Existing where irony meets earnestness, Badd Energy offer cheap drum machines, reductive guitar riffs, melodic ennui, and clunky or occasionally borrowed aphoristic rap, as with "you can't take the heat, you're never in the kitchen" on the lukewarm call to arms of the B-grade New Wave pop-rap Riot which includes "I want peace where we have lots of fun, I don't want peace where we run from the gun". You either laugh at/with this for its throwback primitivism, or hear it as undercooked and inane. It's both. Sometimes the rhymes are perilously close to Flight of the Conchords and parody: "You consciously make me self-conscious, subconsciously you like conquering me, but tell your conscience to have a conference with your subconscious . . ." doesn't improve by being repeated four times.

Third Eye is some sci-fi/Egyptian vision, How Do You Sleep the standout for its spooky monotone, Blue Swan a slight but haunting instrumental . . . When Badd Energy launch this at Cassette Number 9 tomorrow night they'll doubtless get a good reception, but maybe more for who they are - Coco Solid, Sam Moore, Trixie Darko, Jeremy Suave - than the evidence of the lazy seven-song 20 minutes here.

Stars: 2.5/5
Verdict: Uneven, undeveloped but sometimes enjoyably inane

- TimeOut / elsewhere.co.nz