Melted Men's Psychotronic Assault
A Quinn-Martin Production

LIVE SHOW REVIEW at High Hat> Athens, GA> Febuary 16, 1998

by S.D. Fitzpatrick

Here they cum, geared for psychic warfare; hooded for effect and busting a hole in your already Swiss-cheesed cranium. Pass me a fifth of Mr. Boston!

Anyway, I busted into the High Hat on that inauspicious night of the 16th, hungry for some mind-candy made with beef and pork by-products, and damned if I didn't get what I was looking for!

The Mightily Demented Melted Men charged onto the stage and proceeded to tunnel into the abyss. There was a projector there to fill folks in on... something or the other, and a good bit of analog synthesizer sound was being used as back-up weaponry. Cutting drum-machine blasts were punctuated by droning what-zits, with the ghosts of late-sixties TV ads glaring on the screen. Included were images of shampoo ads, tea-bag ads and, I believe Telly Savalas made an appearance, but don't quote me on that. There was a good bit of live percussion taking place too, mostly from bludgeoning red hands . All became a blur, as machines were being set into motion, and then abruptly shut- down. For those of us who have a clue, this was a Full-On Deprogramming Assault featuring the Specters of Lost Media Burnt to a Crisp! Pass the horseradish!

The whole thing seemed to be moved by a third element, an invisible hand of sorts; as the collisions of pink noise increased, strange things seemed to happen. If I may explain, what I'm getting at is chaos-theory brought to life. Blood-red, pulsating life. At one point the image of a baby's head appeared, crowned with the halo of a micro-organism. What? None of this matters, though, because this show was the sum-total of its component parts, which makes for some of the best entertainment this region has to offer.

When the show was over, I did my best to retreat into the night, into the obscurity that feels right. The sound waves were still reverberated in my skull, and the rest of the world looked more absurd than what I had just heard and seen.

OK, you owe it to yourself to go purchase the various Melted-Men products and go see them live. Now! I said now!