Red Hot Rebellion – The Mission

Red Hot Rebellion has a lot of things going on. They like comics books and music so much they decided to combine them into a multimedia experience. The Mission is both a rock and roll opera and a 60-page comic book written by bassist Jim Tramontana and drawn by the artists at Studio Akumakaze. 

The story revolves around the lackluster music of Earth and the threat of forever being a backwater in a universe that has embraced the power of rock and roll. Red Hot Rebellion, like a good-natured GWAR, are dispatched to Earth in an effort to pump up our power ballads and guitar solos. The comic has been coming out one page at a time since December, and the Dayton, Ohio natives have played a hometown throw down to promote the album in the new year.

The Mission is deceptively catchy. “The Seething Horde,“ “Black Magic Dynamite,” “You Bring The Thunder” and “Dirtbags and Halfwits”  get stuck in your car stereo like a bad cold. The guitar riffs cling to the speakers and have to be banged out as you drive 110 mph on the Garden State Parkway. A sci-fi Tenacious D or, better yet, Motley Crue mixed with Judas Priest smashed into a copy of Heavy Metal circa 1978. 

My only critique of the album is that some of the solos have a sameness to them. The breakdowns are genre-centric for metal. It’s fresh in its breadth of media they use to engage with fans–the same way comic-centric bands like Kirby Krackle use comic fandom as a basis for their music. Good for fans of interstellar heavy metal, Jack Kirby two-page spreads and hi-fi sci-fi.