Otis aka Young Wicked (with beard) and Bonez Dubb (repping West Syde)
Axe Murder Boyz is a Hip-Hop duo from Denver, Colorado consisting of brothers Otis aka Young Wicked (James Garcia) and Bonez Dubb (Mike Garcia), who record music in the Horrorcore and Gangsta Rap styles. Their stage personas are based on the movie Frailty, which is about "the God's hand killers", a father and his sons who murder people they believe are demons masquerading as humans, claiming to have been ordered to do so by God himself. The lyrics of AMB songs like "God's Hand Killers" and "The Demon" reference the movie, and Otis' stage name comes from the name carved on the axe at the end of the movie. Not all their lyrics are derived from the movie, though, and many of their songs can be very accessible-sounding with catchy melodies and memorable hooks. As their careers progressed, they went from often extremely gory, grotesque lyrics to much more toned down content far less focused on serial killer fantasies, with their more recent work showcasing a shift away from the horrorcore of their earlier lyrics. Their music is generally defined by having strong influences from West Coast hip hop, featuring elements of funk and soul in their music, although their album Blood In Blood Out also featured some Rap Rock tracks.AMB started out releasing albums for local labels. The 2005 Underground Psychos contest held at the Gathering of the Juggalos won them a one-album contract with Psychopathic Records. Violent J had high hopes for the duo, considering them to be "the future of Psychopathic Records" (along with another new artist signed by the label at the time, Boondox).
AMB left after their sole Psychopathic release, continuing to release albums on their own label, Canonize. They had two releases on the Psychopathic subsidiary Hatchet House in 2008 and 2010 and one more in 2014 followed by a Young Wicked solo album the following year, but AMB had a massive falling out over Young Wicked's relationship with the daughter of Jumpsteady (the girl is Violent J's niece). AMB ended up signing with Majik Ninja Entertainment, Twiztid's record label, which, along with the entire MNE label declining to appear at the Juggalo March, led to a falling out between ICP and Twiztid.
AMB provides the following tropes:
- Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: "Crazy" mentions breaking into an ex-girlfriend's house, eating Cap'n Crunch and then killing her dog.
- Call-Back: Blood In, Blood Out opens and closes with AMB singing a capella, with string instruments creeping in during the outro. Body In A Hole opens and closes with the same beat and scratching, with the outro revealing that the refrain of "The Garcia Brothers!" is the title of their next album.
- Genre Shift: "Scream My Name" starts off with a Hip-Hop beat, then shifts into Nu Metal for a bit. Towards the end, the guitars are still there, but less heavy, and there's another rap verse.
- Also, the beat of "See Thru" changes to a completely different, funkier hip hop style when Blaze Ya Dead Homie shows up to contribute his cameo verse.
- Juggalo: AMB are considered to be the most successful and talented of the "Juggalo rappers" (ICP fans who started rap careers, and especially out of groups or duos who took their names from ICP lyrics; as a comparison, another "Juggalo rapper" duo, Dead Dirty Carnies, was significantly less successful, as AMB's success extended outside of the Juggalo community, while DDC are unknown outside of Juggalos, due to DDC's limited appeal to non-Juggalos, and AMB's West Coast hip hop-inspired sound crossing over to the general hip-hop community)
- I Love the Dead: "Old Girl" tackles this with a Black Comedy approach (although AMB's promotional clip of this song simply implies that she's a bag lady and not a corpse). A significantly darker take on this is "God Only Knows".
- Motor Mouth: Bonez has quite a few fast raps.
- Self-Titled Album: The Garcia Brothers, if it ever gets released.
- Shout-Out: Their name is a reference to a lyric from Insane Clown Posse's song "Bring It On", in which Shaggy 2 Dope calls himself a "axe murder boy".
- Shrouded in Myth: After they left Hatchet House in 2010, there were numerous rumors about their departure (including claims that Otis or Bonez had sex with the girlfriend of one of the label's higher-ups, which was revealed to be untrue). Psychopathic has dismissed all of them, and both parties indicated that the separation was on good terms.
- Surprisingly Gentle Song: "Blood In" and "Blood Out", the intro and outro, respectively, of Blood In, Blood Out, may qualify as this, if what they were singing about wasn't murder.
- Same goes for "God Only Knows", which is not as abrasive as some of their other songs, but still creepy as hell and talks about murdering a woman, keeping her body at the murderer's house, having sex with her corpse and eating her flesh.
- "Honor"
- Xtreme Kool Letterz
