December 15, 2004 - Kane Hodder is a band named after the stunt-actor who played machete-wielding maniac Jason Voorhees in four installments of the Friday the 13th series. This is, believe it or not, the least strange thing about them.

The Pleasure To Remain So Heartless, the debut LP from this energetic clan of indie scream-punks (and follow-up to March's EP A Frank Exploration Of Voyeurism & Violence), is a true oddity; the group turns genre convention completely on its head and the result is nothing short of immediately intriguing. Unique albums do not necessarily constitute good albums, though, and even a sound that defies definition requires some redeeming value above and beyond "Hey, this s*** is weird." Kane Hodder makes its mark for sure, but is it justified?

First things first: One cannot even begin to classify Heartless. It's a punk rock record -- that is, until the instrumentation of Charley Potter, Eric Christianson, Jeremy White, and Nick Cates dissolves into a hardcore cacophony of metal sensibilities. It's a scream record... again, only until adept vocalist Andrew Moore switches over into a trilling, occasionally falsetto, emo croon. And so it is that Heartless alternates between these dichotomies -- sometimes several times during the course of a single song -- and you'll find yourself struggling just to keep up, let alone file it under a genre buzzword.

Heartless offers 11 tracks. I hesitate to call them "songs," as such a label usually implies some sort of formal structure. Kane Hodder has about as much respect for formal structure as children in a day-care center that just cut costs by replacing their milk with Jolt Cola. Forget everything you know about verses and choruses -- you won't find 'em here. Each song reads like a stream-of-consciousness prose paragraph and the instrumentation follows suit, switching melody, rhythm, and meter at its seemingly-possessed whim. One is reminded of Green Day's "Jesus Of Suburbia," a nine-minute song composed of five independent segments... except with Kane Hodder, every song is like that, and they're one-third as long.

So it's an album without a genre, the lead singer has two voices, and you get 30 or 40 songs spread out over 11 tracks. Does it work? For the most part, yes. It's the remarkably unique stylings of Heartless that will
suck you in, but it's the quality of the music that will keep you listening. "Last of the Anti-Fascist Warriors," with its rolling-guitar opening, begins a four-track suite of raw energy in which everything blends into a 12-minute wall of sound. Some segments find the guitar line missing a bar, sending that portion of the song into a daring-but-controlled careen. Other moments see miniature solos thrown up into the air. If nothing else, Kane Hodder keeps you on your toes.

Unfortunately, this buildup of energy is starkly disrupted by "Heaven Help Me! I Love a Psychotic!," a pure emo song that runs about three minutes too long. "A Machine in the World of Man" restores this energy, and it's only a matter of time before you're hurled into the album's most interesting track, "You Sign Your Crimes with a Silver Bullet." While more controlled than the remainder of the album, "Bullet" boasts a sound that is completely beyond description. It's the highest point of the album and three-minutes-43-seconds of proof that Kane Hodder deserves your attention.

As with the first four tracks of Heartless, the latter five tracks (beginning with "Bullet") blend into each other, imbuing the record with a "full-circle" aesthetic. "Attack on Tir Asleen" and the instrumental
"Child of Prophecy" are unremarkable affairs, but
"Crushing Everything in Sight" is the album's mostbalanced mix of punk energy and emo restraint. Finally, "Assault at First Light" finishes Heartless in the spirit of all the best songs that had come before: wild, unrestrained, and loud.

With only one completely wasted track and just two or three more "meh" songs, the lone remaining weak link of Heartless is in its lyrics. Worry not -- the song titles have nothing to do with their content, so when
you see a track named "I Think Patrick Swayze is Sexy," there's no need to fear an impotent stab at comedy. But while the lyrics are certainly far from bad and even have their own (rare) epiphany-like moments of poetic genius,
they were evidently bought from the same Psychotic Killer Emo Lyrics Supercenter all too many bands seem to be shopping at nowadays. At their worst, the lyrics come off as bargain-priced closeout "me-too" pubescent pap
("When that bile burns your teeth / You'll know you really are in love / And it's still the acid with the lethal tongue-kiss that gets you off completely"... what?), but usually, they merely hold up. It's disappointing
to hear lyrics so standard set against music so fantastical.

And it is in this fantastical music that The Pleasure To Remain So Heartless finds its real value. It's less an album than a trip into uncharted territory, but it works on both levels. If you prefer Jack Kerouac to Robert Frost, if you prefer Darren Aronofsky to Jerry Bruckheimer, then get on board. Kane Hodder is not just a band with issues -- it's a band with complete subscriptions, and if you're fed up with the status quo, it's time to subscribe.

Definitely Download:
1. "You Sign Your Crimes with a Silver Bullet"
2. "Last of the Anti-Fascist Warriors"
3. "Assault at First Light"

Overall Score 7.8