Here we have the best of both worlds: serious rocking and non-stop explicit Halloween exploitation. Sure these bands are all current ones, and Psychobabble doesn't like to dwell too much in the twenty-first century, but these acts know where it's at. All fourteen got that surf, punk, psycho-garage sound, you dig? There's The Rebel Set standing in a Sabbath thunder storm, but when the Farfisa kicks in and the mad frugging starts, you won't mistake them for Ozzy and friends. There's The Premonitions doing Screaming Lord Sutch's "She's Fallen in Love With a Monster Man" like Sam the Sham and the Shangri-Las. There's Nix and the Nothings bridging the sound barrier between sixties garage and early eighties hardcore shoutin'. There's The 7&6 catching waves with the "Skeleton Surfer". There's TV Party doing "Pet Cemetry" in a version that is--burn me at the stake for blasphemy if you must--beats the Ramones' slick original with its extra layer of gunk and Jesse Brinkenhoff's too dreamy vocal.
Apparently all of these groups have invested in a vintage Farfisa, and I'm guessing they managed to save up the bread by skimping on studio time. Most of these tracks sound like they were recorded on a portable cassette machine. By the time The Sweet Nuthins roll around for the poppy penultimate track, "Ghouls Just Wanna Have Fun", you'll think Jeff Lynne produced them just because they're in stereo and the vocals don't sound like they're farting from a blown speaker. But if that sounds like a knock, you don't know a thing about rock.
And a bit of extra advice: I thought all the bands on Side B were channeling David Seville, but it turns out I'd just accidentally hit the 45RPM button on my record player. I highly recommend you dig this disc at 33 1/3 and 45, because it works both ways, Chipmunks fans. It's like getting two records for the price of one!
