Pop Reviews : A Rap-Metal Mix That’s Neither Fish nor Fowl

On paper, the punk-metal hybrid seems like an obvious concept, a shotgun marriage of the loudest of noises, and a double-threat whammy sure to set fear into the hearts of clergymen and civics teachers, a sort of malevolent rainbow coalition of disenfranchised American youth. Last summer’s Public Enemy-Anthrax tour was a wondrous thing to behold . . . and even hoary old Rush feels compelled to include rap breaks in its songs these days.

But gangsta rap and speed-metal, two highly formalized media, are not necessarily compatible, however much editorial-page columnists consider them two of a kind. On Tuesday at the Palace, where rapper Ice-T headlined with his metal band Body Count, the rap-metal was kind of entertaining, but neither fish nor fowl. Like rapping about hustlers, fronting a speed-metal band is much harder than it looks.

Body Count is certainly more technically competent than most of its peers, and the level of onstage energy was certainly intense, but speed-core band chemistry is a group thing, and Body Count functioned mostly as a backing unit for Ice-T, who seems to have absorbed his posing stage moves by watching Danzig and Henry Rollins a few too many times, and who seemed a little embarrassed up there. And the band, while amazing in its way, rocked only when it temporarily abandoned its sort of generic thrash thing for some fuzzed-out Hendrixismo.