First things first: Fifty Tons of Black Terror? Do we really need that much Terror? Pavement was content with just one twilight's worth. Wouldn't five have been enough for these guys? That's a couple of cars worth of terror right there. To be fair, this Fifty Tons crap isn't their first choice for a band name. In Europe, this ragtag outfit is known as Penthouse. But here, in the lower 48, it's Fifty Tons.

See, Penthouse Magazine publisher, Bob Guccione, who apparently pays more attention to the Gothic death-blues scene than you'd have thought for someone so fond of clambakes, kiboshed the Penthouse moniker before the Stateside release of their first LP, Demeter. Guccione has tried too hard and spent too long trying to shed that "poor-man's Playboy" tag for Fifty Tons to come along and screw up all his work. Much to his chagrin, Fifty Tons refuses to be brow-beaten by porn czars and is back with their second full-length, My Idle Hands, which is perhaps a subtle reference to their legal troubles.

This is some authentic scary shit here-- My Idle Hands' lyric sheet runs the gamut of FDA-approved frightening imagery. Livestock, blood, kittens, fish, teeth, they're all here. Are you trembling yet? We're pretty sure we've heard most of this stuff at least once before from some other depressed weirdo. Luckily, while frontman Charlie Finke's ruminations verge on cliché as much as psychotic raving can, they never quite plunge over the falls of crappiness. A sense of humor, albeit a severely perverse one, pervades My Idle Hands' songs and spirits them away to a different realm. Come on, who can't relate to poetry like, "If my mattress was filled with Nazis and axes/ I'd sink far into Neverland?" That's a recurring problem for many people-- hardly a night goes by for these traumatized victims where they aren't losing valuable sleep due to National Socialists in our Sertas.

But, for better or worse, the words aren't the focus of My Idle Hands. Fifty Tons blankets their occasionally laughable, occasionally decent wordsmithing in an impenetrable haze of pea-soup guitars, varying stylistically from outright punk, to unmistakably heavy metal, on through to old Chicago blues. The bass occasionally wafts above the sludge, adding more bite to their sonic bark. But generally speaking, Fifty Tons never bothers to lift the mood for a second, which severely hampers the album. They seem both comfortable and willing to stay in their nihilistic, depressing rut, even if the result winds up sounding like a forty-minute train wreck.

The album's not a total loss, though. Hell, as far as monstrously threatening rock goes, it sure beats the pulp out of that sissy-boy Marilyn Manson. It's a rare treat to hear something so intentionally tuneless and trashy that absolutely refuses to suck. Bob Guccione, eat your heart out.

-Beatty & Garrett