. It was the first salvo from their upcoming record, Time to Burn, which is due out mid 2026 on Blowed Out Records — the label founded by nu-metal production legend Ross Robinson, rapper Ghostemane and industry vet Bill Armstrong.
Formed in 2023, XCOMM are already hardcore lifers-in-training, and most of them aren’t even out of high school. Frontman Gatto is one of the group’s elder statesmen at 19. He’s joined by Ian — who just happens to be the 14-year-old son of Anthrax’s Scott Ian and singer Pearl Aday — along with guitarist Jay Vargas (15), bassist Adan Escoto (16) and DJ Hunter Grogan (20). They might be young, but their commitment is already locked in.
“There’s no plan B for me,” says Gatto says without hesitation. “This is definitely it.” Around 10 years old, he discovered guitar and quickly realized that music was “better than crack — you know, maybe a little bit healthier than crack.”
Ian had witnessed bands tearing shit up for as long as he can remember. He, of course, watched Anthrax play countless times and shouts out the live power of formative influences like Every Time I Die. But it wasn’t until discovering Turnstile’s 2021 album, GLOW ON, that the world of hardcore truly opened up to him. “A bunch of my dad’s friends were raving about it when I was 10, so I put it on and it was insane,” he says. “That was my gateway.”
Seeing Turnstile perform at the Palladium in Los Angeles sealed the deal. “The energy in the room was insane,” recalls Ian. “I thought I was going to go in the pit… and then I just saw piles and piles of people, and I was like, Nope, I’m good on that.”
XCOMM emerged after Ian, who’d been playing in another band, decided he wanted to start a hardcore punk project — and that’s when he linked up with Gatto. The pair first met at a Venice show that they’d both played, back when they were in different bands. When they reconnected, they bonded over a mutual love of Queens of the Stone Age, and the fit clicked fast. From there, they brought in the rest of the group and got to work on a demo EP. On a whim, Gatto cold-called Ross Robinson — a friend of his girlfriend’s uncle — and asked him to come watch them play.
“I remember playing drums and seeing Ross on the side of the stage, smiling and doing the Ross thing… the gasp,” Ian says. “And I’m like, Wow, this is… good. So then he wanted to do a record.”
If you thought producer Ross Robinson — known for pushing bands like Korn and At the Drive-In to the emotional brink — would take it easy on a group of kids, you’d be dead wrong. “Ross would get me to drink these really potent ginger shots, like, huge ginger shots, to get me crying,” Gatto says, “and then just put me in the booth, push all my buttons and lock the door on me. I’d be screaming my ass off, doing 10-hour days, and each time I would get better and better.”
Ian, for his part, also got the full Robinson treatment. “He would be standing next to me, just screaming at me while we were recording a song,” he says. Ian reveals he was playing on the same kit used to record Radiohead’s OK Computer, which he had no problem treating like any other drum set that comes his way.
“I beat the hell out of that kit,” he says matter-of-factly. “I cracked a really high-end K Zildjian crash cymbal in one week recording that album. Ross was like, ‘Great!’ He put it on Instagram. He was like, ‘This is cool, Rev cracked a cymbal.’”
When the band isn’t testing how much damage they can inflict on high-priced equipment, they bring a surprising amount of depth to Time to Burn — the kind you don’t hear on many hardcore records, let alone a debut. Songs like “One and Nothing” wind into an unexpected dreaminess, spurred on by Robinson playing the Cure’s Pornography in the studio to give them a guitar texture to chase.
Take away the family ties — or the fact they’re still so young — and XCOMM still hang as a propulsive hardcore band that captures the immediacy that makes the genre great. And for Ian, the definition of success right now is pretty straightforward.
“To be able to do what you want for the rest of your life, that’s success,” he says. When we joke that Ian never really had a shot at avoiding music, given his musical family, he rolls his eyes and deadpans, “Oh no, I grew up surrounded by awesome music and the coolest musicians of all time. How awful.”