Die! Die! Die!

November 2000: With filming on the multimillion-dollar Lord of the Rings trilogy almost complete, New Line Cinema’s mercenary cavalry teams silently scour the moors and mountain peaks of New Zealand in a desperate search for the three experimental vat-grown hobbits who have escaped the top-secret holding pen. Raised on a steady diet of punk rock and Kiwi fashion magazines, these three horrific homunculi spurn their fates as Peter Jackson’s personal slaves and somehow make it to the city, where they insist with grasping digits and chirping squeaks that they need guitars, loud noise, and access to MySpace, and they need them now. Well, not really. The only reason we compare them to hobbits is that their singer sounds rather kiddyish (like he should be in an emo band), but what we have here — New Zealander punk rockers Die! Die! Die! — is actually a fairly solid noise-punk band with decent chops and moxie. Their first album has the Steve Albini seal of approval (i.e., production credits), which means they’ll probably be famous in no time.