John "Speedo" Reis is an old-school badass: pompadour'd and usually clad in a leather jacket and Levi's, he has spent the last two decades keeping the rock 'n' roll flame alive and getting very little recognition for his efforts. He's been involved in a number of projects, all of them somewhat punk-ish, but Rocket From The Crypt is by far his best work. Throughout most of the 90's, Rocket From The Crypt loomed like the ghost of Eddie Cochran over America's largely stale punk rock scene, playing at house parties and tiny bars even while releasing increasingly stupendous albums and achieving international recognition from alternative music magazines. 2001's Group Sounds doesn't come from Rocket's classic era (if you're interested in that period, check out Scream, Dracula, Scream! or RFTC), but it plays like the culmination of over a decade of ferocious punk, primal rockabilly, stately soul, and even the occasional Phil Spector-ish flourish. This is tough, anthemic shit. RFTC might have evolved from a gutter punk group into a serious rock 'n' soul revue, but they've lost none of their bite or intensity. Scorchers like "Venom Venom" and "Carne Voodoo" rock with all the jungle wildness of a feral ape, but it's the more restrained and organized tracks, "S.O.S. with its anthemic horns and "Ghost Shark" with its melancholic piano, that show just have far Rocket From The Crypt have come. Group Sounds is quite a culmination of talents for one of the greatest bands of the 90's, bar none.
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