### Pop Evil: Lipstick on the mirror

#### 15/06/09 || Daemonomania

Goddamn, Pop Evil is fucking terrible. What would you expect from dudes that look like this anyway? Maybe one of these Captain Jack Sparrows was in an actual metal band at some point in their career. Or maybe not. No one even remotely associated with metal would ever issue statements like this one, straight from the band’s website: the sound is a divine collision of “crispy, crunchy, mainstream rock with a little bit of evil”.

As an avid death metal fan, I can assure you these dudes don’t even deserve to have the word evil in their name. Absolutely no evil is present in their poppy, ballady, sometimes slightly distorted American shitrock. When did it become conventional wisdom to sign skidmarks with no originality to a label and let them release the equivalent of 15,000 tons of chlorine gas at an unsuspecting populace? Oh, that was always OK? Sorry, I guess it has been too long since I listened to the radio.

Speaking of the preferred method for mass hypnosis broadcast, each one of Pop Evil’s 13+ tunes sounds like it could be blaring out of a Midwesterner’s shiny car as we speak. “Lipstick on my penis” was created to sell. The real question is – how did this verse/chorus/verse tame pile of used tampons ever become marketable?

I’d blame the success of post-grunge Christian meatmunchers Creed. Yep, Creed brought the safety of Jesus, uncomplicated song structures, heartfelt bland whiteguy vocals, and instruments mixed so well you couldn’t really tell them apart into middle-class households around the world. The band dominated the charts from the late 90’s until the early 2000’s. And sucked massive chimptaint while they were at it.

So to wrap it up, Pop Evil (it hurts to write their name) sounds like someone’s idea of what a Creed fan desperate for more of the same completely anonymous rawk would buy. Their audience is made up of teenage girls, children of evangelists, and 40-something dudes with trucknuts tryin’ to be cool. In other words, not you. Everything about the album is competent aside from inane lyrics like going 100 in a 55 and I don’t know why I am still alive/but I do what I can but I know I can’t take any more/I still believe in this Rock N Roll. However, remember the famous concept about polishing a turd – if you make an album in a genre that sucks, no matter how relatively good it is, it will still be shit.

Visit their website for a laugh. If this is the best thing to come out of Michigan since the automobile, it might help to explain why GM is in so much trouble.

1 evangelical teen trucknut out of 10.

- Information
- Released: 2009
- Label: Universal Records
- Website: www.popevil.com/
- Band
- Leigh Kakaty: vocals
- Dave Grahs: guitar
- Tony Greve: guitar
- Diego Brossa: bass
- Matt DiRito: drums

- Tracklist
- 01. Hero
- 02. Breathe
- 03. Shinedown
- 04. 100 in a 55
- 05. Somebody Like You
- 06. 3 Seconds To Freedom
- 07. Another Romeo & Juliet
- 08. Stepping Stone
- 09. Jupiter In June…ahhh, I fucking quit. There’s more songs but you’ll never listen to them.