Under Review

The Mants

The Mants (Shake! Records)

review by Mark PaulHus

The Mants are coming! The Mants are coming! You can run, but you can’t hide. These extraterrestrial half-man, half-ant creatures will crawl out of your speakers and march into your ear canals, infesting your brain with their buzzing garage rock. Resistance is futile. No “Insecticide” on earth can stop their catchy B-movie rock ‘n’ roll from overtaking your soul. In fact, once you have “Mants in Your Pants,” you won’t want them out. You will unabashedly shake your ass around your living room with a goofy smile on your face.

The alien trio’s self-titled release—available only on cassette—consists of eight tracks, a majority of which were previously released on various seven-inches. The compilation moves between full blast rockers like “I Smell… Woman!” and well-devised instrumentals like “Six Million Dollar Mant.” All are steeped in shameless shtick and unadulterated fun. After one listen you’ll find yourself rewinding the cassette while cheering “The Mants! The Mants!,” eager to press play again!

When you can sing and dance no longer and finally pass out from exhaustion, instead of terrifying nightmares of being abducted and imprisoned in giant anthills in another galaxy, you will have pleasant dreams of blasting off with these bug-eyed men and getting lost in the “Fuzz from Planet X.”