rating:

Giniling Festival’s brand of merrymaking is bloated with inescapable energy that’s supercharged by power chords and highly opinionated lyrics equivalent of a live Tessie Tomas kind of stand-up comedy whose intention is either to convey the message straight and transparent, or just hit the bull’s eye target through injection of irony and mockingly double meaning jokes – something that could pass out as profound and smart, if you’ll just be willing to spend time cracking the meaning. No thanks.

On their self-titled debut record under Terno recordings, Giniling Festival drops their bombs of angst and twisted comic abilities, and further stretch the brilliance with their bold and honest statement that so unafraid to clash even with the most lauded ideas. They, bravely instead of jokingly, express their loathing for fake boobies and gigolo boyfriends through songs like “Dodo” and “Tsong (Boypren mong Pokpok)”, but end up gossiping like salon fags in an instant when the most heated topic centers on rosebud-lipped Angelina Jolie, their confessional adoration for Bicolano-approved chilli foods and fastfood wars. Whether its satirical or just plain assertion of rant, rave and musings, these pranksters winsomely are charismatic when it comes to delivering tight as hell songs with banging chorus and quotable liners.

Technicalwise, Giniling Festival sounds like B-rated System of a Down – only that it’s Jack Black of HBO-branded Tenacious D band instead of Serj Tankian freewheeling on the songwriting duty. And the result: trippy and riotously funny lyrics soaked in catchy pop-metal pastiche and hooks. But it’s more simplified compared to the groundbreaking experiments of SOAD, albeit not generally toned down. The operatic and oftentimes harmonized vocals are still copy-pasted here and there, and the intermingling riffs that crossover mountain and hills still electrocute some big haired metal dude. But there’s more punk-rock feel to it, and the gimmicks are scattered all over the package like pompom-wiggling, alphabet-cheering in “Siling Giniling” (read: Toni Basil), the Bioman-Shyder spoofs of “Psycho,” the courtroom pleadings in “Holdap,” and the list goes on.

The spark of the album doesn’t stop on the technical and lyrical aspect. The fact that it is easygoing, likeable and even marketable (I pity big record labels for not recognizing its cash-bucket potentials) has so much to say about this band of goofy brothers. Who knows, they might have kicked Jay Contreras’ butt in the next few years or put Chito Miranda to mere extinction. Guess what? We wouldn’t see that in the coming years, since they chose to be exiled under Terno Recordings like genre exhibitionists Up Dharma Down and junk satirists Radioactive Sago Project – to prove that it’s not all about selling records and gracing giant billboards. You go, art guerillas!