***1/2 Fifty Tons of Black Terror

DEMETER

(Beggars Banquet)

This is just the kind of album that drives me nuts -- catastrophically brilliant, maybe one of the best all year, and it's such a goddamn ripoff I can't tell whether I want to put them up on a pedestal or beat 'em with it. I poked around in the liner notes, shook the case upside down, expecting at any moment to see David Yow and Jon Spencer come tumbling out of hiding. But to no avail -- neither of them, apparently, had anything to do with what's easily the best Jesus Lizard album and the best Blues Explosion album to come out in three years. Worse, it's by a bunch of English guys (known across the pond as Penthouse; Demeter includes their UK album Gutter Erotica as well as a subsequent remix EP) who freely acknowledge they set out to sound like the Lizard, JSBX, the Birthday Party, and Mule. Singer Charlie "Ratt" Finke is quite a Yow clone (sample lyric, delivered completely blotto: "What? What did you say?! `If only your dick was as big as your shit'?!"), and he blows a harp that'll have Spencer reaching for his Chess box. Spastic slide guitar, garbage-disposal distortion, even the deep-dark secret ingredient we stole from the Brits in the first place (a rhythm section that sounds like Zeppelin) -- it's all appropriately riot-ready and even better than the real thing.

-- Carly Carioli