Pitchfork

Friends Forever isn't a metal record, but let's pause for a second anyway and give credit where credit is due: hardly anyone appreciates the deep and complex sense of humor metalheads have about the music they like. They're one of a few subgroups of music fans who can take their music intensely seriously and laugh their asses off about it at the same time. Half of the point, after all, is to deliver that mind-boggling, ridiculous more: more guts, more demon oratories, more insane, unbelievable, undeniable power. And if you fall over laughing at the sheer intensity of it all, so be it.

There's something of that same giddiness with electro-punk Magas. James Marlon Magas and his wife run a store in Chicago called Weekend Records and Soap. They sell records, obviously: electro, microhouse, minimal techno, glitch, dub, and some other things-- records from labels like Bunker, Force Tracks, Bpitch Control, Warp, Mego, and Tigerbeat6. They also sell handmade soap. Magas also used to sing for no-wavey Chicago rockers Lake of Dracula, and he's got plenty of those horror-flick hesher tendencies wrapped up in his electro love: walk into Weekend, and you're likely to find him standing over a turntable half-banging his head to Luke Eargoggle or Electronicat, smiling in that kidlike way that metalheads smile when Reign in Blood is playing. He's the sort of guy who'll get awfully excited all of a sudden and say, pointing to the turntable, "Wait, wait, wait, check out this part," at which point a German woman will shout something about a cat. Look back up at him and he's grinning and nodding enthusiastically.

Which is pretty much the best way to approach Friends Forever, his first full-length on Adult.'s hesher-friendly electro label Ersatz Audio. (Adult.'s Adam Lee Miller co-produces here.) The quickest way of getting at it is like this: Magas often sounds like an electro version of rockabilly punk favorites The Cramps. I'd even be tempted to try out the term "electrobilly" if there were any chance that anyone but Magas (or Quintron) were likely to make a record like this in the future. There's nothing much danceable going on-- just the stiff and rhythmic crack and buzz of drum machines, rock 'n' roll analog blurts, and the synth-noise explorations of your more "serious" European electro. Nothing very dark, either, despite all the minor-key grinds and rock yowls: Magas, as you can hear almost immediately, is having loads of fun, as will some hopefully decent proportion of his listeners.

You can hear it from the start, on "Blind Contact". A fuzzed-out synth does the rock 'n' roll bassline over a big wet snare drum, and then there's Magas with his deep, affected, Lux Interior/Jon Spencer sneer: "We got the feeeel for the lux-jureeee, we got a taste for the gold!" After only four lines: "Lookout! Waaaaaah!" And that's the program from there on out: something like Quintron, something like Adult. on goof-off day, all peculiarly and entertainingly Magas. It's devotedly minimal-- usually just a drum machine, synth bass, and upfront, untreated vocals-- and probably way too low on variation for most. It sounds best loud. It "rocks" at points, like on "This Is How We Do It" ("Woke up this morning, I was looking for a fight!") and gets all sneery-funky at others, like on "Pocket Racers". It wanders through some more complex and traditional electro, like the synth workout "Love Compressor"; it rewrites "Toys", from the Bad Blood EP; it breaks out the piano for the closing "Too Much Fear", and you can almost forgive Magas for using the same vocal line for the third or fourth time when he sings in the title in a growly demon-voice.

When Friends Forever is working, it makes you chuckle and curl up your lip and sneer along: it's loveable and entertaining and sounds-- a rarity these days-- like people who don't take themselves too seriously having a good time making music. Which is lucky, because you need to be on Magas' side to forgive him for the record's being sort of slight: there aren't exactly a ton of different ideas being worked through here, and the ones that are aren't particularly complex to begin with. Much like metal-- and much like a good number of Ersatz releases-- this record will be a decent amount of fun for those who are ready for it, and sound, well, sort of stupid to everyone else.