Musically? It’s hard to slap on a label that’ll stick, but “taking the ‘P’ out of Psychedelic” is etched into the vinyl on side one, so there’s one word I won’t be allowed to use. Why anyone would wish to do so is left unexplained. Numerological reasons, perhaps? That would be Old Math, but with these guys it may well have been a consideration. I can’t vouch for anybody else’s system, but in my paperback the letters in “psychedelic” reduce to the number 3 (as do the letters in “New Math”), while “sychedelic” is a five. Less is more, though, because 3 is essentially an “artistic” number, whereas 5 is better at marketing. (Must be why they gave away the EP for free.) They soon changed their name to Jet Black Berries. And what’s wrong with that? Well...you guessed it, those letters add up to 5 as well. A year or two later, the band was no more. Why? I have no idea; the typical musicianly reasons I would suppose. Ever-helpful, the book sez that among the most destructive traits of 5 are “sensuality, perversion, malevolence, debauchery, dope, drink.” It’s not nice to fool with Mother Nature.

Bad decisions, bad news, bad craziness. What did they sound like? Essentially it’s dark 80s new wave with influences ranging from Aleister Crowley and Kenneth Anger to Roky Erickson. “They Walk Among You” features the same sort of jackboot beat as True West’s “It’s About Time,” interspersed with a lovely little guitar break of the sort that Brian Jones might have come up with on one of his better days. The lyric was about people being Taken Over. By what is left to the imagination, which is best. Spelling it all out would ruin half the fun when there are so many possibilities. The chorus switches at the end from “They walk among you” to “We walk among you,” and then the final sarcasm: “And you are lucky that we do!” Republicans, demons, pod-people, fundamentalists, zombies, cokeheads, ghouls, Amway salesreps, vampires, military recruiters? More likely some hybrid strain of several of the above, much as in real life. All that can be said for certain is that “Out of the darkness they come/With such strange sense of direction/Taking on their human forms/To complete their mission...They use metal don’t need words/For their communication.” Yeah, them and Miles Davis--if you want to fill your head with real nihilism, put on headphones and sit through thirty minutes worth of On The Corner. Come back to New Math and they’ll have all the impact of a nursery rhyme or an advertising jingle--in fact, that’s exactly how they’ll sound.

The next couple of tunes, “Garden of Delight” and “Branded” make a strategic retreat; they hint at Evil Stuff but never quite spit it out: “Jet black berries I do ingest.” (What sort of inferences are we supposed to draw about the quality of their later stuff, knowing they ate those nasty berries for breakfast?) “The pictures you breathe...Enter the garden of delight” OK, so the berries were psychoactive. “Daddy says he’s coming in a saucer of light/To instill the terror back in their mind.” It’s been fifteen years since that was written and he hasn’t shown up yet. No matter what galaxy you’re in, deadbeat dads are the same everywhere. “A love that cannot speak its name...gives me earthly powers over living and dead.” FM radio programmers belong to neither category. “Loss of reputation I’m a public disgrace/Everybody knows me for my infamous fame.” Infamous fame?? Author, author! Styx never came up with anything half so awkward--we have a winner! Ten extra points for the avoidance of “face,” the obvious rhyme. For losing face, New Math win the coveted Cthulhu Cup for Booboo Couplet most foul!

Just when you think you have them pigeonholed, it’s time to flip the record over and they launch into “Invocation.” The gloves are off now. The appropriate power chords rip, and then, “Invocation of my demon brother/Cup of blood for the sacrifice.” All we need now is a verb. “I receive him, I receive him/Beast of angels be the beast of man.” Don’t make me look! I’m as open-minded as the next person, moreso in fact, but it’s normal to rent a room for that kind of thing.

The finale is “American Survival.” Can there be anything more dated than a bomb-shelter tune? Any two-bit country can get our underwear in a bunch nowadays just waving a vial of anthrax and mustard gas. At the height of the Cold War, this band said, “You can KEEP American survival.” Their attitude seemed to be “go ahead, drop the bomb on us! We hate ourselves and we wanna die!” By this point, one could hardly blame them.

How will they be remembered? As one more 80s band that took themselves way too seriously. Why would you want to play them? Because 80s bands who took themselves way too seriously are even more entertaining than their 60s counterparts. They were hip, they were happening, they’re camp, they’re a laff riot. New Math were so gauche as to put a skull on their EP cover and write about demons (when such tactics had already been exhausted by the heavy-metaliers). Since they didn’t leave behind a legion of loyal fans who did likewise, it’s possible nowadays to play this at will, rather than being assaulted with it on “alternative” stations supposedly dedicated to “new” music. So long I get to choose my own poison, I’ll have my jet black berries and eat them too.

And yet...it behooves us to speak kindly of the dead, and stuff like this is deader than “Rock Lobster.” So I’ll wipe that smirk off my face just long enough to note that, grotesque as they look to modern eyes (particularly their own, I betcha), in the early 80s they meant this stuff in all sincerity. Which is why they went nowhere--in 1983, sincerity was precisely the quality that was disappearing from the face of the earth. New Math redeem themselves because for all their skulls and demon lovers, bomb shelters, marks o’ the beast, electric berries and alien paternity, there was no schtick involved. They were just singing about occurrences in their everyday lives. If you have any sense of fun, try to make New Math an occasional happening in your own.