Oh, so this is the new Black Sabbath album. Forbidden was just a bad joke.

Well, Tony Iommi does guest on "Utopian Blaster", but I don't think anyone would ever mistake Lee Dorian's vocals for Ozzy or Dio or anyone like that. He's kinda hoary. This is not a bad thing.

Let me get this off my chest: this stuff is not even close to being original or terribly creative or anything like that. Just so you understand my next statements.

The Carnival Bizarre is also about the best driving music I've heard in some time (I said the same thing about The Ethereal Mirror, as I remember). Dave Patchett's art is becoming as much a metal icon as Derek Rigg's wonderful visions of 'ead(die). All told, a simply great package that tons of which folks should partake.

I still like the earlier Cathedral better. But this is where the band is now, and The Carnival Bizarre is about as good an album of this sort as I've heard. Period.

Well, David Chastain has found another female lead singer (and guitarist) who wants nothing more than to sound just like Ronnie Dio. Or maybe it's Chastain who modulates her vocals so they sound that way. Who knows?

As usual, Chastain is about two years behind the curve in metal trends, and while this album has the expected immaculate Chastain production touch, that same touch leaves the music sounding somewhat sterile.

As a technical guitarist and producer, David Chastain can take a seat among the big boys. But he simply has not shown the creativity and imagination to write music that is anything but ordinary. Sick Society is much more mundane than anything else.

The press claims a different musical direction. Well, the production has added heavier edges and the occasional grunge feel (and sometimes a little of both), but the base of each tune is still that patented DT take on glam metal.

And, actually, I prefer the tunes that stick closer to the older roots. I mean, why should Dangerous Toys really want to sound like Pantera (check out "The Numb")? And sometimes, as with "Take Me Swiftly", the boys find a sound that mixes the catchier elements of glam and drum machine-driven industrial grooving. The glam-grunge of "New Anger" and "Cure the Sane" is also most appealing.

There's still a ballad and lots of other stuff that sounds calculated. But if you have to pick a glam record this week to dig, then the Dangerous Toys is head and shoulders above that Tattoo Rodeo crap. This is not a great album, but it's certainly worth a spin or few.

Doomy-hardcore with seriously disturbed lyrics. Like if My Dying Bride met up with Earth Crisis and tried to merge both musical and lyrical ideas. Yep, a real bastard child.

The hype is that the band consists of five Swedish women, but perhaps that explains the sound. Who knows. Vocalist Asa has a cool style that doesn't really imitate anyone in particular. The musical attack is a little unfocused and fuzzy, but I like that sound as well. This is a fine bit of work.

And it simply keeps grinding on and on. Fellow Swedes Entombed could pick up some interesting ideas from Doughnuts. And, well, Doughnuts could finally drop off the metal-hardcore tightrope that it is currently walking. But that would be a real shame.

"Twenty-eight more songs" says the back cover. And in only 45 minutes. Pretty impressive.

And what a variety. Heavy Vegetable proves itself capable of running rampant over just about any pop style you can name, including a wondrously anarchic vision of the old Alan Parsons Project sound on "Cotton Swab" (no, really).

As members of the nationally acclaimed (even here) Encinitas (near San Diego) scene, Heavy Vegetable proves to be bored with anything normal. The tunes are zany and wide ranging, with plenty for anyone to dig. God knows how these folks remember which songs are which for the live shows (45 songs from two albums might mess with the memory), but the word is that a show is not to be missed.

Just in case HV isn't in your neighborhood this weekend, pick up the disc. You will like it.

Enough 60s-style psychedelia to drive Roky Erickson out of the asylum. A real Love-in, as it were.

And it works often enough to make me smile. Hooch is working a pretty mined-out genre to death, but the sense of humor saves the disc from being overwrought. And the hooks are there, most of the time.

Is this sorta stuff a coming trend? God, I really should pay more attention to these things. I thought Culture Club cover bands were all the rage these days.

Anyway, Hooch is fun, if rather superficial. Nothing wrong with that.

The remains of STG. And just maybe, Idiot Stare is more than the sum of its parts.

The music is much more techno (in a recent FLA sorta vein; still plenty of guitars to go around) and dance oriented, but the pain and anger are as omnipresent as before. Bucking the trend of most industrial acts becoming more focused on a "live sound", Idiot Stare is the result of STG going the other way. And I like this much better than the last STG disc.

If this can be reproduced live (and the boys have had plenty of experience, so I would imagine that enough could), it would be a most impressive show. Enough of the old STG sound remains (in pieces) to bring the old fans along.

A bold step forward. Idiot Stare has more than enough in the way of chops and tunesmithing to go places. Who wants to give them a lift?

One of the finer hardcore acts around injecting a little metal guitar and industrial beat noise into the mix. Not a bad idea.

This is fucking mean music. Someone could get killed just by listening to the stuff. It simply assaults every sense and bit of awareness you have. Particularly if you play it really loud in total darkness (this is a very good idea).

Only four songs. Makes me a little bummed. But perhaps this means much more Snapcase pretty soon. I'll deal with this right now. Maybe in a few months I'll have recovered.

Vaguely jazzy, with goth and classical overtones. A wondrous mix of styles and (lots of) substance.

Eclectic doesn't really begin to describe the stuff. While it is fairly easy to classify all of the songs on this disc as "Sqounk Operatics", the mood and feel often changes gears from one tune to the next. And to be honest, "tune" doesn't do these pieces justice.

Highly pretentious, to be sure, Squonk Opera still manages to pull off a wacky, cool album. Just because these folks know they are "out there" doesn't mean it sucks. Indeed, while it may take a few listens to even start to acclimate, there is plenty here to admire.

I know exactly who this sounds like, but I remember hating that band so much that the name is burned from my memory.

This is so calculated the liners include a picture of the slide rule used to find precise glam trends used in the production of this disc. And man, does it suck.

To actually list the reasons why this album is dreadful would be pointless. It takes only listening to the first song and single, which turns out to be one of the better things here. Overwrought, overproduced and way too pretentious. The timing is curious: these guys want to be big arena rock star gods when the only bands who fill arenas are hypocrites who claim that being a rock star is stupid.

I'll give them one point for honesty. That still leaves them in the red.

Way too many remixes that sound an awful lot alike.

The tune itself is a cool industrial hardcore thing, and a couple of the remixes (track 5, for example, the techno-pop remix) are pretty good. I'd love to hear a full-length.

Certainly a band worth checking out from the folks who brought you Universal Stomp (and you know that didn't suck). So take this medicine and wait for the cure.

These guys have been around forever, and yet this is the first release to reach most of the U.S. I have gotten so many scattered VGS reports over the past few years, but rarely more than a couple stations at a time. Epitaph should fix that problem.

The unknowing would like me to describe the music. It's a particularly manic version of the hardcore ska gig, heavier and faster than any other such and I've heard.

Including previous VGS albums, which did not have the cash to create the awesome sound found here. This is thick, full and messy, the sort of disc that would inspire you to earn your Hell's Angels red wings.

The version of "Trouble Walking" is not a cover of the Ace Frehley bit, but "Charlie Brown" is that sixties novelty thing, spun almost into incoherence. After this disc gets out, though, no one will be picking on Voodoo Glow Skulls.