melt-banana! weasel walter! the locust! get hustle! glass candy! bastard noise! upsilon acrux! the blood brothers! the oath! some damn good bands on this comp, and some damn good songs too. the song credits have to go first to freddie mercury and the bunch, i guess, because these are all queen songs, but they end up sounding excellent "through the meat grinder of 31g" as stated so eloquently by the record's subtitle. things get started with the blood brothers' "under pressure." the original's bassline is so damn catchy (even vanilla ice used it) that a song with the same notes played 2-3 times as fast should be even more fun, and the capable hands of the blood brothers make it happen. next is get hustle's "another one bites the dust." it is amazing how creative these kids make this sound, considering the poppiness of the first version. after that there are a couple of close-to-unrecognizable thrash/metal/hardcore covers of "ogre battle" and "we are the champions" by asterisk and the oath, respectively. asterisk plays the music extremely fast, but still well--only their "underwater regurgitation vocals" (thanks, scott) get irritating. the oath plays much slower than usual, and seem to be having fun despite the unremarkable song. 5th is gogogo airheart, who offer a solid cover of "death on two legs" with some cool guitar work of the sort that seems to have been forgotten since the ramones and their talentless buddies "revolutionized" music (ha). upsilon acrux covers "bicylce race" in their frantic, idiot-savant-methamphetamine style that one can't help but love, then sinking body does some of their straight-outta-providence electro noise for "who needs you" and, i must say, this stuff is growing on me (it sounds very, very little like queen). glass candy (which i assume means singer ida no and whoever plays bass in glass candy and the shattered theatre because the other instruments are absent) does a very odd cover of "the fairy feller's master stroke" which still sounds like it used to be a pop song but has a starkness that would make it fit in either right before or right after a murder in a movie soundtrack. the locust does their shit for "flash's theme," and then the album's clear highlight is delivered by the patron saint of simulatneously intelligent and ridiculous tunes, weasel walter (flying luttenbachers, hatewave, to live and shave in la II, etc.). if i wasn't gay before, my sexuality was certainly thrown in jeopardy by this one-man-band's take on "bohmemian rhapsody" complete with death metal blastbeat drumming and extreme falsetto vocals. the spacew�rm does a more acessible electro noise take on "vultan's theme" for track 11, and fast forward does his annoying/amusing noisy synth pop yelling for about a minute and a half in order to claim to have covered "crazy little thing called love." probably better than the queen version. next is the convocation of... doing "get down make love" so sexily that the bright pink color of the album is, at this point, completely justified. bastard noise does their evil electro noise deathfest for "lily of the valley" and a band called tourette's lautrec covers "killer queen" with a lot of energy and high-pitched female vocals. last is the marvelous melt-banana. their "we will rock you" is appropriately goofy, but they don't rock anywhere near like they do on everything else they have ever recorded--it is just drum machine with yasuko singing and agata's guitar feedback at the end. still, yasuko's voice is so great that hearing it almost unaccompanied is cool in any context, and it is pretty funny to hear her singing such "badass" lyrics in such a mousy voice. yes, it is a comp, but it is one that--for once--is worth your hard-earned cash.