Hailing from Riverside, CA, the home of mullets, IROC Camaros, unbreatheable air and Lynyrd Skynyrd fans (please see this month’s Foreigner DVD-A review), Alien Ant Farm has somehow transcended its surroundings to craft a sound that is fresh and new, yet familiar enough that fans should catch on quickly. Produced by Jay Baumgardner, whose credits include Orgy, Slipknot, Coal Chamber and DreamWorks Records label mates Papa Roach, Alien Ant Farm’s album ANThology has an obviously metal vibe to it, but it also has a pop sensibility that falls comfortably between indie rock and mainstream alternative. In the band’s bio, Alien Ant Farm’s guitarist Terry Corso sums up the record as "new, emotional, romantic, yet totally metal." Well said. It’s not overly glamorous crotch rock like Bon Jovi, but it’s not extremely heady, thinking man’s music like Rush, either. Sometimes it speaks to the brain and at other times to the heart, but every so often, Alien Ant Farm speaks to the loins.

Limp Bizkit caught the world off-guard with a twisted cover of George Michael’s song "Faith" that brought the band its first dose of public attention. Alien Ant Farm goes one better by kicking out an almost too accurate, sped-up cover of Michael Jackson’s "Smooth Criminal," metal-style. You’d better have confidence in your vocal talent if you are going to try pulling off a convincing Michael Jackson cover, and Mitchell really does the song justice. It’s such a cheesy tune that just the fact that Alien Ant Farm would put it on their album shows that they have injected a healthy dose of humor into their music.

The album’s first single, "Movies," was a good choice to introduce Alien Ant Farm to the world and will surely blow up on the radio and MTV, but this isn’t one of those records that has one single and a bunch of filler. The songs are all different enough that album does not ever become boring or monotonous, yet the tunes are similar enough to create a cohesive record. Alien Ant Farm sounds like a very well-produced, very tight garage band, but I don’t think of that as a negative thing. I imagine that Alien Ant Farm would be a great band to see live for this very reason. Their songs don’t rely on any extra instruments or synthesized sounds. Instead, the songwriting and the band's performances are the real stars on this album.

ANThology is by no means a must-have record for everyone out there. It doesn’t transcend its genre in the way that Beck’s "Midnight Vultures" or Snoop Dog’s "Doggystyle" do, and it doesn’t sound so good that it will ever be an absolute reference disc for you. If you are a fan of A Perfect Circle, the Deftones or Incubus, this record is going to be right up your alley. The music isn’t as dark and cerebral as Tool nor as hard as the Deftones, and it isn’t as funky as Incubus. Alien Ant Farm falls stylistically somewhere between these bands.