On the back of Peelander-Z’s bass drum there’s a green piece of tape with a simple phrase written in black sharpie on it: “KEEP PLAYING!”

That’s the best way I can explain Peelander-Z’s approach to their live show. At no point during their show do you have time to stop and think about what you just saw. There’s no nothing, not even a tuning break (Yellow broke a string with a few songs left and didn’t seem bothered). Ordinarily that wouldn’t be so odd — how much time do you really need to process what’s going on when it’s a guy with an acoustic guitar? — but when a 30 minute show has human bowling, drums in the crowd and a bassist hanging off the ceiling by his feet, you need a few minutes to realize what you just saw.

As the Hot Freaks! coordinator and Future Sounds co-founder John Mascarenhas said in his brief speech introducing Peelander-Z, we try to avoid booking bands multiple times for HF!, but couldn’t resist bringing back the most talked about act of our 2008 event. And if any of us were worried about them falling back on their tricks from last year, they were quickly waylaid within the first few minutes of Peelander-Z’s show. They started off with Peelander Red in a giant red bass/squid costume. After a minute of terrorizing the stage, he poked his head out and played the strings on the costume.

After a quick song, Peelander Red again raised the bar of Mohawk shenanigans by climbing the speaker stack to hang upside down off the stage awning. And instead of doing so with obvious hesitation, Red seemed like he was having a fantastic time. After playing bass upside down for a while, he flipped rightside-up and jumped down. It was probably a ten foot jump made with his wireless bass. It seemed like a piece of cake for him, but I would have hesitated to do it on a crowded stage full of people and equipment.

Before long, Peelander-Z invaded the crowd as they often do. They pulled a few people on stage to play their instruments and cleared a path through the crowd. Bowling pins were set up and human bowling commenced. Strike! Given the relative size of the human body to bowling pins, these guys must’ve bowled the equivalent of a dozen perfect games by now…

After that, the band started carrying all their instruments into the front of the crowd. Not so hard to do with the guitar and bass, but moving the drum kit in under a minute was impressive. Then they played another song and jumped back on stage with all the equipment. During the two transitional periods I was hit in the eye, throat, groin and eye again. But given that their lead singer is missing a front tooth, I’m going to consider myself lucky and try to keep the whining to a minimum (too late).

So no, Peelander-Z will not be remembered as an influential music act. Their songs, though awesome, are part of a genre that’s pretty much been explored to the fullest. What they will be remembered for is that they are the trench soldiers of rock & roll. They jump from heights and hurt their back, they lose a tooth to rock music and most importantly, they KEEP PLAYING.

More photos after the break.