element a440

Thank you-know-who for Mormons, because we never would have had good ol' blasphemous goth music otherwise. The blurry rear cover photo of element a440's debut album makes the troubled trio of Halo, Trick and December look like Columbine trick-or-treaters (singer Halo looks especially spookish with his severely razored Nixon hairline), and they've mined the territory with nary a hint of nostalgia. "Fuck your God," they sing, "fuck everything and fuck me" -- you can just see the principal's notes coming home for fans brazen enough to wear one of the band's tee shirts at school. And just savor the lawsuits if the stereo-panned whispering of "suicide, suicide" on "Kill Me" gives little Junior any bright ideas. The best example of a440's potential accessibility, "Dance Dead," has the right amount of robotic beats per minute for effective strobe-light choreography, and the least amount of objectionable lyrics for airplay. With a nod to the ailing Dick Clark, element a440 has got a good dark beat, and you can dance dead to it.