DATE: Monday, November 17, 1997             TAG: 9711170053
SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B9   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Music Review 

SOURCE: BY SUE VANHECKE, CORRESPONDENT 

                                            LENGTH:   43 lines

PRONG ROCKS BOATHOUSE WITH QUALITY ELECTRONICA

It was an evening of cochlea-scraping, assaultive rock Saturday as New York City's Prong and pals mixed the industrial end of electronica - the digitally produced pop music of the moment - with bludgeoning heavy metal.

Most interesting - conceptually, if not musically - was Hanzel Und Gretyl, a kind of Courtney Love-meets-KMFDM setup featuring a growling frontwoman in pigtails - Vas Callas, formerly of Cycle Sluts From Hell - spewing angry war-cry anthems over aggressively repetitive one-chord/one-riff guitar lines, samples and sequenced synthesizer tracks. The quartet's space-age lederhosen look was futuristic Teutonic. The sound, totalitarian terror.

Sister Machine Gun, though probably better known, was far less intriguing, coming off more like Britain's the The on steroids than the menacing machine-heads the crowd of mostly teen-aged boys undoubtedly expected. The group's unremarkable material - including selections from the new album, ``Metropolis'' - ranged from blues-based chant-alongs to predictable hip-hop, the basic guitar-rock sound fattened up with tracked percussion and synthesizers.

Over the last decade, headliners Prong have undergone an into-the-future metamorphosis with sophisticated results. Originally a long-haired trio playing minimalist, meter-shifting speed-metal, Prong is now a clean-cut, gutter-glam five-piece, the additional guitar and keyboard lending amazing density to the group's already walloping, galloping sound.

Prong has never been shy about its fixation with the arty, '80s, new wave-meets-thrash-metal band Killing Joke, and in 1993 even recruited Joke bassist Paul Raven and programmer/sampler John Bechdel for the excellent ``Cleansing'' LP. The Jokesters' influence is now inescapable.

Pounding Prong classics like ``Prove You Wrong'' and ``Broken Peace'' were presented Saturday night with totally new arrangements, the group's signature angular guitar lines and precise drumming buttressed by throbbing, sequenced synth sounds.

Regrettably, technical difficulties prohibited Prong's stop-start set from achieving a cohesive momentum. But the digitized Prong kept the Boathouse crowd's body-slamming circle roiling, just beneath a billboard-sized sign emblazoned with ``NO MOSHING.''

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