People! Prepare yourselves for a fake-journalism mega-pun that emulates the stylings of the bikini-baiting Entertainment Tonight; I'm talking cleverness on par with "'Friends' Star Matthew Enjoying Rehab 'Perry' Much". Ready? "Moistboyz Have Dried Up." Get it? Because moisture can dry! Hoo, boy! This golden stuff just comes to me, even with a sinus infection. I'll give you a minute to clean your pants.

Yawn. I know this Ween side project is supposed to be a spoof, but the best spoofs transcend their targets. If you're going to dip down into genre-muck, you should be careful not to get any on you. Moistboyz are starting to sound the opposite of inspired, as idea-less as the sociopathic thrash pose they're aiming to lampoon. And this is coming from a devoted show-taping Weenie, who signed on with their debut and kept smiling along as they worshipped cosmic stallions and delivered doomed monologues from the perspective of children with spinal meningitis.

I keep a pocket-sized carbon-dating kit handy to annoy Christians and to test the vintagicity of thrift-store denim jackets. When I played this album into it, the thing thought 2002's III was at least ten years old, with certain moments going farther back into the wanky eras of Judas Priest and W.A.S.P. No fooling, the Moistboyz concept (profane, insanely distorted chunks of standard brag-and-threat metal vitriol) ages aggressively, the same way sports highlights from a noon game look like they were filmed during the Korean War when they're replayed at midnight, isolated as they are from their only momentary significance/payoff.

Fun is to be had on this disc, though: every echoed handclap is guffaw-inducing. The hellish "Yeah!" that opens "The Spike" (with its characteristic chorus, "The spike! The spike!") legitimately induces furniture-burning. "The Tweaker" is a keeper, with its authentically chaotic guitar wail and bullying tempo. The song is hilarious, if manifestly impolitic, as it chronicles people vomiting up their testicles, Satan assisting with drug acquisition, brittle penises falling off on contact, and tips to avoid being a "hippie faggot". The centerpiece is "I'm Gonna Kick Your Ass", as it flagrantly cops the second half of the riff from "Iron Man" and boasts lyrics such as "Talkin' that shit-- you're mine!" and my favorite: "Asshole/ The shit is going down right now/ Put down the kid and run/ Daddy's gonna die/ Wave bye-bye."

But puerile thunder can only rumble so long, and ultimately, this project suggests the unfunniness of Tenacious D's valleys, or a backwards-moving Ween, as if they're over-revisiting their early work. Moistboyz just performed a show they billed as "Retardapalooza", and that's a clue as to just how "Beavis & Butthead"/Spencer Gifts this album can be. The human rhythm section sounds unpromisingly like drum machine programming (a la mid-90s Al Jourgensen), which makes the rock seem strangely contained, like havoc trapped in a Skinner box. Titles such as "Great American Zero" and "I Am the Reaper" should be sufficient to communicate how tired things get. The lyrics intermittently scan as clunkily as the predictable doggerel people send in to newspapers' obituary sections. If you still go around ranking your top ten farts or playing mailbox baseball, or if you want cartoon-morbid songs about eating Mickey Moist's leavings, purchase away. Else, leave it for someone's ten-year-old brother.

-William Bowers, September 26th, 2002