The Brides fake their vows.

Appropriate to their roots in horror punk and the creepy, early-20th-century imagery adorning their releases, the Brides seem to be born under a bad sign. I'm talking about bad luck?the recurring type attracted to certain varieties of the creative personality that dooms visionary painters to die penniless and above-par bands to rock in obscurity. And that's the important point here: the Brides rock, though you might never know it.

I bumped into drummer DW Friend outside their Ludlow St. practice space in summer 2001. I was familiar with DW and guitarist/vocalist Corey Gorey from their previous collaboration with super-campy New York horror punk trio the Brickbats (described by DW as "The Brides' ugly younger brother.") He told me they put together a new outfit with Gregjaw, the former guitarist and vocalist of the equally campy group Thee Hallowteens, and a new keyboard player who would later be identified as Julia Ghoulia. Then he invited me down to listen in on some of the new material?a surprisingly potent combination of creepy surf guitar riffs, a keyboard sound like the organ in a Lon Chaney movie and a mingling of 80s punk with straight rock 'n' roll. They seemed to come from some Bizzaro New York, where creepy, 45 Grave-style glam/goth/ surf/punk collides with modern garage.

Those were the innocent days, before New York's artificially inflated and irritatingly trendy local music scene came to be. This was back when "neo-garage" was the sole purview of slavishly dedicated underground musicians, and the Strokes were just a glimmer in a record company's eyes, and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs were playing shows at Brownies that nobody gave a shit about.

Nobody, at that point, was getting a damn thing, so everybody's band seemed equally viable. Locals weren't as often rewarded just for having the right tie or haircut or ripping off the right bands, so they weren't quite as bitter that they had a day job instead of getting signed (and consequently didn't bother trying so hard to follow the rest of the crowd).

Now, in the wake of accidental trendiness, I've never seen so many local musicians so bitter. At a Motherfucker party last year, a friend observed: "It's great to see this many people coming out to a rock night. It's just too bad I feel like it's the flavor of the week for most of them."

The Brides are no exception; they're frustrated at the state of things, and sometimes it's hard to be a mensch when you don't quite fall snugly into New York magazine's E-Z Identity Chart or bear the direct identifying marks of established subcultures. The Brides aren't quite riffing the 60s, 70s or 80s, nor are they trying to anticipate 2010. They do what they do and look a lot like the negative image of a neo-garage band: Black ties on black clothes. Sleeveless button-up shirts. Armbands with a "B" logo. Too campy to be goth, not trite enough to be fashionable, not deadpan enough for some, too tongue-in-cheek for others?they've moved past irony to absurdism. Lead singer Corey Gorey describes the visual style as "fascist sports team" meets propaganda posters and silent movie stills.

Contrived and self-aware? You bet. But the point is that it's a gag.

In fact, the calculated image is ultimately a foil to their live show: a no-nonsense, high-energy pummeling of raw guitars that make surprisingly dynamic roller-coaster dips between the Ventures and Rudimentary Peni. Halfway through, Corey usually passes the mic to Greg, who then growls his way through a couple of the harder songs.

A lot of recent bands have bought into the ideas of performance, showmanship and spectacle, but live you can see a difference between the performers who are there because it's what they love and the ones who are "giving the people a show" with their eyes on a paycheck. The Brides' public personas are those of drunken standup comedians; during a recent interview, it was near impossible to get them to stop clowning around long enough to give a straight answer. On stage, though, they're not screwing around and unlike, say, the Mooney Suzuki or others of that ilk, they're not directly co-opting a single style that meant a different thing at a different time.

The band's most recent releases were dual EPs this past December, Here Come the Brides Parts 1 & 2. Despite the lack of recognition, they continue to crank out the work, DIY-style, from the depths of a recording studio in Poughkeepsie. After a "final" show at CBs Gallery earlier this week, the Brides have returned to the studio for the month of May to record new material. News of upcoming shows and releases will be posted at their website, thebrides.net.