Dr. Phobic & The Phobic-Tones - Melophobia

​Written by GE 138.

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First off, Kudos! for being something different and outside of the norm of the usual "Punk Rock" crap that I get in the mail around here! ha ha ha Not exactly my cup of bone broth, but an interesting release nonetheless. I love the cover of this album. Reminds me of the Groovie Goolies 70's cartoon series. And the band's name is great too - Dr. Phobic & The Phobic-Tones. Bit wordy, but it works for me. Second off, again, Kudos! for having the balls to name your album after a Cage The Elephant album! LOL Now that's some chutzpah right there! ha ha Although they share a album title, the 2 bands couldn't be any further apart musically if you tried. Cage The Elephant is lame wimpy ass chick rock and Dr. Phobic & The Phobic-Tones are, well... Instrumental Horror Surf Rock? Sure, I'll go with that. I believe this project is an offshoot of sorts from the ol' Monster Zero band of yore, but I could be mistaken about that, and the first I ever heard of Dr. Phobic & The Phobic-Tones is when they appeared on that shitty Prince tribute compilation on Squidhat Records that came out awhile ago, but I won't hold that against them. ;) This is a pretty good release. There's some super catchy Surf Rock Punk Rock Spooky tunes on here - Tetraphobia, Metathesiophobia, Pithecophobia, just to name a few, I never bothered to look up what any of the titles mean, because I'm lazy, and it all got boring to me after a bit listening to it all. I think the songs would be sooooo much better with words, because the musicianship on display here is impressive - the Dick Dale inspired guitar work alone makes this worth seeking out, and the rhythm section isn't anything to sneeze at either, but with the huge revival right now in the whole Surf Rock sound (Thanks Ty Segall! lol), this release feels like a missed opportunity. It's too good not to be listened to by everyone, but as some Surf Rock Horror Punk Instrumental musical project, I think it's just gonna be dismissed or ignored or classified as background music, which is a shame, because it's really fucking good and deserves to be a bit more than just that. Phooey.

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I assume that this is available from Dr. Phobic & The Phobic-Tones when they play gigs, but I don't know that they do that very often. This release is available directly from the band themselves, including digitally, on the Dr. Phobic & The Phobic-Tones Bandcamp page which you can go to by clicking here, and it's also available on iTunes (click here) CD Baby (click here), Spotify (click here), etc. etc. etc. "Like" the band on Facebook by clicking here.

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