Various Artists: TV Terror

Earlier this year, a small New York label released a 35-song compilation called Show & Tell. The concept Punk bands cover your favorite TV theme songs. Though it took three years to assemble—and was surely in the works longer than its punk-rock counterpart—the remarkably similar TV Terror is bound to be subjected to comparisons: The 36-song, 103-minute, two-disc collection features much of the same source material, though the renditions here are turned in by a wide variety of electro-industrial bands. As a rule, tribute albums suffer from being either too reverent or too disrespectful to the originals; there's no point in wasting your time listening to a note-for-note cover by some nobody, and you can only derive so much joy from hearing punk bands defecate all over dumb '70s songs. TV Terror generally avoids both pitfalls, often because a lot of these acts take themselves too seriously to either mimic or make fun. That creates an amusing juxtaposition of treacly lyrics ("Facts Of Life") and ploddingly self-serious arrangements (courtesy of Hate Dept.). Some of the deconstructions border on the unrecognizable (you may have to check the track listing to determine that Terminal 46 is doing "Three's Company," or that Cut.Rate.Box covers "The Jeffersons"), while others are too goofy not to enjoy (29 Died's reading of "Addams Family," to name just one). Some arrangements are insufferably obvious: How deviant of Idiot Stare to convert "The Brady Bunch" into a tedious, roaring rant! If industrial music isn't your thing, the collection is bound to wear thin quickly—and two discs is excessive for a concept as trivial as this one—but you have to admire TV Terror's straight-faced diversity in the face of such a silly concept, especially on its superior second half.