Ladies and Gentleman, I come to you live from the fields of New Jersey. Some sixty years ago, Orson Welles relayed the tale of visitors from the stars that came to our world. Now it is my turn. Less than an hour ago, an early 1960s Chevrolet landed in this field, frightening citizens and gulls picking the garbage from New York alike.

I am perched behind a small embankment, and as of yet there has been no sign of motion or light from the Chevrolet. Wait, something's happening-- the door, the driver's side door, it's... swinging open! There are beings exiting the vehicle. We are about to have our first glimpse of creatures from another planet!

They are strange looking visitors indeed. They look like women, attractive in a creepy sort of way. Wait, they've got instruments. Guitars, drums, amplifiers... they're going to try communicating with us using the universal language of music! Ladies and gentleman of the world, for the first time, visitors from another world will speak to us!

Well, it's not really speaking. They're... playing. And they're... singing. One of them, She-Devil, is speaking into a microphone. It seems these visitors come to us straight from Monster Island Planet. They are Famous Monsters, the premiere surf-rock band from this mysterious world! They're handing out copies of CDs that will spread their message throughout the land.In The Night, the band rampages and hams it up through fifteen songs. From these surf tunes, it would certainly seem that their world is populated by creatures not unlike those from old monster movies. If their brand of surf-punk is indeed the premier brand on Monster Island Planet, I can safely say it's a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there. Redundancy seems strange from a world populated with vampires, mummies, swamp creatures, and human resource specialists.

[hours later...]

Well, as it turns out, ladies and gentlemen, this strange, campy surf-rock band is not really from Monster Island Planet. Instead, it's made up of Sean Yseult of White Zombie fame, and Brijitte West, late of the underground legends NY Loose. They've turned their backs on their pasts and created a band that's something that good old Dr. Frankenstein might have made in his lab: one-half White Zombie and one-half NY Loose with a dash of Dick Dale thrown in for good measure.

It's a combination that probably works live, but on record it sounds like the infamous Shaggs, if the Shaggs grew up and followed up Philosophy of the World with a punk rock record. This is most readily apparent on the title track, an interesting (for lack of a better word) cover of Cheap Trick's "Clock Strikes 10," and "When I Grow Up," which was borrowed from an old cartoon show most of us don't remember.

Don't go spending hard earned dollars on the record unless you're a huge fan of surf-punk, and want to hear 15 songs with riffs you've heard in every Quentin Tarantino movie ever made, intertwined with insipid "Monster Mash" lyrics. The album is enough of a tease to make you want to see Famous Monsters live, but hold off on your plans for a Monster Island Planet vacation until you do.

-Duane Ambroz