Horrorpops

‘Hell Yeah!’

Hellcat/ Epitaph

Psychobilly n.: An eclectic genre of music – a combination of rockabilly, horror punk, punk, goth rock, blues and bluegrass; old-school rockabilly meets punk.

That’s as good a definition as any to sum up the singularly unique punk subculture known as Psychobilly, a kind of dirtied up rockabilly swing, spliced with sneering punk ‘tude. And it is as good a definition as any to sum up “Hell Yeah!” the appealing Hellcat debut of Danish psychos Horrorpops.

Don’t be scared by the sizable amount of tattoos and blood-spattered imagery that the band employs in their music; there is not that much “psycho” to their “billy.” Though the Horrorpops’ four members (and their two loyal go-go dancers Mille and Kamilla) look appropriately grody enough with their blocky tatoos, abundant piercings and insanely structured and colored hair, there is nothing scary about their music. The breezy, rocking pop tunes here owe more to SoCal darlings No Doubt (in their ska-punking early years) than the horror imagery suggests, another band that is more show than go.

Oh there’s plenty of ghoulish references found throughout “Hell Yeah!,” the allusions to monsters and cannibals are of course more metaphorical than literal (thank God for small favors.) But the music itself has the kind of boppy, bouncy giddiness that’s perfect for an open-topped Convertible drive.

The songs veer between punk, ska, swing, surf, and even ’50s-style rock ‘n’ roll (on “Dotted With Hearts,” which comes complete with a Roy Orbison sound-alike on the interlude.) There’s no shortage of glistening pop hooks here, either: “Julia,” “Miss Take,” “Girl in A Cage” and “Drama Queen” all frontload the album with nagging memorable harmonies, that stick to one’s brain with their contemporary-ness. It is the kind of spunky, punky gaiety that Gwen Stefani and her crew indulged in before they discovered their now hallmark pop sheen. (Heck, even their lead singer sounds like a throatier version of Stefani’s kewpie doll vocals.)

There are a few too many filler songs here to call “Hell Yeah!” anything more than a solidly made showcase for the band … but then who would resist the tribal-beat drums that kick “Psychobitches Outta Hell”? I can’t even see anyone resisting once they drop “Hell Yeah!” into their stereo.

Lostprophets

‘Start Something’

Columbia

It can be a blessing for a band to have a killer song smack dab in the middle of an album – unless of course that killer song sucks the life out of every other song around it. That is what has happened to Welsh hard rockers the Lostprohets on their sophomore release “Start Something” in which the hooky single “Last Train Home” looms like a monolith over the rest of the album’s tracks, consigning them to instant forgetability.

Listening to “Start Something” you realize exactly what Lostprohets are: a reasonably solid, tight radio-rock outfit that spins songs that would fit snugly on a modern rock formatted FM station. They are to Hoobastank what that band is to Incubus as that band was to the Red Hot Chili Peppers, though after all the watered down refinements, the funk is almost totally bled out of the music of the LostProphets. Yep, the band is that generic, though the craftsmanship is still concrete enough to (almost) forget that insurmountable problem. Except that the relatively listenable fodder that makes up the album – the kind of “emotional” soft-hard rock fit for chore work – is universally eclipsed by the appeal of “Last Train Home,” who’s dual choruses will leave instant imprints in your mind. It’s hard to listen to the other songs without being reminded of the boring samey-ness of it all. The guys of Lostprophets may have just accidentally turned themselves into one-hit wonders.

Information from urbandictionary.com was used in this article.