Las Vegas Weekly

Heroic effort

Love Pentagon throws costume party to celebrate new EP

An inventive, long-anticipated CD deserves an inventive, long-anticipated CD-release show, and Love Pentagon—vocalist Christina Z, guitarist Amanda Majestic, bassist Judi Brown, keyboardist Marites Velasquez and drummer Courtney Carroll—are unlikely to disappoint on either front.

With Bang!, the assiduous quintet (various members also pop up in local groups Chemical Ex, Action Cat, Pan De Sal and The Clydesdale) manage to pack all the enthusiasm, cohesion and pageantry of their live shows onto a six-song, superhero-comic-themed EP. Recorded July 27 and 28 and mixed, engineered and co-produced by Death By Stereo vet Paul Miner, Bang! features upbeat electro-pop rhythms and spacey psychedelic breakdowns, with a sprinkling of tambourine and glockenspiel thrown in for good measure. Unicorns play a prominent role, but further scrutiny reveals some seriously dark subject matter including manipulation, alcoholism, death and really scary circuses. Enthuses Christina Z, “These are songs we’ve been working on since we formed in August of last year. We’ve only gotten to [release] live stuff; we’ve never had any kind of decent-sounding recording where we could do lots of effects and things we wanted to add.”

The band will hit the road in January for a week-long tour throughout California, followed by an extensive summer jaunt once Velasquez graduates college. In the meantime, however, they’re finalizing light-show preparations and procuring costume-contest trophies for Friday night’s superhero-themed release party. “We’ve always dressed up,” Christina Z explains. “I don’t know if we were really superheroes in the beginning, but we ended up with our own colors, and it became this crazy theme. It’s like a power suit: You put it on and you want to perform as well as you can. We’re the superheroes of good music, we hope.”

With A Crowd of Small Adventures, Jr. Anti-Sex League. October 19, 7 p.m., $5 ($3 in costume). The Box Office, 388-1515.