Pitchfork

By all accounts Dr. Victor Frankenstein was the archetypal mad genius, born in the formative gloomy climate of 19th Century literature. The "mad" portion of this now-commonplace descriptive dyad comes, of course, from the hubris he displayed in attempting to wield verboten godly powers over life and death; the "genius" part results from his innovative methodology: mixing and matching interchangeable parts.

It could be the members of the Party of Helicopters consider themselves similar mad geniuses, due to the genre-bending liberties they take in their efforts to reinvent metal. They aren't, though. Their liberties don't amount to much and neither are they convincingly presented. Layered, airy vocals with the staggered delivery of arrhythmic kindergartners singing a round of "Row Your Boat" seem cribbed from a borrowed My Bloody Valentine mixtape that received only a listen or two.

Sure, the Party of Helicopters manage to evoke Iron Maiden, as they boldly claim to do. But they also tap the reliable headwaters of metal's own genre-wide influences such as Jethro Tull, Deep Purple and even early Van Halen. Their efforts to plug into more contemporary recastings of hard rock are belied by their own trappings of classic, epic metal: overdrive effects, modal soloing and churning, thrash-y rhythm guitars.

Sadly, a dash of flat-toned countermelodies and unaligned harmonies aren't exactly grand innovations, even in metal, where new ideas are subject to the same kind of trickle-down cultural delay that causes places like Des Moines, Iowa and Kent, Ohio to get "new" fashion trends four years after New York (and six after Milan). Eventually, the white elephant of vocal experimentation distracts from the other more modest and successful innovations hidden within.

The Party of Helicopters' tendency to overreach is a shame, really, because their consistently intriguing metal is often undermined by too-earnest efforts at creating a self-styled signature sound. Even less fortunate, the music is grafted to the vocals like a secondhand limb, and gets dragged down in much the same way as a lifeguard trying to save a drowning swimmer that doesn't have the sense to stop flailing. Put a retarded brain in a lumberjack's body and all you get is a smarter lumberjack, as the Great Doctor learned.

At the outset, the unforgivably titled "Rock Me Amedusa" (apologies to the late Falco) actually starts off suggesting that these short-haired Ohioans have an even-odds chance of pulling off their gene-splicing experiment. As quickly as the third song, however, the contrivances become a crutch and the band devolves into self-parody. From that point, the exceptions become the rule. In the end, the most successful tracks are the ones that trespass wholly into different territory rather than concocting some laboratory hybrid. The delightful hack-job, wiry punk of the title track, and the off-time, episodic and ambitious "Seven Separate Kids, Seven Separate Fires," redeem a quarter of the disc. In these instances, the guys begin to approach the fun, fast power of songs like "Fire Eaters of Tomorrow" or "Reduced to Rubble" from their simpler-is-better debut, Abracadaver.

But just as ol' Vic Frankenstein didn't intend to create a misunderstood monster that snapped moppets' necks and terrified villagers, I'm sure Party of Helicopters never considered their project might go awry. Still, good intentions don't always make for decent results, and won't stop this particular terrified villager from reaching for his torch and pitchfork.

I've got to run now. I have a mob to join and a castle to storm.