* images not included
VHS or Beta's debut release is available only in VHS, thank you — no CDs or tapes, yet. And while there are no actual video images to accompany the music, the sound quality is enormous (especially if you have one of those "surround-sound" stereo VCRs). So tune in the blue screen and prepare to be perplexed.
Musically, the band takes conventional rhythms — elements of industrial and hardcore — and dumps buckets of intense distorted weirdness over them. Vocals are electronically treated, then placed carefully within various parts of the mix, sometimes singing, sometimes screaming, sometimes flatly intoning. At times, VHS recalls Sonic Youth or Captain Beefheart, but the influence I hear most comes from things like video games, Japanimation, comic books, and ordinary household appliances. Songs bear titles like "Gamalan," "Creepshow" and "Swamp Thing." Guitars are made to sound like telephones, percolators, jackhammers and ray guns, among other things. One can get so out of it on the mental images produced by this music that the blue screen on the TV helps as sort of a neutralizing component — or maybe that's just me, I don't know. This is fun stuff. Use a head cleaner before listening.