Ex-Idols

Pill Popper (Relativity)
by Chaz Thorndike

After watching the sleazeball heyday of adrenaline saturated rock ‘n roll dwindle and die as a scene in L.A. and as a copycat lifestyle across the country only to be replaced by flannel donning the-uglier-the-better Gap-shopping wanna bes with poor personal hygiene…Yeah, I was bummed. So GNR is doing classic rock rehashes and someone let Vince Neil form a band, but at least hardcore is pushing its way into the limelight. Right on its heels are punk rock, punk pop, junk rock, and punkish rock. Enter the Ex-Idols.

From the scrap-overlay ‘zine-ish cover (not to mention the breasts) and the first five seconds of high strung punkish rock, I knew this was a keeper. The Relativity four song EP lasts a whopping eight minutes and 33 seconds, so make sure to set your CD player on repeat, or your tapedeck on loop. (If you don’t have these functions, geez, get with the [shudder] ’80s!) The songs carry that frantic beat and sneering vocal line throughout, mix in acoustic strumming, howls, screeches, Bang Tango mellow man crooning, megaphoned schmaltz, standard group shout choruses that sound like a dozen monster truck announcers, blenderize the whole goopy concoction and jam it into two minute capsules. The title track, a song totaling almost three minutes, has the chorus effects, flanging drums and twisted pop dittiness of Cheap Trick and sounds like, dare I say? (Dare! Dare!) Enuffs Znuff. Scary, huh?