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If life is a highway, Fu Manchu is its soundtrack. Over the last dozen years, the Southern California quartet has perfected the art of the riff, mastered the depth of the groove and sharpened the edge of the hook, and as their 10th album "We Must Obey" proves, the group's always-rockin' van still has plenty of gas left in the tank. Co-produced by Andrew Alekel (Weezer, Rancid, Queens of the Stone Age) and the band themselves, the record is infectious, inspiring and, most importantly, authentic, the sound of a time- and road-tested group cruising along confidently yet effortlessly.
While Fu Manchu's music has been alternately described as stoner rock, surf-punk and desert rock, the truth is that it's all of the above. Rolling Stone probably said it best when it described the band as "a transcendent distillation of Seventies rock heaviness and Eighties punk aggression," going on to say that "Fu Manchu rock purely for the sheer joy of rocking." In other words, don't spend too much time digging for deeper meaning, for enlightenment awaits the very moment you press play, when founding guitarist Scott Hill's fuzzed-out guitar blasts from your speakers.
If you're craving a fix of unpretentious, classic hard rock in its most timeless form, look no further than Fu Manchu, whose music the L.A. Weekly once called "as purely Californian as anything (Beach Boy) Brian Wilson ever recorded." England's NME did one better, saying that "the secret of Fu Manchu's sick genius is that they're writing the soundtrack for the ultimate, never-ending, coast-to-coast, psychotic American rock n' roll road movie." Words not only to heed, but obey. 
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