"The band with glasses and hard looks/ Has got you down in their black book," sneers Voodoo Glow Skulls lead grunter Frank "Potatohead" Casillos on the title track. With similar nose-thumbing numbers like "Hit A Guy With Glasses," I assume the Glow Skulls are former high school marching-band nerds with a past predilection for getting stomped in parking lots. Ever since, they've imbibed lots of cheap beer, fattened up, and formed this band to take their revenge.

From the get-go, the Glow Skulls shoot their musical wad and go for broke. Rapid-fire horn-blasts power the opener "Human Pinata" (think of Chicago's "25 or 6 to 4" melded together with any Bad Religion song. Disturbing, no?). Hot on the brass section's heels is the Glow Skulls' anarchic kamikaze power-chording. The brass-knuckled trombone and trumpet jabs serve as ideal sparring mates for the fiesty vocals and guitar. Sure, like a million other punk bands, it's all basically the same old Sabbath shit sped up and played over and over with minimal deviations. But, for the most part, the Glow Skulls' punk is energetic enough to make up for a lack of sonic versatility.

Taking this balls-out approach into account, no self-respecting pin cushion could rightfully say these beefy guys don't "fuckin' rock." The Glow Skulls' approach, however, seems to be an increasingly popular one among semi-hardcore bands. They marry elements of ska, doom-punk guitar, and a dash of corny Zappa-ish wit to round things out. Oh, and sometimes they're really angry, too.

Personally, I'd recommend listening to The Band Geek Mafia before a hard day of cutting class, getting lit on Boone's Farm, taking a Louisville Slugger to neighborhood mailboxes, and hurling Molotov cocktails in and around the nearest planned-retirement community. It's a call to arms for hyper-hormonal suburban kids crowd-surfing through the Cruel Story of Youth, powered by a surplus of testosterone, tattoos, and Taco Bell. But hey, better to latch onto this stuff than those horrendous Chumbawamba guys. And it's all brought to you by the gentle, aging punk provocateurs at Epitaph.

-Michael Sandlin