A few years back, when some friends and I noticed that a band called Nashville Pussy was booked to play on my friend Jessie's birthday, we only joked about making the show into her birthday party. But as the show approached we started to hear the buzz about Nashville Pussy's raw energy and rapid-fire speed metal guitar. We were also clued in to the fact that their bassist, Corey, was over six feet tall, had a tattoo across her pelvis that read "Princess/Eat Me," and spit fire into the audience regularly.

So we got liquored up, and headed towards a club packed with fans screaming "Pussy" in anticipation of the 70's rock revival at hand. Their southern take on speed metal included a mad dog vocalist screaming subtle, almost literary lyrics such as "Go, motherfucker, go!" and "All fucked up!" They played hard, sweat a lot, made out on stage, and Corey spit huge clouds of fire onto the crowd as promised. The band's guitarist, Ruyter, sent Jessie home with a copy of the almost pornographic "Eat more Pussy" tour poster, signed "Happy Birthday Baby-- Here's some rock!"

While my first experience with retro sleaze metal was certainly a memorable one, it was also symptomatic of the genre's reliance on showy kitsch to get your attention-- after all, they're not getting it with their music. Sure, not all of these bands sound exactly the same. For example, Alabama Thunder Pussy's guitars are slower and chunkier than Nashville Pussy's, which means that only a few bluesy hooks stand between them and the current "alternative" hard rock scene. The Black Sabbath and Lynyrd Skynyrd influences are marked, and one song steals directly from Pink Floyd, but I didn't hear anything new on Alabama Thunder Pussy's Constellation.

I'm not afraid to gutter rock it-- there are few shows I've seen lately that made me happier than the sloppy but infectious Stooges-inspired rock n' roll of Cherry Valence. But one of the most depressing things about Alabama Thunder Pussy, is that unlike Cherry Valence-- or their sister "pussy band," Nashville Pussy-- it's easy to name bands who rock a lot harder than they do. With that taken away, what else is left? Only the comic failure of Alabama Thunder Pussy's attempts to write "sensitive" lyrics rather than relying on short violent utterances a la "All fucked up." Check out this chunk of sentimental Thunder Pussy wisdom: "It's funny how best friends can become enemies overnight/ Relationships gone sour within the span of twelve hours."

There are musicians out there that use a retro format as a platform from which to produce creative and engaging material. There are bands that recontexualize the old in order to inspire newer forms, rather than simply exposing the dated styles as stale. But while neither of these statements apply to Alabama Thunder Pussy, they certainly aren't afraid to be dreamers! Guitarist Erik Larson helps to elucidate the niche the band yearns to fill: "Then we bring three-chord rock and roll back. Someone's gonna break. I'm hoping it's us!"

-Kristin Sage Rockermann