BOBAFLEX

Spending enough time on the bottom of the music industry's bootheel to get real used to the taste of asphalt and piss has made West Virginia alt-metal C-listers BOBAFLEX just a little bit bitter. Of course, getting the gear they spent a lifetime accumulating ripped off on tour probably didn't help. Nor, I'm sure, did the endless stream of buy-on tours opening for equally-hopeless third-tier acts (TWIZTID? No one deserves that) or getting stiffed by their label and having to pay for their own pre-production demos even after getting a few unequivocally good breaks (hand-picked by Mustaine for the first Gigantour).

Lucky for BOBAFLEX, they channeled that rage into working smarter, not harder. "Tales From Dirt Town" is an altogether more melodic, mature, polished yet eccentric affair than we'd have any right to expect from this band, an obvious do-or-die effort that pulls out all the stops in creating a sprawling, cinematic modern radio-metal quasi-concept album. Bookended by two of the bleakest guy-in-a-band songs in recent memory and bursting with tales of substance abuse, failed relationships and mental problems galore, "Tales From Dirt Town" is the feel-bad hit of the fall — or at least it would be if it wasn't so musically clever.

This record is all over the place — "I Still Believe" is the best "Crimson Idol"-era W.A.S.P. song that band never wrote, dashed with a little SYSTEM OF A DOWN theatricality, while "Sellout" takes the head-down monotone chug of STATIC-X and infinitely improves on it. "Born Again" does some serious vocal layering and adds some demented gloss to a rollicking tale of disaster and redemption. Don't think of the usual crap nu-metal suspects when you think of these guys; their spiritual kin are more the likes of CKY or 36 CRAZYFISTS — bands dishing out unique and interesting, but accessible, fare.

Not everything works — the squealy skronks of "Goodbye" instantly raise bile last spilled for the band's nu-metal descendents, and it kicks off an album-ending run of second-rate songs that don't match up to side one's fire and craft. Closer "Home", the album's first single, re-ups the quality with a truly quizzical approach — a lighter-in-the-air road anthem about how much being on the road gradually beasts the life out of you. It's no "Turn the Page", but its air of desperation and frustration ought to strike a chord not just in any struggling musician, but anyone trapped in a dream that's slowly soured on them. It's a compelling song, and one that will hopefully turn a few heads in the band's direction.

BOBAFLEX are wrestling with a dilemma that's not new — is it possible to stick to your guns, follow your own muse, and not get ground up and spit out by the unforgiving gears of the mid-level music business? Previous evidence doesn't offer a lot of hope, but at least it can be said that if BOBAFLEX goes down, they'll have spit in the executioner's eye and done a perfect little song-and-dance on the scaffold before they got stretched. "Tales From Dirt Town" is an ambitious, impressive album, and it'd be cool to see someone a little left-of-center actually make some headway in the mainstream. Godspeed, ya hayseeds.