The quintet broke out of the pack early this year when they released their debut on Korn's Elementree label and then went on a winter into spring tour with metal and rap champions Korn and Limp Bizkit. "We had to win 'em over every night, and we did it. At least nobody booed us off the stage..." says drummer Kris Kohls, speaking from a cell phone at the group's tour stop in Tempe, Arizona. That evening they were doing more of the same, this time prior to Orgy: try to win over a media-saturated club full of kids who bought their tickets to hear somebody else and who probably own too many CDs as it is. But he emanated a "What? Me worry?" vibe as he spoke to Tattoo while the other members of Videodrone--- singer Ty Elam, guitarist Dave File, keyboardist Rohan and bassist Mavis corrected gently mocked his answers.

He and lead singer Ty Elam are the ink-men out of the band. Elam has replaced his eyebrows with the tattooed words, THINK and FOCUS. For Elam getting those words are marked a turning point. "I got it about a year and a half ago. I was at the Roxy with my friends seeing a band, I think it was Coal Chamber..... Afterwards I went down the street into a shop, and Frank Ball did it. First he talked to me for about twenty minutes about not doing it, then he did it anyway."

The anecdote is vintage Videodrone, typifying their music, a miasmic juggernaut of rock, metal, and trip hop, of Nine Inch Nails rhythms poured into Alice in Chains' aggressive rock mold. When it comes to citing influences, the band is more likely to talk about B-movies, science fiction and high tech video games than other bands. But you can't talk about Videodrone without bringing up Korn, and not only because both bands come out of Bakersfield, California. Korn was formative to the sound of Videodrone's self-titled debut: Fieldy produced it, and Korn's Jonathan Davis and Brian "Head" Welch make guest appearances.

Fortunately, the Bakersfield boys are no Korn clones. More Cure than Korn, Videodrone is 11 songs plus a piece of a Christmas carol thrown in a muck of sonic detritus. To get there, you pass through a postmodern planet-ful of disturbed emotions, the audioscope you might hear for some cable TV horror-futurama file late at night. Lunatic-worthy longing for sex infuses "Ant in the Dope." A moody meditation Mad Max style gives menace to "Jesus (Lord of the Apes)." Elam luxuriated in angst in "LSD (Lucifer's Stained Dress)" and "Closer to Coma." Mind control, personal oppression. Bitterness, anger.

The association with Korn allows the band to capitalize on the indie cred they built through a decade's work as Crown of Thorns*. Signed to Elementree, they changed their name (adapting it from the title of the 1983 sci-fi flick Videodrone*), got real budget (their first, says Kohls) and settled on a catchier sound with more introspective lyrics. Till then, the group got confused with bands like Cradle of Filth, or their show ads read anything from Ladle of Thorns to Crown of Filth.

Elam has a brain with a crown of thorns on his back, a piece which grew out of his "constantly thinking about God," he says. "I'm not really religious, but I was always thinking about God, always wondering where the f*** he is. He's not there for me." Hence his tattoo by Shaun Smith of a burning, falling Bible open to the Book of Revelation. And the Armageddon scene on his back with two depiction's of Jesus, one green with greed, the other with money flying over. Martin Robson inked the fairy-demon combo. The latter one comes out of personal experience: "The demon is a man/goat who takes fairies on rides and drops them off in scary places. I got the idea from a girl I was going out with."

Kohls has ink from Jimmy, a tattooist out of Naked Owl in Bakersfield. Homeboy did a stormtrooper-robot typified from a Rob Zombie stage prop. On his left arm, next to his Crown of Thorns* logo stands Abe, the green alien from Odd World, a Sony PlayStation video game, courtesy of Big John at Purple Panther in Hollywood. Jennifer, formerly of Superfly in San Diego, half-sleeved Kohl with a chessboard-fire-sun image.

Elam and Kohls both plan on acquiring more ink. For the time being, however, their focus was on the next six weeks of music, to be followed by more of the same. Kohls said, "Hopefully we'll get on the Family Values tour," referring to what's becoming the buzz package tour of the industry, a metal/rap throwdown assembled and headlined by Korn and scheduled to hit the hockey rinks this fall. "And if not, just stay on the road anyway and play as many shows to as many kids as we can."

---Frank Booth