The Ventures meet Black Flag while watching El Santo and Blue Demon fight Dracula and the Wolfman.

12 MP3 Songs
ROCK: Garage Rock, ROCK: Surf Rock

Show all album songs: The Forbidden 5 Chop You Up! Songs


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You've probably heard that old line, "writing about music is like dancing about architecture." But what is writing about music ... that's about film? Well, I don't really know, but you're looking at it.

The Forbidden 5 is the official band of Dormont cult-film emporium Incredibly Strange Video, drawing inspiration for songs like "Luther the Geek" and "Night of the Bloody Apes" from that store's shelves. Which seems a little odd until you realize that the band is fronted by ISV's crazy-maned owner, Bruce Lentz, who just so happens to possess a top-shelf punky croon that's equal parts Joey Ramone and Danzig. And really, who more appropriate to sing a hiccupping chorus that ends, "psycho rat fink fuck a go go"?

On the 12-song debut, The Forbidden 5 Chop You Up!, Lentz is backed by Michael Athey and El Koppertan (guitars), Joseph Elzer (drums) and Derek Anderson (bass). Most of the songs are straightforward frankenpunk workouts with ghoulishly humorous lyrics and touches of distorted surf-guitar runs. The exceptions to this formula are among the album's most welcome diversions, such as the instrumental, "Fang Boner," and the Kinky rock&B of "Slice and Dice."

Perhaps you could call Forbidden 5 "lifestyle" music, a good soundtrack to a balanced diet of nostalgic cultural obsessions and basement hobbies, and retro musical tastes, entertainment choices and personal style. Or perhaps it's best considered as a secondary text, an irony-heavy gloss on primary pop-cultural artifacts. Whatever the case, if your chosen form of transportation is a de-commissioned hearse, or you don't wanna be buried in a "pet sematary," or you regularly laugh in the face of -- kitschy -- death, this one's for you.

-Aaron Jentzen, Pittsburgh City Paper

Pittsburgh Calling: A capsule look at Pittsburgh bands making news
Thursday, May 03, 2007

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

THE FORBIDDEN 5

Tactic: Surf-garage-punk inspired by the Sonics, Stooges and Cramps and a store full of B-horror movies.

Cast: Bruce Lentz, vocals; Michael Athey and El Koppertan, guitar; Derek Anderson, bass; Joseph Elzer, drums.

Hatched: Two years ago when Lentz, who owns Incredibly Strange Video, was able to round up four other guys for his mission of rock 'n' roll band that slices and dices. "I was in a band called The Dogs, from Erie, for a really long time," he says. "I quit playing for a couple years and wasn't doing anything musically and wanted to get back into it, but didn't want to sing about myself like I used to. An angry young man is cute and cool, but an angry old man, nobody wants to deal with. I decided to write about what I really love: B-movies and horror movies."

Howlin' at the moon: Lentz, 49, is surrounded every day by lyrical content in the form of his store's wicked supply of films. "It's basically endless material and an endless wasted life of watching all this stuff," he says laughing.

Killer tunes: The band's debut, "The Forbidden 5 Chop You Up," features songs like "Kill Baby Kill," "Slice and Dice" and "Night of the Bloody Apes," named after a Mexican wrestling flick that is one of Lentz's favorite movies of all time. "Luther the Geek," the song and the movie, is "about a guy that goes around and bites people in the neck. They let him out because he was behaving in jail, and the first thing he does is bite someone in the neck."

Music to match: As for the sound, Lentz says he wanted to avoid the typical psychobilly and Misfits knock-off. "I just wanted to play simple rock 'n' roll with those kind of lyrics. The songs are kind of morbid but they're more like Alice Cooper than like a death metal thing with explicit lyrics. 'Chop You Up,' you can actually tap your toe to."

Day of the dead: The career highlight so far for The Forbidden 5 was playing the Zombie Walk on the South Side. "It was 300 people dressed as zombies," Lentza says. "We couldn't have asked for anything more."

Release show: At the Thunderbird Cafe, Lawrenceville, for the Rock and Roll Spook Show, Saturday at 9 p.m., with Al and the Black Cats (Michigan) and The Arkhams (New York). Admission is $7.

-- Scott Mervis,
Post-Gazette pop music critic