The band know their pop-music history.
A four-guitared wave of excess will crash through the High Noon Saloon on June 17, leaving a sweaty mess of headbangers in its wake. It's Nashville six-piece Diarrhea Planet, who'll share the stage with Milwaukee rockers Midnight Reruns and local garage punks Fire Retarded.
Diarrhea Planet formed in 2009 at Belmont, a Christian university in Tennessee. They released their first EP, Aloha, the same year. Driven by tracks like "Get Stimulated" and crowd favorite "Ghost with a Boner," Aloha sparked a downloading frenzy. Since then, the band have released two full-length records, 2011's Loose Jewels and 2013's I'm Rich Beyond Your Wildest Dreams.
The sextet's music is often described as a combination of punk and arena metal. They sound a bit like Twisted Sister might have if they'd been a part of the scene at legendary New York City rock club CBGB in the 1970s. But Diarrhea Planet also seem ready for the challenge of a huge venue. Their choruses abound with the shout-out-loud catchiness of Skid Row's "Youth Gone Wild," but with lyrics like "Ghost with a boner, ghost with a bone/Drinking my beer, drinking my beer and bitching." In fact, those are all of the lyrics in "Ghost with a Boner."
The band also know their pop-music history. On "Orange Girls," a track from Loose Jewels, their vocal harmonies recall the Beach Boys. A retro alt-rock guitar line fades in and out of the track, too. It's the kinds of thing that would be right at home on the Pixies album Doolittle.
I'm Rich includes a slew of fun rock references. "Hammer of the Gods" will make you wonder if Misfits founder Glenn Danzig has a child in the band, and "The Sound of My Ceiling Fan" has a giant wall of sound that's downright shoegazey at times. "Babyhead," meanwhile, takes cues from the emo-ish pop-punk that bands like Samiam and Knapsack perfected. Mind you, these sounds accompany guitar shredding fit for a hair-metal band, the crunchy distortion of a garage-rock act and power-pop song structures that would do Cheap Trick proud.
