Maximum Metal Rating Legend

The Graveyard Boulevard - Toe Tags and Body Bags - 2003 - Reviewed by Nailer

Judging by the CD insert with its pics of everybody in homemade Halloween getup, I thought that The Graveyard Boulevard was going to be some kind of Midwest Black Metal with too much seriousness and too small a budget.

TGB is basically the remaining/original members of "The Frankenstein Drag Queens from Planet 13" (Sicko-Zero, Seaweed, Abby-Normal and Professor Sluggs) after the singer left to form the Murderdolls with the drummer from Slipknot. I was surprised to hear that TGB has a nice laid-back punk sound that dishes the silly spooks out steadily instead of in mass quantities to shock and awe like the look-at-me theatrics of Alice Cooper and Marylin Manson or the over-the-top gorey goofiness of GWAR.

I'd imagine these guys would spike your party punch with poison and sell the antidote at the front door to make enough money for another kegger and a DVD copy of "The Lost Boys" rather than delight over the gagging carnage. Either that or they'd just pee in the punchbowl.

Thankfully, the don't sound like pop-punk bands like Sum 41 and Blink 182 and at times they do venture into Ramones territory. TGB, maybe you could call it "horror-punk", could use a little more meat to chew on but its a tongue-in-cheek stew full of plastic eyeballs and rubber fingers that's fairly easy to swallow.

I bet their live show is a whole mess of fun.

Best Songs: That's My Mom, Dear Dead Delilah, Circus Horrificus, Terror T.V.



--Nailer 10.31.03