Aiden

Rain in Hell (Victory)
by Scott Hefflon

A guilty pleasure for a bunch of us. Sure, the teenage girls love them, but they love a lot of complete shit, so they’re no barometer for quality. Aiden was discovered by Dead Teenager records, and we had ’em on a wicked early mp3 CD. I think the label folded before sending us the CD, never paying for a handfulla of the ads and mp3 tracks for these guys, Speedealer, Players Club, and a few other bands. Shit happens. Just because Aiden wear eyeliner and cheerleading gossip queens wet their panties over them doesn’t mean they blow. They’re fun, and this EP/DVD that came out on Halloween shows that. There’s some emoting and whining and some “Youth Gone Wild” group shouts (I often think of “Freight Train Coming” by Nitro, who’s on the cover a book called American Hair Metal that came out recently, cuz they kind of exemplified just how far gone the genre was by the end, but I’ve been on the couch with Dr. Jim Beam, trying to get them outta my head for a decade and a half), but they’re smart enough to work in some metal-light riffery amidst the whoa-oh, and here they cover “White Wedding” and “Die Die My Darling,” which were dark and cheesy in their day, and it’s nice to hear a new generation of overrated bands mangle them. Ahem, sorry…
(www.victoryrecords.com)