Even for someone like myself, who has the very briefest experience with Saturday-morning cartoons like Transformers, Jeffrey Brown’s Incredible Change-Bots Two is a highly enjoyable send-up of the genre and a silly little slice of nostalgia.  Something about recasting transforming robots as incompetent, bickering armies, or featuring a robot with a gun for an arm as having an existential crisis, works perfectly as both an absurd tribute and satire of shows that were, even in their heyday, thinly disguised means of selling toys.

The graphic novel continues the story of Incredible Change-Bots, in which the Fantasticons and Awesomebots destroyed their own planet through war and then traveled to Earth, which they also destroyed.  The sequel continues in the same endearingly nonsensical vein.  The leader of the Fantasticons, Shootertron, was left behind when the rest of the Change-Bots left Earth and tries to regain his memory with the help of farmers and the ridiculously ineffectual US government that wants to use him as a weapon.

Just as Shootertron remembers his true purpose (the gun arms were kind of a giveaway), the Awesomebots crash-land on Earth again, and face opposition from their Fantasticon members who defect back to Shootertron, as well as the government.  The admittedly thin premise, designed to mock the shows that it apes, just provides a reason for some excellent jokes, colorful characters, and cartoonish art.

In a great running joke, some of the Change-Bots transform into completely useless things, like a microwave or just a metal head.  Their names, like Eject, Big Rig, Racey, and Extra Damaged Battle Arsenol, add to the silliness, while the jokes recall some of the tamer shows on Adult Swim.  Meant in the best way possible, the art and hand-drawn lettering look like they could be found in the notebook of a young fan.  It’s a perfect fit for the full-out absurdity and silliness of the story.

Brown is also keenly aware, however, of how much something like Transformers meant to its now-adult fans when they were youngsters (look no further than the movie success for proof that we’re all still interested in robot action and explosions), and he doesn’t stray far from the essence of the cartoon.

I never would have thought that a tongue-in-cheek story about transforming robots would have me laughing out loud, and the appeal of the book is still a little hard to explain.  As strange as it is, readers will be drawn into the bizarre world of Jeffrey Brown’s imagination, which is both self-aware and gleefully enthusiastic about its childishness.  Great jokes and art, along with a clear love of the original property, make this comic a quick, fun read for anyone who enjoys his or her childhood nostalgia with a winking self-awareness.

I’ve never seen Metalocalypse on Adult Swim, though the premise of an animated series about a metal band sounds hilarious, and I’d never heard Dethklok before, but when I heard that Converge and High on Fire, two groundbreaking artists with compelling rock shows, along with prog-metal stalwarts Mastodon, were on tour  opening for a cartoon, I had to go to Chicago's Aragon Ballroom on October 17 to see for myself.

I’m not knocking Deathklok—the live band sounded great, despite deliberately playing second fiddle to the large screen above—but I still can’t wrap my head around the idea that thousands more people would prefer to shell out their hard-earned cash to see a cartoon (albeit, a cartoon with a live soundtrack), then to see a badass rock ’n’ roll show on it’s own.

Not to mention that prior to the evening’s headliner, the screen was used to run advertisements for the Metalocalypse DVD. Spinal Tap-ish? Maybe. Disheartening? Definitely.

The good news is that each band was exposed to new audience members for the first time (after all, the Aragon does hold 4500 people), which will hopefully lead to more good things to come. High on Fire introduced a badass new song, most likely evidence of a killer record to come in 2010, and Converge put on a thrilling show, showcasing material from their incredible new album Axe to Fall (Epitaph).

Still, next time I’ll stay at home and watch Metalocaplypse on the small screen before heading out to a show to rock my face off.

-Jamie Ludwig

Meanwhile, Mike Patton has kept busy with yet another project — scoring his first feature film, Crank 2: High Voltage (out April 17).  His soundtrack for A Perfect Place, a short film noir, was one of last year's best albums.

In an interview with BBC, Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys describes the group's next album, Tadlock's Glasses, as being a combination of live playing and obscure samples.  The album is expected to be out later this year.

Rapping virtuoso Doom — dropping the "MF" — has a new album, Born Like This, that will be out March 23 on Lex Records.

After a six-year hiatus, Anticon hip-hop duo Themselves (Doseone and Jel) has returned and will issue a third full-length album, CrownsDown, in August.

Definitive Jux rapper Cage has a new album, Depart From Me, that will be out June 30.  In the coming months, he'll also release a free EP, I Never Knew You, available through Def Jux and Adult Swim.

Mogwai has announced a new North American tour, running from April 20 to May 16.

Dinosaur Jr. has signed to Jagjaguwar and announced a five-week US tour that runs through April.  For these "intimate" shows, concertgoers will receive either a limited-edition 7" or a free digital download.

Atmosphere has announced a lengthy North American tour that runs from April 9 to May 22. The hip-hop duo gets great direct support from P.O.S. from April 9-24.

Psychedelic Cambodian pop-rock group Dengue Fever will provide musical accompaniment to the 1925 silent adaptation of The Lost World during the San Francisco International Film Festival on May 5.

Grizzly Bear's new album, Veckatimest, will be released May 26 on Warp.

One-man grind project Toxic Holocaust has announced a North American tour with Napalm Death that runs from early April to mid-May.