Theoretically, if you crossed the ninety-mile-an-hour, fuzz-busting pop of the Ramones with the heavy-metal, DC Comics corn of Kiss, you could come up with a fascinating monster. Not this time. Instead, what you get are the Plasmatics, a group that looks like something out of Hustler and sounds like Black Sabbath at 78 rpm. Fronted by former porn princess Wendy Orlean Williams, usually in various states of undress, and a lead guitarist who wears a tutu and sports a blue Mohawk haircut, these motley New York jokers have made a career out of chain-sawing guitars in half and blowing up Cadillacs onstage.

The music on their Jimmy Miller-produced debut LP, New Hope for the Wretched, indicates that the Plasmatics should be seen but definitely not heard. Williams is a miserable singer, and she's all but drowned out by the moronic bamalama of the band as it fumbles through such one-riff excuses for songs as "Monkey Suit," "Butcher Baby" and the appropriately titled "Living Dead." The credits tell us that for the instrumental break in their cover version of Bobby Darin's "Dream Lover," the musicians "were isolated from one another so that they could not see or hear what each other were playing." Frankly, it sounds like they recorded the whole album that way. (RS 341)

DAVID FRICKE