POP MUSIC REVIEW : Audience Abuse Is Genitorturers’ Gig

Florida mock-shock band Genitorturers purports to make art and entertainment from the S&M; and body-piercing lifestyle. But the group’s calculated and anything-but-erotic show at the Whisky on Thursday was just torture.

The troupe, led by dominatrix/ringleader Gen, a peroxide blonde stomping the stage in a vinyl body suit and plastic sneer, verbally and physically abused audience members and each other while playing bonehead guitar tunes, then strongly advised the half-filled room to buy their new, major-label album.

While such musically innovative bands as Ethyl Meatplow turn their sexual obsessions into a seductive show, and the Jim Rose Circus Sideshow turns gross-out into art, the Genitorturers’ low-brow, freak-show appeal renders sex about as spiritual and intense as a quarter-a-shot peep show.

Among the low-lights: Gen ordered an audience member to masturbate on stage, and he did, along with one of the show’s male performers. Later, performers were subjected to body piercings in certain unmentionable areas.

Oh, yeah, the music. Gen tried to belt hard and heavy growls but had no vocal power, while her three band mates, who looked like they were pulled out of a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert, played thoughtless and speedy grindcore. An impotent cover of the Motorhead classic “Ace of Spades” proved the most tortuous moment of the evening.