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LIFE & ARTS

Black Meth releases twisted new album

by BEN HILL
The Daily Cougar

The first track of the Black Math Experiment's new album, Last Transmission From The Blue Room, says everything that needs to be known about this Houston-based five-piece. Fans of the Rocky Horror Picture Show will recognize a punkified cover of "Science Fiction Double Feature" at a tempo normally reserved for most of Meatloaf's live show. But the rest of the album begs the question: Is this a band of musicians or comedians? 

The answer is both. 

Judging from the fun this band is having in the studio while committing tracks to tape, its album release party Saturday night at Fitzgerald's, 2706 White Oak Drive, should not be missed. 

Half the fun of the band is trying to spot all the influences and parodies. The band covers nearly every style of pop music from the 1980s with startling accuracy, often to the point of wondering whether it has a good lawyer on its payroll.

"Ology" appears to be a reworking of Johann Pachelbel's "Canon in D," while "Ohio," one of the album's strongest tracks, could be a Talking Heads song. 

Last Transmission also incorporates hilarious observations about pop culture into catchy melodies that occasionally recall They Might Be Giants. "Every Five Minutes" will have metal fans snickering with its snide stabs at the scene: "Every five minutes / Lars Ulrich puts out a hit on a 15-year-old girl for downloading Master of Puppets / Every five minutes / Slayer is denied rehearsal space at Auschwitz / Every five minutes / Ronnie James Dio loses another inch of height / Every five minutes / Anthrax makes another bad business decision somehow involving surf shorts," and that's only the first verse. 

The apex of the album's humor is "Evil Wizard Jesus," a twisted tale of a fictional outlaw/sorcerer who robs banks and battles lawmen in the streets of small 19th-century Texas towns. Underneath the bizarre imagery and metal riffs that bring Galactic Cowboys to mind, the story is a little too similar to Garth Brook's "In Lonesome Dove."

One problem Last Transmission has is that it sounds like it was recorded in 1981, stuffy production and all, which hurts the impact of the material. A re-recording sometime in the future is a good idea. 

Fans of Blondie, Talking Heads, Devo, They Might Be Giants, the Beastie Boys and humor in general should catch the Black Math Experiment's album release concert on Saturday night. Tickets are $10.