Oxymorrons, courtesy Tommy Vo.

Just a few days removed from returning home from Oxymorrons‘ first headlining tour, vocalist Dave “Deee” Bellevue is still recuperating from the grueling yet rewarding run across the United States.

“We’ve been the lucky band that, in the last two years of touring extensively, we haven’t had any van issues,” Bellevue said. “Then [on] this one we had three back-to-back!”

The punk- and hard rockers, who fuse their sound with hip-hop on bangers like “Look Alive,” packed rooms across the country, the byproduct of gaining fans while opening for other bands throughout the years. Bellevue said Oxymorrons have been surprised at the support in cities where they didn’t expect it.

“When you do a support tour, you don’t actually know the acquisition, you don’t really know what happened,” he said. “This tour was a really good gauge of what cities we had fans’ attention in.”

The band, which includes Deee’s brother, Ashmy “KI” Bellevue, drummer Matty Mayz and bassist-guitarist Jafé Paulino, also got the attention of Slipknot frontman Corey Taylor. Right after they opened some shows for Taylor in America, he invited them right back on the road for a string of European dates. The band has thrived overseas, also opening for Bad Omens there earlier in the year.

“I feel a little spoiled, we’ve come to Europe and the red carpet has kinda been laid out for us,” Bellevue said. “We don’t know its not easy to go into Europe and we’ve been able to go over there with two really big bands.”

Oxymorrons’ latest album, Melanin Punk, is the fullest expression of their musical mission and ethos.

“That’s just how we create music; we don’t know any other way,” Bellevue said. Besides blending genres, the band mixes cultures without sonic boundary. Saying they fuse rock and rap doesn’t do justice to its songs. For Bellevue, it’s all defined by the band name. “Fusing things that don’t normally go together is literally our existence,” he said.

The foundation was formed in Queens with a vibrant culture and music scene. Bellevue said it was easy to draw influences from different places. Just down the road from where Bellevue grew up is the World’s Fair. This band of long-time friends and, in some cases, childhood neighbors are the sons of immigrants, each with a different musical upbringing. Some grew up on reggae others with Haitian music.

The most hip-hop-leaning track on the album is “Mike Shinoda Flow,” a title shouting out the Linkin Park vocalist. Oxymorrons wrote it on his birthday, but it also serves as an homage to that band’s innovation in blending musical styles and showcasing rapping as an elevated art form within the rock space.

“To put things in a 16-bar structure, have them rap, have them make sense with each other, and also, a lot of the time, ping back in and out of each other with double- and triple-entendres [is a big accomplishment],” Bellevue said. “I think people tend to simplify what rap is because the mainstream has simplified it in a way to sell it in a very particular way.”

Bellevue believes that rapping in rock has been historically undervalued, and Oxymorroms want to show what some might be missing out on in its own form of musical expression.

“We wanted to ensure that the complexities that come from playing the guitar, or holding a note, or screaming; not one is more talented than the other,” he said. “It’s all different art forms and they all hold the same weight.”

Oxymorrons are one of a growing number of bands creating a musical moment in hard rock, and rock in general. Look at the new bands coming up and you’ll find more diverse voices and backgrounds. Up until this moment, the genre was starting to stagnate, he said, with very few acts breaking through and most of those that did fitting a sort of cookie-cutter mold.

Now, hard rock is having a moment and Bellevue said he hopes that translates to the mainstream.

“I think it’s breathing life into rock in a really, really cool way,” he said. “Rock has always been one of the most creative genres, but I think it was gate-kept for a really long time. It kind of stifled it; rock was in a bit of a chokehold. Now that chokehold is being released and you’re seeing bands from all walks of life starting to surge and emerge.”

Follow writer Mike DeWald at Twitter.com/mike_dewald.