Call me ridiculous, but Houston's Fatal Flyin' Guilloteens just may be the only credible musical descendants of renegade Houstonian bluesmen like Amos Milburn and Lightnin' Hopkins. Who knew these once-crazy, and now quite dead old punks would pass the gutter-blues torch to well-bred, ennui-ridden suburban kids. Presumably via acid, whippets and the weird chemicals in Starbucks coffee, these angry Texas youths regurgitate the rawest of primitive blues, mixed with an unhealthy splattering of pea-green punk bile. Hell, Houston is the most polluted city in the country, so why shouldn't it render equally toxic bands?

I'd wager the Guilloteens are influenced as much by the Germs, Pussy Galore and the Stooges as they are the Stones. Listen and marvel at the way they contort the blues into a rusty, tangled mass of over-amplified six-string wreckage. With lots of runaway slide guitar and gnarled riffs strewn about, these are some of the most demented hooks you've heard since discovering your former flower-child parents' collection of Country Joe and the Fish albums. The songs are barely held together by one-note basslines, rapid-fire bass drum kicks and snare drum cracks, with bellowed mic-in-the-mouth vocals topping it all off.

Yet as prehistoric as their sound is, the Fatal Flyin' Guilloteens are still too structurally advanced and coherent to be signed to Calvin Johnson's K Records. As a result, they were taken on by another respected Washington state garage-rock label, Estrus-- home to your favorites the Mooney Suzuki, the Mono Men, and the Volcanos. I suppose, though, there will be inevitable comparisons to the white-boy slop-rock of Jon Spencer (pre-fatherhood, that is), and the likes of the Jesus Lizard, Chrome Cranks and Speedball Baby. But I'd venture to say the Guilloteens drag you down even further into the primordial muck. Maybe as far as, say, Wings' 1971 garage-punk semi-classic Wild Life. Really.

The Guilloteens' lead singer can wail with best of 'em, screaming the seemingly disjointed, scattershot lyrics on "Rawhide 2000," or "Straight Lines," where the traditional concept of a chorus is rethought simply as, "Yaaaaaahhhrg!" Or maybe when they're feeling extra expressive, you'll get a catchy chant: "We're gonna do-do-do-do-do you in," as on "Role Models." There's a lot here to remind you of James Chance circa 1979, too, as the Guilloteens are also able to pull off believable dementia. Most punk and metal frontmen, hard as they may try, come off no more believably tortured than James Hetfield wondering who drank his last Pellegrino.

You could easily connect the Guilloteens' recorded vocals with an image of a straitjacketed shock-treatment junkie bouncing around a rubber room-- his private tirades conveniently recorded for public consumption. And through all this shouting and lunatic babbling, you're able to make out a host of vague Old West-themes: references to John Wayne, saddlin' up and saddlin' in, dead man's graves, quick-drawin' outlaws, sheriffs, and hangin' em high, along with miscellaneous other meaningless rock 'n' roll verbiage. No art school-influenced Crass or Gang of Four punk politics here, thanks.

True, these guys don't offer much in the way of lyrical invention or harmonic contrast-- nor much in the way of lyrical contrast or harmonic invention. I doubt they'll be adding sampled string sections or machine-generated trip-hop beats anytime soon. They know one royally fucked-up sound, and they'll go with it till they 1) turn 21 and realize that playing music interferes with their drinking; 2) have nothing further to record after achieving their professed aim of completely "destroying" music as we know it; or 3) eventually enroll in law school.

So listen and enjoy while you can, because, thankfully, this isn't the sound of careerist longevity. Remember, kids, your republican parents would probably tolerate the sonar blip-rock of Tortoise and (and even Jon Spencer's disco tunes) at the dinner table, but the Fatal Flyin' Guilloteens' loud, trashy blues will wreak havoc on peace-loving mom and dad's fragile central nervous system. Thus, you have rock music that works. What more do you want?

-Michael Sandlin