Pop Music Reviews : Mind Funk Checks Out Its Vital Sex Signs

“So many songs about (sex),” singer Pat Dubar mused during Mind Funk’s show at Bogart’s in Long Beach on Thursday.

Mind Funk’s sex-obsession had nothing to do with the puerile fantasy you get from the airhead wing of heavy metal. At a time when some think metal bands have abandoned sex as a subject, as if the airhead wing had tainted it for good, this New York-based band makes lust meaningful. Mind Funk’s idea of sex is like D.H. Lawrence’s or Jim Morrison’s: a primal, animal drive, but also one of the few paths to transcendence available to earthbound flesh. For Mind Funk, sex is the ultimate vital sign.

But Mind Funk needs to look at love from both sides now: not just as a carnal release, but in its more tender and emotional aspects. A little lyricism wouldn’t hurt, nor would more melodic daring. But these powerful newcomers, whose influences range from speed metal to the Doors, Iggy Pop and Jimi Hendrix (with just a trace of funk) are worthy contenders for recognition and a welcome reminder to intelligent metal bands that sex need not be a dirty word.

Opening act Tribe After Tribe is a trio of white South African expatriates who moved to Los Angeles after being hounded in their homeland for taking an anti-apartheid stance. They featured some intelligent, hard-hitting basics, but almost every song was stormy, portentous and too much the same.