Mann's World

Valient Thorr

According to the liner notes on Valient Thorr's latest CD, Total Universe Man, "Rock 'n' roll can very well save your soul, and therein lies the key: If you believe in it, you can make it happen. Let us know if we can help."

One listen to the CD will tell you they aren't kidding around. They believe in rock; hairy, sweaty, sex-charged rock with a pounding backbeat, screaming dual guitar leads and a hilarious, over-the-top frontman who hollers and yelps like a tent revival preacher. They claim they're from Venus (though they now apparently reside in Greenville, N.C.), and they all have goofy names, including singer "Valient Himself," who spends a lot of time yelping about "the future."

But where these guys are really from is the past, specifically the wood-panelled rec basement room where a whole other generation searched for rock 'n' roll salvation between the grooves of records by Ted Nugent, Blue Oyster Cult, Alice Cooper, Heart, Thin Lizzy and Black Oak Arkansas. Valeint Himself's crazed, quasi-spiritual ramblings bear more than a passing resemblance to those of Jim Dandy Mangum.

You won't find a whole lot that's new on this CD, and you won't find much that Gluecifer didn't do on their last good CD, 1999's Tender is the Savage. But of the current crop of bands mining this particular '70s rock vein, Valeint Thorr is the most entertaining.