Rob Zombie's Baby Brother's Band Grasps For a Fake Revolution

Them faux-vintage "CCCP" T-shirts sported by Powerman 5000's spiky bleached frontman Spider One—still dining out on the two-and-a-half-note joke that was big brother Rob Zombie's cartoon crunchcore—hearkens back to headier days. Like those 17 seconds, 17 years ago, when the coexistence of Billy Idol's sneer with the high hilarity of Sigue Sigue Sputnik felt more epochal than Generation X's entire back catalog.

photo: Annamaria DiSanto

Videogame crunchcore

Details

Powerman 5000
Transform
DreamWorks

Related Content

• If Adele Found A Solid Relationship...
  October 31, 2011
• Mobb Deep
  November 9, 2011
• Yelawolf's Gritty Performance
  September 21, 2011
• Live: Yelawolf Carries On The Shady Records Legacy
  September 19, 2011
• Will An Army Of Beyoncés Save "Run The World (Girls)" From Chart Oblivion?
  May 23, 2011

More About

• Rob Zombie
• Eminem
• Powerman 5000
• Billy Idol
• The Vines (Band)

Like this Story?

Sign up for the Music Newsletter: (Sent out every Thursday) Keep your thumb on the local music scene with music features, additional online music listings and show picks. We'll also send special ticket offers and music promotions available only to our Music Newsletter subscribers.

Privacy Policy Cancel Continue

Eminem's "Lose Yourself" KO'd all lesser rap-metal angst mutations, which the Powerman five weren't terribly good at to begin with. So they're now gasping for, and grasping at, a marketable suburban Situationism—such as gobsmacking the Vines' "Get Free" with the gratuitous assertion that "living so free is a tragedy." And take these song titles, please: "Theme to a Fake Revolution," "A Is for Apathy," "Song About Nuthin' "—perhaps the biggest thing a-matter is the DreamWorks label (who've kept P5K on the roster since the mid '90s) appearing where a Soviet-era Melodiya ought to be.

While the bleak sloganeering gets toned down for Transform's back end, the album's plodding prog crust only accentuates the odd infectiousness of P5K's glib, videogame-friendly fist-pumpers. Just imagine a Glasnost-era rock band transplanted to 2003, forever out of step, forever in (bootleg) blue jeans.