Punk Rock on a Diversified Note

This talented, craftsman-like and often impassioned Orange County/Long Beach band sells a diversified product line of modern-rock stylings. The ever-fickle marketplace will determine whether Dis Inc.’s stock will soar and split. On the evidence of its first full-length album, its personality already has.

“F=O” starts as if it’s going to pick up where “Spoken Through the Profits,” a four-song teaser from 1998, left off. “Profits” was a sizzling slice of a live show at Linda’s Doll Hut; three of the songs reappear here within the first four tracks, this time in studio renditions abetted by big-name co-producer Dave Jerden, known for his work with Jane’s Addiction, the Offspring and Social Distortion.

Most of the album’s first half showcases a band with a punk rock mind-set but the musical dexterity of players with higher technical ambitions. The Stranglers and the Jim Carroll Band come to mind on “Forget,” and “Chinese” ends with a driving bass solo by Doug Van Dyck that sounds like something you’d expect from power-rock’s greatest bassist, John Entwistle of the Who.

Social commentary dominates the lyrics. Singer Brian Burns goes in for hipshot sprays of disgust in “American,” a litany of violence, corruption and injustice. The ideas are commonplace, but the song takes its spark from Burns’ delivery, which works up to a fine screaming lather. In a nice touch of musical Americana, a banjo momentarily finds its way into the mix.

“Bleeding Boy,” reprised from the “Profits” EP, is more focused, but a fairly rote tale of how a discarded kid grows up to be a sociopath toting an AK-47. Again, the music carries the song, with machine gun riffing from guitarists Mark Christian and Warren Huart, and a charged yelp from Burns, who fairly well bleeds as he bleats.

“Don’t Think the Sun” is chirpy and psychedelic, yet foreboding; the deliciously fat and lazy slide guitar that briefly floats to the song’s surface is typical of the many grace notes Dis Inc. cannily arrays to keep its music shifting and attractive.

“Chinese” is the album’s most enigmatic song--a storming rocker reminiscent of the Cult, in which Burns comes off as a cousin to those survivalist far-right “patriots” in the Montana outback who think the government is illegitimate and that gun control and bleeding hearts will spell doom for the U.S.A.: “We’re all gonna be Chinese some day/We’re all gonna end up on our knees.”

I haven’t a clue whether Dis Inc. is waxing sincerely ultra-libertarian here, or taking a Randy Newman-like poker-faced satiric jab at a form of political crackpotism. But it’s a heckuva rocker.

Then Side Two comes along and we are bathed, often languidly, in a different sensibility entirely. The tempos slow, the politics disappear in favor of romantic themes, the musical influences show more blatantly, and we even get a couple of breezily enjoyable pop confections.

“Gone to Heaven” finds Burns adopting a sinusy hay-fevered tone akin to the Cure’s Robert Smith (whom he often echoes vocally) as the guitarists twang away like a pair of Byrds. The refrain, “I’ve gone to heaven” completes the transparent reference to the Cure’s “Just Like Heaven.”

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The closing track, “Almost Again (Our Summer Song),” is a chiffon-light bossa nova that sounds like the Cure stealing the Zombies’ suitcase of musical goodies and making off to Ipanema.

“Hurts to Laugh” knocks off the atmospheric side of Led Zeppelin, complete with Robert Plant-like singing. “Anna” is a Jane’s Addiction-style alarmed workout. On “Vanishing,” Burns sounds like Jon Anderson of Yes as he impressively scales a chorus of high notes.

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It’s all very well put-together, but the passionate dark vision that fired most of the album’s first half is supplanted by the craftsman-like, chameleonic side of the band. The only unifying link is, in fact, disappointment: Even the guy who has “gone to heaven” suspects he also has “gone to hell” (the song seems to be about a couple whose love is based on the skillful manipulation of guilt), and the sunny romantic interlude of “Almost Again” has a strong tinge of melancholy.

Only one track, the monotonous “Candy (Let Me In)” fails to command, or at least seduce, interest. The rest is solid, sometimes riveting, but Disappointment Incorporated lives up to its name by getting us revved up at the start for an intense, explosive experience, only to let us down gently in the end.

Albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor) to four stars (excellent).