"I'm a law unto myself," he gloated, rubbing his hands together. "A god with the taint of human emotions. I'm a man who renders humanity a great service, and for that my brain must be clear, my hands steady, and my nerves even."

Bela Lugosi in horror movies like The Raven had a strange and lasting effect on the Fleshtones' lives. Everyone has heroes; theirs happens to be Bela Lugosi. And Liberace.

The Fleshtones, too, render humanity a great service. They produce wonderful music to which they are passionately committed. Known in some circle as "Kings of Garage Rock," the group has been practising its Farfisa-laced hoodoo since 1976, when singer/keyboard player Peter Zaremba, guitarist Keith Streng and bassist Jan Marek Pakulski got together in Queens. (Saxophonist Gordon Spaeth is another Queens native; drummer Bill Milhizer is from upstate New York.)

New York new music entrepreneur Marty Thau signed the band. The Fleshtones recorded an album, Blast Off, for Thau's Red Star label that should have been released in 1979. Unfortunately, Thau lost his financial backing; only a single, "American Beat", came out. (Blast Off was issued as a cassette in 1982 by ROIR.) In 1980 they signed with IRS and released an EP, Up-Front. Two albums followed: Roman Gods and the current Hexbreaker!

The Fleshtones are basically a party band. They have no intense underlying message except to keep your perspective on life, have a sense of humour, and try to have a good time. Their energetic, earnest method is to meld the best bits of R&B, psychedelia and simple rock'n'roll into a style all their own.

The result sounds nothing like what is popular today - unfortunately for the bands career. Artistic success aside, the Fleshtones have been struggling for too long, while their companions in the musical class of '76 (Blondie, Talking Heads, Ramones) went on to bigger and better things.

"Roman Gods was the first step," Streng says. "The second step was the Hexbreaker! 'super rock' concept."

Is Hexbreaker!, then, a concept album?

"Well everything we do is kind of conceptual," Streng smiles, "even sitting here talking with you."

"Unfortunately, super rock has not paid off in the dividends we expected monetarily," Zaremba says.

"Right," Streng adds. "The music we are making is super-oriented but the money is not."

"But the faithful know," Zaremba says proudly.

Granted that the Fleshtones make exciting, vital music and are, as Zaremba says, "the most exciting men in rock 'n' roll - I say that in all modesty." Why, then, do only the faithful know?

Zaremba agrees that the radio's much-touted opening up to "new music" applies only to bands with synthesisers.

"We're having much more difficulty with this album than the last. This album is a lot less compromising than the last one. We wanted it really driving and hard, and as a result the commercial stations are really afraid of it. God bless the college stations, 'cause they just play what they like.

"We didn't set out to do something that wouldn't be popular." Zaremba continues. "We just thought the time was right for a real tough Fleshtones record. We did it, and we're glad."

Image problem, perhaps? No way, Zaremba retorts.

"I think we've got more image than A Flock of Seagulls. When they step out of a shower, what's their image? (Mike Score) probably combs his hair back and looks totally normal in his everyday, 'real' life."

"A Flock of Seagulls have a gimmick more than a good image," Milhizer says. "We have an image - I think it's easily identified - but we don't have a gimmick. We don't want a gimmick."

"We're niche free," Streng adds.

"We've lasted as long as we have because we're doing something we think is important," Zaremba says. "Not only do we meet fads head-on and win, but we set the pace for the pacemakers."

As with other bands who base a modern sound on an older style of music, the Fleshtones are often written off as part of a "psychedelic revival." Band members agree that they are a psychedelic band only in the word's literal meaning of expanding one's mind. Aside from that, Zaremba says, "We take as much inspiration from Sylvester as from the Chocolate Watchband." "And Bert Kaempfert," Milhizer adds.

What about the band's penchant for vintage equipment? Not many groups today use Ampeg amps. Zaremba plays a 20-year-old Farfisa organ; Milhizer has a 1963 Ludwig drum kit. "We got these instruments," the singer states, "because we wanted these sounds, not because we wanted to recreate the Whisky A Go Go or the Cheetah Club.

"We started to create our sound a long time ago, before it became popular for Billy Joel to pose with an old-fashioned mike, or Neil Young to pose with an old guitar. A lot of people now do it because it's just style. We started in the age of Marshall stacks; to show up with amps like this was like when Martin Luther nailed that manifesto to that church door - not that I'm a big advocate of him...he would have been better off buying some Ampeg amplifiers, probably. "We're not into being Fleshtones because we were into being rock stars. It was never a means to an end, like a kid who dresses up and buys a guitar and makes sounds like Jimmy Page."

"We've been good at other things we dabbled in," Pakulski chimes in.

"I was good at typing," Streng declaims. "I was in the typewriting class in high school. I was better than all the girls. I was doing about 45 words per minute."

"Those same skills carry over to the fretboard," Zaremba adds helpfully.

"Now I do 60 words per minute on the guitar," Streng laughs.

The Fleshtones hope Hexbreaker! will live up to its title and get through to the deaf ears of commercial radio programmers.

"We New Yorkers are fortunate enough to be able to go down to our botanica and buy Lucky Dream spray and special anti-hoodoo candles," Pakulski says. "We figure most of the country can't get these things, so we've packaged the Hexbreaker! album for nationwide - in fact, worldwide - distribution, for the unlucky populace."