PAIN TEENS: FOLLOW YOUR BLISS

"There's always been this underground of weirdness here in Texas," says Bliss Blood, frontwoman of the Houston-based Pain Teens, "a fascination with the sensationalist side of life."

Blood well knows such fascination. Her band whips out warped, altered, menacing and nightmarish music, with lyrics designed to massage the sociopathic kinks out of society's underbelly. Primarily a collaboration between Blood and guitarist Scott Ayers, the Teens evoke a demonic world where child abusers, serial killers, and assorted deranged psychos wreak havoc on their victims, and where the news media glorifies such characters -- in other words, a world quite like our own.

"I'm inspired to write about ugly things," Blood continues, "but in real, personal terms that are empowering."

Ayers provides the sinister soundtrack for Blood's words. Using effects such as distortion, delay, samples and tape loops, he creates webs of sonic images in a psychedelic, bluesy guitar style. "I want to make music that creates a number of altered states," he says. The result is not unlike the distorted noise of Nick Cave's former band, the Birthday Party. Songs like "A Continuing Nightmare" and "The Dead Cannot" suggest an evil marching band with hallucinating tribal rhythms, while "God Told Me," about child killer Albert Fish, is a noise-funk workout with samples of a TV evangelist in the background.

Pain Teens have been chronicling the lifestyles of the cruel and bizarre since 1986, though it wasn't until 1988 that the group released its self-titled debut on its own Anomie Records. That album was followed the next year by CASE HISTORIES. In 1990, Butthole Surfer King Coffey signed the Teens to his Trance Syndicate label in Austin, and the band has since released BORN IN BLOOD and last year's STIMULATION FESTIVAL. In addition to doing several singles (including "Death Row Eyes" for Sub Pop), the band just completed two new albums, DESTROY ME LOVER and the soundtrack to the forthcoming cyberpunk film, NO RESISTANCE (a split album featuring Ayers' hip-hop alter-ego, Fortunes of Vice).

The group's rhythm section -- bassist Kirk Carr and drummer Frank Garrymartin -- lays down industrial-sized grooves, but it is Ayers' often random-sounding blend of noise, tapes and sinewey leads that identifies the Pain Teens sound. "Our musical influences are not obvious," he says. "I've often favored the John Cage approach to playing. Also, Robert Fripp -- who with the League of Crafty Gentlemen has provided the ultimate honky guitar playing experience -- has had a huge influence on me. I like Ornette Coleman; some of his stuff reminds me of the Residents in that it sounds so foreign. Bliss and I also listen to African, Balinese, Eskimo and other weird world musics. Basically, you grow up in Texas listening to a lot of blues and you have to sever your ties with all that. I guess I'm still a blues guitarist, though -- psychedelic blues."

Blood's lyrics deal mainly with what goes on beneath the surface in life and society but, as she explains, her songs are ultimately about healing. "I get letters from abused kids who connect with my music," she says. "Sure, my lyrics are confrontational and ugly, but I'd rather have people listen to violent music than to bash their wives in the heads or abuse their children."

She was inspired to write the song "Lisa Knew" after reading about the notorious Lisa Steinberg child-abuse case involving a professional, outwardly stable New York family. "It's easy to get desensitized to such rampant neglect," Blood continues. "This is really horrible stuff that people don't realize goes on, on different levels. Pain is everywhere and it's important that we talk about it to stop the cycles of abuse."