Pop Reviews : A Tame Anniversary Bash at Cathouse

When the Hollywood hard-rock nightclub Cathouse opened in 1986, a lot of people thought it marked a slouching toward the millennium. Catering largely to guys in bands and the women who writhe in their videos, Cathouse celebrated the antediluvian sexist debauchery that the post-punk scene had tried so hard to snuff out.

Since then, Cathouse has become as mainstream-respectable as the Los Angeles Master Chorale. The bands who play the club are admired by critics, and its proprietor Riki Rachtman is the industry-powerful host of MTV’s Headbangers Ball. And when Cathouse celebrated its fifth anniversary on Tuesday at the Palladium, the “party” seemed more ceremonial than debauched.

Electric Love Hogs and Junkyard started off, each with a brief, underwhelming set of rough-edged Hollywood rock; Bang Tango played an anonymous set of its KNAC-friendly metallic pop. Faster Pussycat, which is sort of Cathouse’s unofficial house band--one of the members co-founded the club--seemed a little tired, as if it were recovering from a year and a half on the road. And headliner Megadeth, though it seemed to have more energy than the previous four bands put together, ran through what was essentially an uninspiring rote recital of its greatest speed-metal hits.