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Destroy All Monsters were a band that had consistency going for them: they always managed to be decisively out of step from whatever was going on in the Michigan music scene at the time. When they started in an Ann Arbor basement in the mid-'70s, full-bodied hard rock was the order of the day, but artists turned semi-musicians Cary Loren, Jim Shaw, Mike Kelley, and Niagara were instead stumbling through atonal lo-fi experimental music, created and recorded on cheap gear that only added to the aural chaos. By the early '80s, there might have been some audience for what they were doing in post-punk and avant-garde circles, but Niagara had lured her boyfriend Ron Asheton, formerly the guitar hero of the Stooges, into the group, and he in turn brought along ex-MC5 bassist Michael Davis and hard rock drummer Rob King into the lineup, turning DAM into a latter-day variant on classic Motor City high-energy rock, albeit with Niagara's purposefully flat vocals and bad-attitude lyrics putting her own spin on the material. The 1995 box set 74-76 delivered an exhaustive look at the early experimental years of Destroy All Monsters, but the two-disc retrospective Hot Box 1974-1994 presents a broader and more streamlined study of the band's history, starting from the early basement experiments and ending with performances from a DAM reunion in the '90s. The set opens with some potent examples of DAM's formative caterwauling, most notably the primitivist rock of "That's My Ideal" and the bare-wired soundscapes of "Confession? I Love You But You're Dead," but by the midpoint of disc one, DAM have evolved into a competent rock band, and the music sounds like Detroit-style hard rock with an eye toward punk rock and an arty edge brought on by Niagara's distinct vocal and lyrical style. If in some respects DAM the "rock" band were a somewhat less interesting beast than DAM the "art" band, the rock band could more than kick out the jams while still sounding uncompromisingly left of center, and this makes clear that Asheton and Davis still had plenty to offer after the Grande Ballroom scene faded out, even if most of the world wasn't paying attention. And one wonders if Kim Gordon learned what she knows about singing with a band from Niagara's cool but individual style (not to mention Niagara's attitude -- when she pauses during a live gig to tell the audience, "If you have anything to say, any complaints, say 'em right now, I'll take the complaints, I'll handle it," it's hard to believe anyone would have had the nerve to respond). Hot Box 1974-1994 is a fascinating bit of rock & roll history on several levels, and an effective document of a band that blazed its own trails while no one was looking. ~ Mark Deming

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