Dengue Fever
Dengue Fever
Web of Mimicry Recordings
Dengue Fever may not be something you want to come across in a CD store. In these paranoid days of terrorist-launched airborne viruses we tend to shrink from ominous-sounding afflictions, especially foreign ones. It wasn't so long ago that fast food aficionados were keeling over right and left after gulping down e-coli tainted Jumbo Jacks. And who can forget that flesh-eating Ebola? Or the packs of Monkeypox-infected prairie dogs that terrorized our middle states earlier this year? This is not to say that having your band's title affiliated with a disease is necessarily a bad idea; case in point Anthrax, whose only shot at any sort of media recognition in recent years came in the wake of 2001's postal scare. Unfortunately for aspiring musicians, the names of many appealing infirmities and diseases have already been accounted for. Catchy names like Adema, Seizure, even Venereal Disease, already grace countless concert tees. I recently came across a death metal CD entitled Wizards of Gore: A Tribute to Impetigo. On the up side, more obscure illnesses and terms such as Maple Syrup Urine Disease or Nodule and Pustule are still apparently up for grabs. Dengue Fever, due possibly to the unweildliness of its four syllables (placing it beyond the ken of your average nu-metaler), remained available to be snatched up, not by dreadlocked white kids with too big pants, but by a group of well-dressed and undeniably funky LA musicians fronted by a pretty Cambodian singer named Chihom Nimol.
(This review originally appeared in Big Brother magazine. R.I.P.)