Brain Bats “Feed It” and “The TV That Ate My Brain” split 7″ with The Super Sonic Space Rebels “Bloodbath” and “Drop and Show” 2018. Limited Record Store Day release on red vinyl, artwork by underground comix legend XNO (Chet Darmstaedter). The Super Sonic Space Rebels are a “Surfabillypunk Smut Rocket Roll trio from Chicago” and the songs on this split are snotty sneering punk in a (fake?) Cockneyish accent, bouncily upbeat about murder (“Bloodbath”) and a Cramps-inspired groove-creep, possibly about a peeping Tom (“Drop and Show”).

The rest of this post will focus on Milwaukee’s Brain Bats. We caught them play this past weekend, opening for The Spits along with one of my favorite local bands, Gallery Night, and another MKE group, Sex Scenes. Brain Bats play punk rock, heavily influenced by – as if the artwork didn’t make it obvious – creepy underground horror comics and a lot of cheesy B-movies from the 50′s, 60′s and 80′s that “get thrown in a blender to flavor the songs.” During their performance, singer Dillon Hallen commanded the floor with a frenetic vicious stomp that never stopped (and made it exceedingly difficult to take live action shots).

Fortunately he lives and works in our neigborhood so I was able to get him to slow down for a few minutes to chat about the split single. The tracks on the 7″ are a couple of leftovers from the 2017 recording session Brain Bats did with Shane Hochstetler at Howl Street Recordings, that session also supplied their debut 7″ release, “Road Kill From Outer Space.” “Feed It” is a punk rock ass-shaking screamer with a killer groove and “The TV That Ate My Brain” is a space-alien hard rocker, big metal guitars and thundering drums.

Dillon also was able to elaborate on a really cool story that our mutual friend Bill kinda told me at the show but that I was unable to recall the next day (it was loud, there were drinks, Bill is a highly entertaining but rather non-linear conversationalist and was getting distracted and off-topic about golf – if you know Bill you know exactly what I’m talking about). Besides singing for Brain Bats, Hallen has a new and extremely cool project in the works with a few friends called TV Tombs. They are in the process of collaborating with a couple of artists to produce a read-along printed book and vinyl record, the kind popular back in the 60′s and 70′s, especially with Disney movies (I had one in the 70′s from 101 Dalmatians that I listened to/read so much that my parents took it away for, like, a year). Like Brain Bats, the material filling the book and record are influenced by 80s monster and alien movies and will be family-friendly, kid appropriate. Called “My Best Friend the Monster,” the book will finish its publication later in June and the record should be pressed by the end of summer. Be on the lookout for this! Dillon was gracious enough to share a sneak peak at some of the book’s content.