PAIN TEENS: DEEP IN THE HEARTBURN OF TEXAS

When you talk to Bliss Blood, have your serial killer trading cards handy. You'll need them. The singer and female co-leader (with Scott Ayers) of Houston's Pain Teens is pretty well read on the subject, able to detail any number of sociopath stories on request. Take Albert Fish for example, "a religious fanatic, self-flagellator, child killer and cannibal," Blood relates. "He was so screwed up, trying to blame it all on God. He was put in an orphanage, his mother didn't want him, when he was six years old. And he witnessed the brutality that went on there, and was a victim of it. Finally, even after he was married and had kids of his own, he was obsessed with that sickness."

Fish is the subject of "God Told Me," one of several tracks on the Pain Teens' latest album STIMULATION FESTIVAL (Trance Syndicate) that tap the antisocial vein. "I really wanted this hwole album to be on that same theme," says Blood, citing "Shallow Hole," "The Dead Cannot," "Living Hell" and CD-extra "Apartment 213" (Jeff Dahmer's abode) as similarly inspired cuts. Lest anyone think Blood et al are fixated on the topic, though, other numbers approach a variety of subjects including sex and religion. "The Poured Out Blood" copiously samples a certain televangelist cousin of Jerry Lee Lewis, and "Evil Dirt" features "a voodoo radio call-in show" wherein a "cursed" listener is advised "someone's putting evil dirt in front of your house and you step on it every morning."

"Power's our main point of interest," the singer explains, "between individuals, power struggles, abuses of power, power in the sexual realm." The encompassing value of that subject also graces the Pain Teens sound, an integration of musical styles like classic Goth rock, primitive rhythms, and tech-inspired psych. On STIMULATION FESTIVAL, they can come across like .45 Grave and their Texas pals the Butthole Surfers, often at the same time. The menu includes instrumentals well fitted for a slasher movie soundtrack, mood pieces centered around dialogue edits, and more traditional rock-outs.

"We try to leave it as wide open as possible," says Bliss of the process that creates such diversity. It can take the form of Scott Ayers working alone in his sixteen-track studio, or Ayers collaborating with Blood, playing "the weirdest, noisiest stuff we can," like on their cover of Brownie McGhee's "Hangman's Rope," sporting "tennis shoes going around in a dryer" for percussion. Songs also originate from the whole group (including bassist Kir Carr and new drummer Frank Garrymartin) jamming together -- a process which produced the noisefest credited on the album as the Birthday Party's "Wild World" because Blood, unbeknownst to the others, interjected the lyrics.

In all permutations, the band is abundantly creative; though STIMULATION is their fourth distributed album, they have available ten 90-minute cassettes and more material on the shelf (the source for many of their recent seven-inchers, including Sub Pop's Single of the Month this past May, and their latest, a tribute to abortion pill RU-486). Then there's the soundtrack they're finishing for the cyberpunk film NO RESISTANCE (Film Threat Video), which will introduce Blood and Ayers' side project Fortunes of Vice, tailored for "stuff that we can't play live as the Pain Teens." Then there's Anomie Records, their own label which releases albums by Sugar Shack and the Mike Gunn as well as PAIN TEENS. Then there's the live show, which they'll be taking around the U.S. and England this fall. Then there's... enough!

Above all, though, Blood seems focused upon conveying a message. Even as she acknowledges the cynical humor and sometimes confusing qualities in Pain Teens music, Bliss feels strongly that "it's definitely confrontational" about the social issues within.

"We may be misunderstood about all these songs on murderers and death. Really, what I'm more interested in is stopping the abuse that creates violence like that, through education and understanding. I think this country's going to get even more fucked up if people don't start caring about children more," says Blood, whose own childhood was marred by the deaths of two brothers. "I've read a lot of books about killers and psychos and practically all of them suffered horrible abuse as children. When they're on trial, you don't hear about that, and that's wrong. That's a mistake that we're making."