Point Pleasant, West Virginia is a small town near the Ohio River. Its a nice place with friendly people, but one where strange things happen. There was the Mothman, a winged creature that terrorized the citizenry in the late 60s. The area was also the location for munitions manufacturing during World War II, and its said that runoff leaked into the groundwater; when divers began to search the bottom of the Ohio following the collapse of the Silver Bridge in 1967, they found, according to lifelong Point Pleasant resident Marty McCoy, catfish the size of cars. McCoy, incidentally, is a decedent of half the Hatfield-McCoy feud that almost caused a war between Kentucky and West Virginia in the 1880s. He also formed, with his brother Shaun, the band Bobaflex. The Mothman. Chevy-sized catfish. Bobaflex. Strange things continue to happen in Point Pleasant. Bobaflex is an odd beast, a bracing mix of heavy riffage, hip-hop-inspired beats and alternately growling and soaring vocals. There are four singers in the band, so the angle of attack constantly shifts, which is partly why the bands songs careen around your brain far longer than hard rocks usual offerings. Mostly, the songs on Apologize For Nothing rock outrageously hard because Bobaflex is willing to try anything that sounds good, and couldnt care less how any of it might make them look. Its all about the vocal line and the melody for us. We were never worried about being tough, Marty says, contrasting the bands approach to that evinced by so many others. You can sing a high-pitched melody and go into this falsetto thing without going Im fuckin heterosexual and pissed off! Who gives a fuck? Quit being afraid of not sounding tough. We heard, one time, he continues, that Rock-n-Roll is supposed to be big and dumb and shameless. It always was to me. Theres no bravado in rock anymore, his lead-singer brother Shaun adds. If I could do a split off the riser I would. We want to keep the music fun, Marty concludes, If people are coming to see us play and buying tickets, Im having a damn blast. The songs on Apologize For Nothing run from the irresistibly over-the-top aggression of Better Than Me to the heavily armored melodies of Bullseye and Guardian and short-attention-span gems like Got You Trapped. All the songs are pushed by beats that bang like hip-hop but never resemble the limp aping of the rap-rock era. Theres always melody you can hum along to chasing some locomotive-sized crunch that makes a mosh pit seem like a good idea. The Bobaflex you see hooting it up on stage is born of small-town restlessness. There was always only one band in Point Pleasant, and that band always seemed to have Marty McCoy, bassist Jerod Mankin and drummer Thomas Johnson. (Guitarist Mike Steele is a native of New Orleans.) In 1998, brothers Marty and Shaun formed Bobaflex, making it a full-time thing in 2000.