Exene and D.J. from X and Matt Freeman, ex of Rancid. Nicely layered punk pop. I mean, precisely what were you expecting?

On the political trip, which is again right where I figured this would run. Exene is in good form, ripping off riffs and hollering with abandon. Not the most sophisticated of showcases, Auntie Christ beings here back to the land of unrestrained music.

And that alone makes it worth the effort for me. The songs themselves are merely middling, considering the folks in charge. But the sound is nice and ragged, and these folks sure sound like they enjoy playing with each other. One of those supergroup things that might actually put something good together.

Most of the stuff I've gotten from Hammerhead has been atypical of the general stereotypical greater Chicago area (I know where Champaign is, damnit). Finally, a band that would sound at home with the good folks at Touch and Go.

But probably even more like the Austin gang at Trance. Trippy, bass heavy guitar lines, rapidly shifting rhythm work and a general disregard for vocals and melody. If you remember Johnboy, Bantha could be a second cousin.

These guys insist on destroying every song they write. I mean, "Clowns of the Carnivale" could be a seriously gorgeous pop tune. And yet the end result here is a song without any lyrics during the verse, and a totally distorted chorus to boot. Completely brilliant.

Utterly incomprehensible at times, Bantha wields its music as a big, ugly stick with which to subdue any praise. Didn't work. Sometimes this sounds like nothing more than a big-ass shouting match, but the real result is rather satisfying.

Um, yeah, it's an Australian film. Why do you ask?

All kidding aside, the main work the "big three" at the top of the marquee is compose. This is orchestral stuff of the film variety, which means rather overdone, with way too many strings swelling. Still, there are a few nice moments.

Most of those occur in odd sampled moments that take the music away from a Gone With the Wind feel and more toward the ambient. But honestly, there aren't enough of those spots to make up for the garish excess. Yeah, sure, I remember who's in charge here, but a track record of overblown, moody music doesn't mean you should cheese out that vision for a movie paycheck

There are two tracks here that aren't of the "filmic music" variety. First is "Mourning Song", by Raun Raun Theatre, bit of which are sprinkled throughout the instrumental parts. And second is Scott Walker's Englebert Humperdinck-esque walkthrough of "I Threw It All Away". Yow. Imagine Nick Cave doing "Love Will Tear Us Apart" while overdosing on Prozac.

Well, I prefer not to think about that. Same goes for the soundtrack.

I thought the stuff on the 7-inch was well-constructed and generally nicely performed. There was a question in my head, though, as to whether or not the songs suffered from so much contemplation.

See, it's not supposed to sound like you're trying. At least, that's always been my theory. Still, Camber does such a fine job of crafting the emo-core (and talk about a genre where planning and painstaking effort are key), I can't get too hacked.

The songs are gorgeous, and there is not one hair out of place. This is really a supreme production job by John Agnello. A solid piece of work all the way around. I'm not sure if punksters are ready for this kind of pinpoint precision, but then, that would be their loss.

I liked this more and more as I listened. Patience is a virtue when it comes to this sort of music, and Camber shows more than enough.

Clay People has always wanted to sound like the perfect mix of FLA and Fear Factory. Not too surprising, as Burton Bell of FF has helped out these guys on occasion. Stone--Ten Stitches takes the sound of Millennium, throws it in the mud a bit and really rips a new hole in the industrial fabric. Finally, I can say the guys have made it.

The first thing you notice is an astonishing lack of bass. I know one longtime fan who has been bitching about that for a couple weeks. As for me, I'm happy to hear a Clay People record that sounds like it was made in the real world. The percussion is sharp, the vocals rough (but audible) and a guitar sound straight out of death metal.

And I consider all this to be a good thing. I've been hearing the band attempt to make it here for years, and now that Clap People has reached the promised land, I simply have to chime in, "Amen."

Very much a "love it or hate it" album. Fans of Sepultura and Fear Factory will really groove on the awesome production work and general metal/industrial sound, and FLA fans will probably just call the whole thing a big rip off. I mean, "Pariah", among others, has a real Vancouver feel. I sorta agree, I guess, but Clay People isn't fucking around with synthesizers, and this is anything but a cold album. While highly mechanized, Clay People has infused the metal guts with something very alive.

This is the sort of album that moves the future of music. Taking some of the best that came before, Clay People has crafted a gorgeous sound all its own. i understand why some folks don't like this, but as a real music maniac, I can only stand back in awe.

Way out off the trendy road, Dakind flicks off the rap-metal-funk trip like Infectious Grooves, Scatterbrain, Love/Hate and others. Not the commercial stuff of latter-day RHCP, but the stuff that has never quite broken into the mainstream. And Dakind does it fairly well.

Oh, the waves of excess are apparent and annoying. Dakind doesn't try to pretty anything up for the masses, and the band insists on making its own way through the a morass of unpopular music. This is compliment, so don't take me wrong: Dakind is precisely the sort of band that my brother Matt (the Lies guy) would love to front.

I find this sorta stuff fairly cheesy most of the time, but Dakind is damned impressive. Whenever I think I can predict the band's next move I'm surprised. The mark of fine songwriters.

And they didn't skimp on the recording budget, getting Steve Albini to work the knobs. You can hear Albini's contribution in the rich guitar sound and the wild diversity of sonic textures. And the vocals are astonishingly good for an Albini recording.

Far better than I would have expected, especially if I had been given a description before listening. I have no idea how many people would appreciate this sound, but Dakind makes it as attractive as is possible.

Wonderfully rich and full noise stuff. All the samples and tape loops you expect, a full dose of white noise and distortion and then the kicker: real live songwriting.

There's structure here. Not rigid or constraining, but a definite pattern to the underlying sound. Deutsch Nepal uses every available tool to further its vision, and the results are stunning.

The real key here is the production, which doesn't skimp on the outlying sound. Instead of excessive sharpness, or the dull muffle of inexperience, Deutsch Nepal has an almost overpowering grasp of a pure sound, something that is stronger than the visceral universe.

Wonderful, amazing, dark, penetrating. None of these words can begin to describe my amazement. A beautiful work.

The title says it all. Gawk takes a sludgy approach to a trippy industrial sound. This is certainly some sort of alternate-reality world.

A real mess, and not always in a good way. There's too much sloppiness, even for what I think the band is trying to do. The songs are not well-organized, which isn't a crime in and of itself, but in general there isn't much to keep the wildly disparate musical idea from simply flying apart.

The hardcore approach to free jazz, I suppose. And hell, there are some truly inspired moments (the middle portion of "AADG", for example), but not enough to counterbalance the overall poor execution. This is on the high side of good, mostly for the attempts at the unusual.

All cred for that. But for all it's trying, Gawk doesn't quite manage to pull off the big score.

The title to the first book I ever read. Well, Go Dog Go! anyway. Who cares about punctuation.

Dreadfully sloppy alterna-pop, with the occasional soprano sax squeak. These boys pull out all the stops (and cranked the master volume to 11, to boot), and I must admit that the adrenaline rush is inspiring.

The music, on the other hand, loses its novelty appeal after a few songs. A real bash and pop experience, the players seem to be playing with sledgehammers. Nothing is precise or ever reasonably accurate. I like riff slinging as much as the next person, but it would help if the guys would hit the same one twice in a row.

And I wouldn't bitch so much, except that the band is obviously playing pop songs. This stuff is more structured than a Noel Coward piece, fer Chrissakes. It's not terribly good, but there's a road map a mile thick for the music. And that's why I wonder why it's played so poorly.

Sounds like people who want to be "alternative" to me. I can't imagine why people would work so hard to sound like shit.

Another one of the old-line San Diego bands coming back to the fold. Inch released an album three years ago on Seed, toured, lost its bass player, found another and now has this album to show for it.

Sounds a lot like the first one. Reasonably catchy tunes, laid out in a crunchy bed of pop-punk music. Lots of distortion, if you please. Well, enough to make the salal crunchy, anyway.

I have the same reaction to this album as I had to the first one: Inch is a good band, but not a great one. The songs are good, but not great. The sound is better than average, but not in the inspiring category. All the requisite parts are present, but there is that indescribable something missing.

Hey, there's nothing wrong with being a working-class pop band. And hell, San Diego is as good a spot as any to ply that trade.

Piledriving rock madness. Catchy, heavy tunes with undeniable grooves. Bits and pieces of the NYC metalcore sound, but Karma to Burn has really glammed a lot of that out. Hey, the time is right...

Brilliant, really. Heavy enough to appeal to today's metal mavens, but with enough juice to bring back a few of the poofy-hair types back into the fold. And undeniably fun.

A lot like an old, old Roadrunner band, Last Crack. Yeah, the songs are serious, but they sound so damned good, you know? The music advances toward the apocalypse, with no looking back. And why would we want to go back to world without Karma to Burn?

And, of course, the best thing about the band: they obviously understand that there is no such thing as good karma. It's something to be worked off, like spiritual restitution. I just wiped a whole slate of bad memories cranking this puppy up.

Roots-oriented pop, with just enough of that punchy punk sensibility to keep things moving along.

Three songs: catchy, inventive and appealing. Nothing complicated or overdone; just simply great music. The Keeners follow enough of the rules to make sense and break enough musical tenets to be truly fine. Folks who know how to distill the good stuff.

A really solid 7". This puppy is being released on the band's label, so I'm not sure how interested they'd be in some offers. Putting out a slab of vinyl like this makes that sort of attention almost impossible to avoid.

A real find.

Once you get past the title track (a real musical extravaganza that clocks in at more than 20 minutes), Makkiwhipdies (don't even think of asking me what it means) settles down into a steady diet of sample-heavy, tres-electro pop.

A guy named Cosgrove in is charge, and we should be happy he isn't running a nuclear power plant. His mind flits from musical thought to musical thought, and it doesn't much matter if that makes sense to anyone on the outside. Abetting Cosgrove, mostly in the graphic presentation department (and there's plenty of that, too) is a guy named Mourad. He's responsible for supplying this disc and the bio to me. The bio, by the way, was printed on the back of a recycled Whalers schedule. I like.

Aggravating, but undeniably brilliant. Much of this disc is way-overdone in a dreadful self-indulgent way, but there are also many moments of sheer grace.

It's like reading someone's thoughts as they have them. Cosgrove doesn't bother to explain or even to tell us why he put this disc together. The liners are minimal, yin to the music's all-enveloping yang.

Inexplicable. Maddening yet glorious. Painful yet thrilling. A frightening glimpse of one man's mind.

Awfully pop punk stuff. The Parasites craft cloying melodies and even sillier lyrics. I sure feel stupid for bouncing about a bit while listening, though I know that after a couple more listens I'll be sick of the stuff.

And that's the real problem. The Parasites write throwaway stuff, and I'm not one for excessive sweets. Some people I know can eat a whole cherry pie at one sitting and be raring to go. Me? I get constipated.

Good enough for what they do, the Parasites crank out three light-as-air pop tunes here. Nothing more and nothing less.

Some nice boys who have been listening to a bit much Primus and Mr. Bungle for their own good. I mean likes like "I wish I was gay so I could have pride" and song titles like "Al Beaman Is Still a Jew" just aren't meant for popular consumption.

And I haven't even started talking about the music. The songs generally have an excessively long sampled intro, which sometimes relates to the song itself, but usually not. The music itself is convoluted and generally whips itself into a frenzy by the end of any given song.

But damnitall, this shit is funny. And don't let my little snippets leave you with the impression that Pigmaster is a bunch of ignorant guys. They simply think that sacred cows make the best eatin'. And, lordy, do they feast.

It takes a twisted state of mind to really groove on this stuff, and I'm happy to take my place in that group. Pigmaster is really unlike any other band I've ever heard, and that is always a good thing. Sure, there are many moments of excess and puerile comments, but hell, that describes every second of the Old Time Gospel hour, now doesn't it?

Silliness bordering on insanity. Life should be this wacky.

A group of guys who believe that textured, well-crafted pop music is the perfect accompaniment for goofy songs. Indeed, Plastic Mikey reminds me a lot of Squeeze (late 70s version). Not a bad thing at all.

The basic band arrangement (guitar, bass, drums) is augmented by full-time sax and keyboard (or sometimes piano) players. This gives the sound many more areas for roaming, and Plastic Mikey isn't afraid to take advantage. Every player gets a moment to shine, and like a good jazz combo, the stuff really starts to cook when everyone gets into the act.

As I noted, the songs are rarely serious. The humor is somewhat corny, but Plastic Mikey manages to pull it off fairly well. The music in back is so good, it hardly matters what the folks are singing about.

A big wad of fun. I haven't heard a pop album like this is quite a while, and I'm quite glad this puppy came my way.

A big ol' slab of that upper-Midwest post-grunge stuff. Not quite sludge, but yer in the ballpark. Reminds me of a Kalamazoo band called Twitch that I liked. Less cock and more rock than the Seattle version.

And nowhere near the pretension level. This is pretty much pure pain music. A death-inducing guitar lick leads into most songs, and the songs move forward from there. Yeah, after a few songs, I wish there was a bit more musical growth. Take what you can get, I say.

I am rather tired of this sort of music, really, though Pound does a good enough job presenting it here. Indeed, I heard a couple licks I hadn't before, and that's always good.

But in the end, Pound is just a god example of the same-old same-old. A well-worn musical track that doesn't seem to be going anywhere.

Um, prog-pop anyone? The Skeptical Cats have a weird kinda Yes-lite sound. And come to think of it, perhaps the more loopy take on this stuff is the right way to go. I mean, just imagine Squeeze playing "Yours Is No Disgrace", and you might get the idea.

I mean, I like the musical diversity and the willingness to take lots of chances. And the Cats are consummate musicians and songwriters. Each tune is meticulously performed, with sharp production to boot. And while there is a huge amount of crafting involved, the stuff still sound fresh.

Perhaps that's because the songs are so self-consciously wacky. Of course, once you get past the looniness on the surface, there are a few serious points to be taken. And with the complexity of the music, a few takes are recommended, anyway.

These guys should hook up with Plastic Mikey (reviewed above). The Skeptical Cats rely on a fuller sound and somewhat more complicated arrangements, but otherwise the two bands have a lot in common. I give the Cats a slight edge, just because everything is just a bit... moreso, I guess.

A fine disc and a band with a great sound. Not much more to ask for, is there?

Kinda trippy, kinda-rockin' stuff, a lot like Seam and that sort of thing. Swoon doesn't get into the excesses of production like a My Bloody Valentine (God, remember when? Do I feel old...), and that helps the songs themselves work things out.

The guitar lines are particularly good, and as they go, so go the songs. Most of the time the sound is dead on. Add in the aforementioned restrained knob job, and you get a nice set of tunes that aren't overbearing or silly.

And there's a big danger of that sort of thing with music like this. After all, each song is a sort of anthem, and that sort of pretentiousness can wear thin quickly. Swoon manages to downplay the annoying bits and simply focus on the music.

Cool enough by me. I'm not the hugest fan of this mellow-psychedelia stuff, but Swoon does an admirable job making it presentable. Surprisingly good.

The ambient intro left me with one feeling. But then the real music arrived, and it's something like generic roots-pop that sounds astonishingly artificial. Mostly due to the really cheesy drum machine, I guess.

There's an odd "electronic hoedown" feel to a lot of the music here, and I like that. At times, it reminds me of Magnetic Fields without the spooky lyrics. But Thick Black Theory gets old fairly quickly, and the music doesn't get much beyond its initial accomplishments.

I really don't know if the band wanted this rather cheesy sound, or if it was forced upon it because of a general lack of members. I get a really poppy Gary Numan feel here. Not good, really.

Still, the lyrics are amusing, and once I accepted the limitations of the music, I kinda liked it a little better. For so much going on, this should be better.

I've always wanted to like Thumbnail. I'm a big fan of noise pop in general, and Thumbnail's technical approach to chaos is one that quite appeals to me.

For some reason, though, things just don't work out between us.

I just get the feeling that something isn't quite there. I think it may be the lack of a central idea. Is it possible that Thumbnail is too "out there" for me?

Maybe, but I don't think that's really the case. For all the obvious care and concern, Thumbnail is often inexcusably sloppy. Not in the playing or the writing, but in the feeling part. The guys seem more than detached; they seem absent much of the time. As if the original mechanical band had been reincarnated as a distortion-laden noise pop outfit.

I can hear plenty of good things here. Indeed, I think the talent in Thumbnail is second to none. One of these days I might even really like an album.

I remember some years back when I got the Disembowelment full-length, and the good folks at Relapse told me that two band members had an ambient project, a project that would pretty much mean the end of the first band.

Disembowelment was ahead of its time, and that album still stands as a landmark death metal album. Many of the small touches that made it so fine are also evident with Trial of the Bow. There are plenty of influences, from Australian Aboriginal melodies to tunes more reminiscent of the Middle East. And back again.

All performed on fairly primitive instruments, lending an authentic feel. Yeah, it could fit under world beat, but this is one generation removed, really. Perhaps you should call it simply "good music".

A wondrous and moving album. I could expect no less from the guys in Trial of the Bow. Worth searching out.

Yeah, another cheap-ass compilation to introduce the label's first-half of 1997 releases. The Sunshine Blind is already in stores (and reviewed a couple issues ago), but there's plenty more to appreciate.

April sees the release of the new Hanzel und Gretyl, and I really can't wait. Two tracks from Transmissions from Uranus appear here, and they but whet the appetite. I'm ready now, damnit...

Bile has one track from the forthcoming new album, and one from the last album. It's Bile, and I think you already have an opinion there.

And finally, a couple bands new to me. Heavy Water Factory is a somewhat poppy industrial outfit, and the tracks here sound pretty damned good. Fueled is also an industrial band, with plenty of gothic and metal overtones. The mix on the tracks here seems a bit weak, but perhaps that's just a function of the sampler.

This puppy is priced at under $4, so if you really need to hear some new Hanzel und Gretyl (and I sure did), then that alone is worth the cash. And the rest is a nice bonus.