**1/2 The Unband

RETARDER

(TVT)

This rambunctious Northampton power trio are more than just a Yank Nashville Pussy minus the hot chicks. They're a Yank Nashville Pussy who cover Billy Squier, delivering a swift kick to the crotch of their fellow Mass metaller's "Everybody Wants You" on an album full of similarly boisterous gestures. Like Billy, the Unband sing of "loneliness and a-al-co-hawl" and cocaine and smokin' a bowl, so it's no surprise that singer Matt Pierce prefers the whiskey-fied rasp of Motörhead's Lemmy to Mr. Squier's AOR bravado. Although not as prone to full-throttle thrashing as the aforementioned Pussies, the Unband suffer from a similar molten monotony -- nothing here's as catchy as hard rock's reigning revivalist touchstone, Buckcherry's "Lit Up." But they have the amusing habit -- check out "Ski Hat," "Dope (Part 2)," and especially "$#@?!!" -- of riffing straight through what would usually be a song's first couple of verses, throwing in a few lines of debauched lyrics, then cutting the whole thing off around the two-minute mark. It's these controlled doses of alcoholic incoherency, along with more traditional barn burners like "Too Much Is Never Enough," that make Retarder a keeper.

-- Sean Richardson