yip-yip - two kings of the same kingdom

One thing is for sure — no one's going to top 98 Degrees' self-titled debut release. Music just doesn't have the same awareness it did in 1997. It's a miracle I've found Jesus (he was hiding in my uncle's Jeep Wrangler) since then, or else I'm not sure I wouldn't have died from sheer listlessness by now.

I feel like a kid again. If I close my eyes and let my mind wander, I can almost feel Father Don tickling my sack with his smoke-encrusted beard. The Holy Grail could be hidden anywhere, and if those Methodist cocks find it before I do, I'm going to have a fucking hissy fit.

2K.O.T.S.K. is the theme music for the post-apocalyptic QVC. Not only that, if you were trapped in a Doonesbury comic, I have a feeling this album would be playing in the background, belching out palsy-walsy boogie synth and taunting your ass while you try to figure out why your shoes smell like piss or how you got stuck in a mediocre comic strip about a pathetic, middle-aged choad engine.

Koodoo.

get it if you like: bLectum from bLechdom, nero's day at disneyland, zom zoms, les georges leningrad

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upsilon acrux - galapagos momentum

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masato nakamura - sonic the hedgehog 2

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zom zoms - yellow rainbow

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boredoms - pop tatari

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pataphysics - take a look out your window

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gay beast - second wave

for those of you who AOL-keyworded "gay beastiality", prepare yourself for something even more arousing than horse ejaculate.

gay beast have injected themselves with hormones from a behemoth and recorded another album. second wave is an epileptic spazzblast with breakneck changes, jabbing into the air with its lanky appendages and threatening to explode at any moment.

get it if you like: the flying luttenbachers, night wounds, dmonstrations, death sentence: panda!

fav trax: revolt revolt, white diamonds, eeexxxpppaaannndddiiinnnggg

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holy molar - cavity search

so there's a lot of fat kids in the audience tonight.

holy molar are notorious for taunting, degrading, and straight up insulting their show crowds. it's no surprise that their songs have a similar disposition. cavity search is five stomach-pounding tracks -- each one taking a giant dump on conventionalism in the name of indecency.

get it if you like: the locust, harry pussy, arab on radar, xbxrx

fav trax: the night pocahotass spread her land o' lakes, der werewolf breath

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dmonstrations - night trrors. shock!

the first thing that struck me about dmonstrations was the crazy japanese dude bellowing and squawking like a snaggletoothed droll.

night trrors. shock! sounds like it was recorded in an insane asylum. the staggered, angular guitar makes things rarely feel relaxed, as it insists on resolving tension with more tension.

ten blistering spazzouts in 25 minutes -- when the weirdness clears, you're left with a swelling abscess the size of a metropolitan city. and it's begging for more dmonstrations.

get it if you like: ex models, pre, gay beast, holy molar

fav trax: london machine, voyeur, crocodile brain

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white mice - ganjahovahdose

there's nothing like waking up from a nightmare, palms sweaty and heart racing, unable to recall what just happened.

on first listen, this album sounds like a bunch of cranky ogres fornicating with one another. i haven't been this excitedly disturbed since i saw the winkie's monster in mulholland drive.

ganjahovahdose displays a certain degree of badassery that the son of god could only dream of matching, earning the quality of "shit that would make glenn danzig cry".

get it if you like: coughs, usaisamonster, aids wolf, prosthetic cunt

fav trax: passsthefissst, the ape-caca-lips, placenta the crotchtower

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totally radd!! - shark attack day camp

totally radd!! is an 8-bit homage burrito with a hair metal tortilla, stuffed with intellivision synth and game genie irony, and doused in secondhand devo sauce.

tr!! write songs about beating mega man and pulling all-night street fighter marathons. before you go shouting "sacrilege!", they even have a song dedicated to mike tyson's punch out!, sampling sounds from the game and yelling "mike tyson's punch out!" about 83 times.

my initial reaction to this band was, "this is so bad it's good." but now it's "this is so good, it's fucking AWESOME."

get it if you like: zom zoms, devo, bondage fairies, mega man®

fav trax: turtle eggs and mumblety pegs, vomit missile, victory pose

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upsilon acrux - radian futura

upsilon acrux pushes itself to the limit on this album, refusing to stay in 4/4 and inventing new forms of theorem madness. it's hard to imagine writing these songs without a metronome and calculator sewn into your skull.

in classic upsilon tradition, the guitars remain the focus of the songs, blasting at light speed like something hopping in hot lava, rarely pausing for a break.

the music can feel eerily focused at times. "transparent seas (radio edit)" is 28 minutes long, a legendary maze of a song engineered down to the last note, testing their gladiator-like endurance and memory.

get it if you like: tera melos, ahleuchatistas, sleeping people, yowie

fav trax: prelude to foreshadow'n, landscape with gun and chandelier, transparent seas (radio edit)

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nero's day at disneyland - attention shoppers

attention shoppers is a carnival of fairy tale demolition songs. wind up your fisher price music box and prepare yourself for nexus-laced mayhem.

this is fun b-grade horror music with a short attention span.

get it if you like: death from above 1979, zom zoms, stunt rock, pink & brown

fav trax: godzilla take your mask off, the glass ceiling cabaret, here we lived one baba at a time

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wizardzz - hidden city of taurmond

wizardzz are magical jelly gnomes that prance around, combining their geek sorcery powers to conjure up some killer spaceship tunes.

this is arena rock gone sheer bad-ass, with drumming in the vein of chippendale from lightning bolt assisted by some cheesy sci-fi synth glorification.

hidden city could be the soundtrack to a new quest for glory game, egging you on as you man the deep woods, casting flame dart on undead lizard monsters.

+10 vitality!!!

get it if you like: lightning bolt if they were trapped in a cathedral without a bass amp

fav trax: sailship, jellipper-lilly field, sea battle at orkusk

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anavan - cover story

anavan turned me gay for dance music, so it's only right they get a spot here.

if this band was to be classified, they'd be free-party megatoon-laser galacticore. but fuck genres, right?

cover story is a collection of infectious dance jams, infiltrating your brain and demanding movement- i could ride these basslines over the caspian, nosedive into the abyss and burst through the surface straight into the stratosphere. no joke!

anavan is the sonic prism of modern dance music, taking all the pieces of the formula, straining them through a cosmic colander, and splattering the output all over a raging dance matrix.

get it if you like: trash fashion, shy child, neon plastix, new young pony club

fav trax: traumatology, work it out, boom

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flux information sciences - private/public

i have no appropriate opener, so i'll just start by saying- this album is insanely fucking good.

influenced by the the rhythms of urban machinery, private/public is the musical workings of a sinister manufacturing plant, spewing oxidation wherever the fuck it pleases and twisting your arm into a mechanical gangrene of colossal proportion.

flux are masters of decay and destruction, leaving nothing in their path but mangled architecture cranking and whistling on beat as the mob of robot vikings march to their next decimation.

get it if you like: james chance & the contortions, swans, d.n.a, teenage jesus and the jerks

fav trax: adaptech, the shocking truth, jewelry, parking/shopping

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germlin - thrash'r

listening to thrash'r is like being glitchfucked by a cyborged-out ADD caterpillar... gently and with uncanny precision.

he squirms his way into the depths of your fragile ear canals, flooding your brain with his chummy brand of hip hop atari-core. and just when he appears to be retreating to his chrysalis, he flanks you with a fresh injection of amphetamine.

break out your mame emulators. joe germlin leaves no leaf uneaten.

get it if you like: gay against you, nullsleep, venetian snares, nintendo tunez

fav trax: nite eat ii, don't punch my lunch, thrash'r

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zom zoms - cd ep

zom zoms are devo worship gone manic. if their off-kilter conventions aren't charming enough to win you over, they'll remind you that in addition to writing zany jamz, they also deliver pizza freelance. (quicker than mr. gatti's!)

cd ep is effortless and absurdly fun... a nervous guitar fending off a party of wonky circus synths as the zoms moan and grumble in schizophrenic babble.

nonsense at its finest!!

get it if you like: DEVO, captain beefheart, pffr, dmonstrations

fav trax: septagon crazy, tense tents, love disease, umm... all of 'em!

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hot hot heat - scenes one through thirteen

somewhere buried beneath the ill-tempered synthesizer madness, relentless bass riffing, and untamed chimp-like tom thrashing is an angsty matt marnik, yelping about bullfights and gourmet chopping knives, and demanding your barber's contact info.

if you're a fan of later hot hot heat, you're in for a real tasty confection... or excessive mindraping! this sounds nothing like the hhh you know.

s1-13 came out sometime in 2002, before the band nixed its original singer and added a guitarist for a more accessible sound. yep it's true! before hhh started pumping out bubblegum beach pop hits, they were naive garage-synth punks with no fear and a knack for obliteration.

get it if you like: le shok, the red light sting, the mae shi (terrorbird era), sump pumps

fav trax: haircut economics, tokyo vogue, matador at the door

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