The apocalypse is coming. That's obvious. Hollywood says so. Religion says so. Crazy people in the 42nd Street subway station say so. What the hell are we going to do about it? Dude, let's start a band. And that's how Children—playing tonight at the Shangri-La in Greenpoint—was formed.

OK, maybe it didn't go down like that. Two guys from the left coast, guitarist/singer Skyler Spohn (San Diego) and guitarist Jonny Ollsin (Vancouver), moved to the city to start a band after jamming in California. They started playing in the bottom of the Cake Shop while it was closed during the day. When they needed a name, they chose Children because it was the title of one of the last song's Ollsin wrote for his previous band S.T.R.E.E.T.S. and also because he had recently played shows with Japanese psych-rock veterans Flower Travellin' Band who has a song with the line, "Children of the mushroom aren't we all."

After a single last year, the band released a six song LP, Hard Times Hanging at the End of the World, last month. The album pursues this idea of a looming nuclear apocalypse and how to deal with being a regular dude who likes to skate, play guitar and listen to Black Sabbath while the world is falling apart. It's not a concept album, or at least Ollsin says it wasn't planned that way.

"A lot of the themes of our band are sort of living in the pre-apocoalyptic world, and about all the bullshit that's going down and it's really the children who are inheriting it," he says.
Children may not have planned it, but I think this is a concept album. I hate the label, but I haven't been this drawn into analyzing the story of an album in a long time. Imagine you've never seen Blade Runner. Now, you're sitting on your couch smoking with your skater friend and he's trying to describe it to you. He thinks that the world is going to shit and this bothers him so much, he can't live. He says, "I went to the buy a beer from the store, I was thinking about the third world war." He gets so worked up, to relax, he says sometimes the only escape is "Shredtopia." He gets up, pops in Maiden's classic Number of the Beast, cranks it to 10 and starts headbanging his fears away. This is what listening to Hard Times Hanging at the End of the World is like. Sort of.

The likeness to Maiden exists only in sound. Classic metal canon is full of songs about dragons, monsters, quests, and the obvious, death. Most metal content is escaping, while Children is attacking. Instead of singing about the fantasy, Children is realistic about how hard it is to push the real world away. In Subterranean City, Ollsin shouts, "We fight to hang out/ but the war keeps creeping in/ we fight to hang on/ but the bombs keep going off."

The guitars attack as well. Some of the song lengths push 10 minutes, but it's not like there are long boring breakdowns. The only true breakdown, or breakaway, from non-stop double guitar riffing is the title track, "H.T.A.T.E.O.T.W.," in the middle of the album, a two-minute soft Mexican guitar diddy. At the end, two electric guitars slowly rise in the background, pushing the album back to its crazy dueling guitar attack. Just when you think everything's gonna be all right. It's no fucking use. There is no salvation in the eye of the storm.

The album's second half has even more impressive guitar work than the first. Children swallows the ideas of sound from the metal classics and spits them back out untainted. "Subterranean Cities" has a main riff that equals anything from Kill 'Em All. Yea, go ahead guys, crucify me. I don't give a shit, the end is near anyway. One difference you'll notice from the metal canon is the singing. The singing is hardcore. A much more aggressive and honest style as opposed to the operatic style of many heavy metal founders.

"If you could make Van Halen punk, that's what I'd like to do," says Ollsin, "If Van Halen wasn't so fuckin' goofy, like if they were actually a heavy band, they'd be the slayingest band, you know what I mean?"

Yes, I do. Take away the guise of metal's forefathers, the lyrical fantasies and the creepy horror show album art. Add some pre-apocalyptic paranoia, a watercolor painted album art with rainbows shooting out of a guy's neck and sing a little bit Rollins, a little bit Hetfield. Keep the rockin' the same, but take out anything that gets in the way of the nonstop guitar riff and solo. That's it. Children.

>Children
May 30, Shangri-La, 100 Sutton St. (betw. Nassau & Norman Aves.), Brooklyn, no phone; 9, $12