POWERMAN 5000: Stripping Away Hidden Messages

POWERMAN 5000 frontman Spider One recently spoke to the Las Vegas Mercury about the change in the group's musical and lyrical direction betweem their last two albums. Where 1999's "Tonight the Stars Revolt!" traded on B-movie sound effects and hijacked sci-fi narratives about all-seeing eyes and man-eating cyborgs, 2003's "Transform" was all serious, talking about authenticity and self-determination and the responsibility of youth. It was almost as if Spider One — often accused of mimicking his brother Rob Zombie's horror-core shtick — had bought into his role as an arbiter of youth culture. For a fraction of the POWERMAN faithful, it was a bit too much to stomach.

"It definitely turned some people off," Spider One says. "It's funny because a lot of those messages were on the other records too, but since they were hidden in all these science-fiction metaphors, no one quite got it. Like, 'When Worlds Collide' was actually about social stratification and the haves and have-nots of society. But everyone just thought it was about robots or something."

Although POWERMAN will not release a new studio album until 2005, the band did recently unveil a collection of B-sides and rarities called "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly". Decorated with photos and hand-drawn fliers from the band's fledgling days in Boston, the album compiles 20 tracks that Spider One characterizes as "alternately good and terrible."

"There weren't any consequences back then," he says. "We weren't thinking about a record or a fan base or a label. We were just doing whatever we felt like doing. Any band that reaches any level of success — whether on a major label or on an indie--usually finds that something's changed because they're suddenly doing it not only for themselves but for other people. So I always look back on that time as really the freest time the band ever had." Read more.