The charming moniker and c.d. title prove that sometimes you can judge a book by its cover. Which means that the music herein is pretty much what one would expect from a band featuring piss in its name sporting a dominatrix-clad blonde with bumper stickers gracing her boobies on the cover.

One's shock or glee, of course, depends entirely upon one's musical preference.

Piss Ant has few punk leanings beyond a bit of Sex Pistols sass and a slight Runaways/Donnas thing going on. Mostly they are metal heads from the Judas Priest and '80s hair band school of thought. The only difference being a couple of girls tossed in the mix.

Ok. Not to knock anyone's musical pleasures, but doesn't the fact that Led Zeppelin were about the only band to ever make heavy metal palatable and innovative for any sustained length of time (probably because they were more than solely a metal band and even they collapsed under their own weight and excess rather quickly), and that was 100 years ago, suggest that maybe this music ought to be quietly packed away and forgotten? But, to each their own, I suppose.

Anyway, vocalist Josi Kat screams, barks and even sometimes sings. The band is good if annoyingly predictable. The songs soon blur into seamless drones.

Lyrics cover sex, drugs, mystical mumbo and bad-girl 'tude while failing to be half as interesting as such sounds. "Send Us Your God's" line, "Right from the start Eve was number two," makes valid feminist point but never follows up. "You don't have to pray to be on your knees," from "Pain Medicine" and other such lines prove that women too can produce sexual innuendo just as dumb as Warrant's "Cherry Pie" or any Ho-bashing rapper.

Actually, I've ripped Piss Ant more than I really meant to. For their style of music, they're pretty decent, even melodic at times. It's just important to place them in proper context, which means they are probably better suited to the Ozzfest crowd than to most indie/punk fans tastes. Course, there's no law saying you can't dig both, but still.

Wait, there's one exception!

"Superchick" is a pure adrenaline rush of punk abandon. Sounding unlike anything else on the album, it could be easily mistaken for a lost Bow Wow Wow nugget circa summer of '82. Every fan of girlpunk.net-type music needs to hear this gem.

Otherwise, if the spandex bands of the Headbanger's Ball days send your head a whirlin' into fits of retro ecstasy, buy Piss Off today. If not, download "Superchick," prepare for head-over-heels love and simply forget the rest of the album ever occurred.

-Matthew Smith

GirlPunk.net Web Site: http://www.girlpunk.net