Fifty Tons of Black Terror is more than just a great band name. It's actually a band. And, ironically enough, it's not the band's real name. See, there are these four Euros parading around their home continent under the name Penthouse. Sadly, when they reached the United States, entrepreneur and ambassador of goodwill, Bob Guccione, nixed the moniker for obvious reasons. Which brings us to our interesting aside of the day: Guccione, a guy who's amassed great wealth under the auspices of our first amendment rights, so eagerly limiting the use of a common noun? Hmmm...

Demeter is Pent... er... Fifty Tons of Black Terror's first U.S. release and they certainly hit the ground running. The album's first track, "Voyeur's Blues" is a twisted, smoking wreckage of deviant sexual ambiguity that does both the band's names justice. A hard- boiled, blues- based growler, the tune briefly gives hope that the Replacements have risen to deliver us all from our earthly burdens. Sadly, that Tasters' Choice moment ends abruptly as the album's second track begins. While "Road Rush" and "Deviant Soiree" almost capture the opener's clean- burning fuel, the remainder of the album's first disc falls short. The project basically disintegrates during "The Beauty in the Beast," and despite all the indecipherable ranting screamed to the contrary, it never recovers.

The album's second disc is even more troublesome. A double- length album is usually the signature of great ambition, and although those aiming higher often have a longer fall, the grand failure is always intriguing. Unfortunately, there's nothing ambitious about the album's second disc, a collection of unimaginative and stale remixes, and its failure is anything but grand. The remixes here are either to bland to save the bad material (mostly garnered from the album's first disc) or, in the case of "Red Tears," a remix of the great "Voyeur's Blues," a faint image of the original.

Demeter, an effort that opens with such promise, ends in a silly drag parody of itself. What starts out as Fifty Tons of Black Terror ends like so many teenage boys ogling one of Guccione's magazines: spent.

-Neil Lieberman