House Of Gvsb
Girls Against Boys

For all their rebel posturing, many so-called alternative bands still adhere to the old-fashioned conventions of melody and verse-chorus-verse. But not Girls Against Boys. Their songs are mostly combinations of three or four killer riffs and a juggernautlike groove. Welding metallic-riff crunch to Teutonic trance rock, the band draws on the big, nasty neo-industrial sound of Chicago outfits like the Jesus Lizard, Big Black and Ministry. But where those groups holler, Girls Against Boys singer Scott McCloud rasps like a debauched East Village lounge lizard; his nicotine-stained vocals owe a fair amount of cigarette money to Psychedelic Furs' Richard Butler, while his incantatory delivery and ciphered lyrics recall a sexier version of the Fall's Mark E. Smith.

The darkly sensual element that pervaded the band's last two albums remains, and it's a refreshing anomaly on the asexual alternative landscape. The band accomplishes this without overt strutting and pouting; the sensuality all comes down to an aloof cool, a suggestive growl and the way the two-bass rhythm section throbs like some erotic factory (or is that a sex machine?). The effect is mesmerizing even though the tunes aren't strictly memorable. McCloud gets to the essence of the band's sound in "Another Drone in my Head": "It gets around your eyes/It gets around your head/It gets you hypnotized."

The ominous wah-wah howl on "Super-Fire" is magnetic, and the dissonant one-note guitar stabs on "Click Click" make the song. Even McCloud's voice wears a light veil of insidious distortion; he clearly relishes the "k" sounds in "TheKindaMzkYouLike." On "Disco Six Six Six," drummer Alexis Fleisig whacks out a huge, walloping funk beat, with Eli Janney's Ham-mond-from-hell keyboard lick dogging it like a bad conscience. Like every other track on "House," the malevolent groove of "Disco" reaffirms a rock verity: Feeling bad - as in bad to the bone - feels really, really good.

--MICHAEL AZERRAD