Danza II the Electric Boogaloo

Album Review

Murfreesboro, TN-based grindcore outfit Tony Danza Tapdance Extravaganza fills its first album for Metal Blade (the band's eponymous debut came out on Corrosive Recordings in 2005) with enough black humor to win over legions of Carcass fans and enough cheese ball "good old boy" bravado to satiate the NASCAR crowd as well. For a band this tech-heavy and brutal, its flippancy is actually kind of refreshing. Not only do they have one of the worst names in the genre, they manage to make fun of both punk-metal legend Glenn Danzig and the 1984 sequel to Breakin all in one album title. Danza II: The Electric Boogaloo doesn't deviate much from frenetic, jugular-slicing schlock-thrash of contemporaries like County Medical Examiners, Ed Gein, and Cannibal Corpse, but their decision to pepper it with hillbilly skits concerning embarrassingly small shots of whiskey and midget pool sharks keeps the math-heavy, chop-shop rhythms and tonsil shredding from becoming a complete blur. At its best, like on "I Don't Mean to Impose, But I Am the Ocean," and the serpentine title cut, TDTE prove that they can cut through the ether of tuneless noise-mongering with machine gun snare hits and guitar notes that detune gracefully into the abyss. That said, Electric Boogaloo doesn't really break a whole lot of new ground, and by the time the listener gets to "Louisiana Dive Bar Massacre (Sawin' Bones and Chuggin' Brew Outro Skit)," with its surprisingly melodic and savage acoustic-slide outro, it's hard not to wish that they had thrown some of that black magic into the pot instead of all of the Hee Haw.