Beyond The Valley Of The Murderdolls

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When Joey Jordinson, the diminutive drummer of Slipknot, has time off from Iowa's finest, he straps on a guitar as one of the Murderdolls--a pulp-rawk five-piece that draws inspiration from slasher flicks, Alice Cooper and Twisted Sister on Beyond the Valley of the Murderdolls. Boasting song titles like "She Was A Teenage Zombie" and "Kill Miss America", it's fair to say that this debut isn't to be taken completely seriously. But the trash-metal aesthetic is firmly entrenched in the annals of rock & roll, and it's this very vein that the Murderdolls are out to suck from. Jordinson and Tripp Eisen of industrial metal freaks Static X form a double-pronged guitar assault that simultaneously evokes the flamboyant fretwork of glam-metal and the gutsy roar of the Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones, but the focus is surely on singer Wednesday 13--a super-camp frontperson that sings lyrics like "I'd rather cut you than the wedding cake / Your bloody guts on my rented tux" ("Die My Bride") in a voice that sounds like Mötley Crüe's Vince Neil after the overdose. It's a brave move, but if the sound of 1980s hair-metal prompts an involuntary sneer, you may find the joke here quickly wears thin. --Louis Pattison