Still only available in their home country on frighteningly expensive imports, A.R.E. Weapons are media darlings in the UK and their home town of New York, performing in art galleries, beating up their audiences and dating models as new and edgy bands are supposed to do. Judging by some of what they say and what is said about them it might be missing the whole point to concentrate on their recordings, but these disks are here and the CD deck is waiting to play something....

Their first release, the Street Gang EP owns much to an earlier New York band, Suicide, whose eponymous first album from 1977 has influenced at lot of people, rarely beneficially. Even the covers look similar, the groups' names scrawled in blood on a white background. The title track sounds a lot like Suicide's spooked and spooky "Ghost Rider" although the galloping drums and bass come straight from the Sisters of Mercy "Floorshow" and the vocal line and delivery flit between the two. Squelchy electronics, no real tune and a surly reverb-drenched sneer of a vocal - it's a combination that works almost perfectly despite the inevitable memories of technopunk ninnies Sigue Sigue Sputnik it revives.

Next, New York Muscle, where the influences move a little more up-to-date, but not much. To me it's 23 Skidoo or Cabaret Voltaire meets Deutsche Amerikanische Freundschaft or Fad Gadget, all circa 1980, grunts, growls and yelping over primitive, clubfooted funk. It might have appeared on the B-side of something on the Mute label twenty-odd years ago, which isn't such a bad thing. Lyrically there's not much going on besides the shouting. "I love it when the weapons start to sing /always wrecking everything/I love it when the weapons start to scream /life ain't nothing but a dream." is the only line I can pick out. Again no tune, and almost no instrumentation beneath maybe half a dozen bawling voices, besides stuttering drums, unexpected bursts of piano and inappropriately jolly horns. The other two tracks don't outstay their welcome, flinging everything - except melody and musicianship, of course - into the mix. At one point I could almost visualise the Glitter Band attempting "Planet Rock" using half-speed Stooges samples instead of Kraftwork, but that's just plain silly.

Both discs are fun in a kitsch, obvious way, with the same sort of nostalgic appeal to an old timer like me as the Strokes, that is a cartoon of the music we listened to back when we had the luxury of believing that music this far off the mainstream might really matter. And to young pups in need of something fresh but parent-annoyingly obnoxious, something slightly nastier than the chuntering self-righteous lunkheadedness of nu-metal with its already tiresome flirtation with rap, it might have a grubby bravado they're be happy with. But I don't think it's the future of rock 'n' roll. It's a grab-bag of the past, served up with glamorous dirt and slightly more street attitude than Avril Lavigne, and all the way through both discs I had a goofy smile plastered across my face - which you can take as a recommendation if you please.