Red Planet

Let’s Degenerate (Gearhead)
by Scott Hefflon

OK, I was too hard in my review of Revelotion 33, calling them Bay City Roller Mod-retro pussies with Weezer-stroking tendencies or something equally prickish, but their spacepop Cars-meets-Cheap-Trick bubblegum prancing’n’skipping are hard to handle without yer teeth hurting. But the title track in particular has a riff that cuts a wide swath of devastation, something The Hellacopters’ fans can appreciate, and while the fruity squealing vocals still kinda remind me of Gaza Stripper Rick Simms with his nuts caught in his zipper, hell, that pretty Zander fellow sung like a girl and we all somehow accepted rockerisms from those puckered lips… Honestly, the songwriting’s damn fine, even though most of it was forged in the ’80s (pop rock like Boston, early Van Halen, J.Geils, and that kinda stuff). A good indication of what’s what is the back cover photo that shows the band sprawled on the bedroom carpet by the turntable with their (up-to-1984) Van Halen records out (hum the appropriate line from “Surrender” here), and one guy is in a Donna’s shirt and another’s wearing one of the band’s own shirts (usually a no-no reserved for butt-ugly metalheads who need a reminder of what their band’s name is), but it’s a take-off on the classic sloppily-layered/blotches-of-ink Cheap Trick shirt using the name Red Planet instead. Nice touch!
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