JAPANESE WAILING

The head-banging headliners Saturday at the Santa Monica Civic were Loudness and Poison, two bands obviously christened since the little-publicized passage of a musical truth-in-advertising law.

Japan’s Loudness wailed and pounded out the fast, flashy metal with such conventionality that you’d hardly know the English lyrics were a fairly recent addition. Nice to see a Japanese band making it, though, even if it’s only because they’re so skillful at regurgitating the American hard-rock formulas they’ve witnessed over there.

Poison, meanwhile, is a local metal outfit whose glam-rock prissiness and Bay City Rollers-type chants initially suggest something more clever. But it’s really the usual lunkheadedness--”I Want Action” comes dangerously close to advocating rape, and singer Bret Michaels’ drawn-out description of his loss of innocence was amazingly unfunny in attempting an all-libido, post-lobotomy David Lee Roth.