Sin City

Florida's Genitorturers are of that rare breed whose music will never live up to the maker: leader Gen preaches torture fetishes and extreme S&M erudition and stages intense performances with Caligula-like unmentionables. Sin City, the band's second full-length, mechanizes and bleaches the heavy pound of the darker dissertation 120 Days of Genitorture. Gen just wants to have fun reworking societal mores, but this time she's operating from the inside: a carnal carnival atmosphere, an AC/DC cover and a conceptual sex strain are candy-coatings that scream mainstream. Once she lures the unsuspecting inside these black grooves, she will do with them what she will. Genitorturers may never harness their psyche-scarring live vibe on CD, but Sin City still kicks and claws with some downright delectable tracks ("One Who Feeds," "Razor Cuts"). And after discovering the great pop-secret of subversive substance under a commercial sheen, Gen may yet unleash a brilliant piece of work. She is straining to be the warped ringmaster who dictates the perverse practices of a generation, and this deliciously decadent vinyl veers in the right direction. Sin City snarls in an unnerving Mechanical Animals vein, but many may find Gen a preferable presence to lead them through the aural plateaus of pleasure and pain.