The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Come Out of Their Shells (And Their Minds)

One day in the sewers of New York, a huge merchandising empire was losing money at an unsettling rate. After a series of staged publicity stunts involving the turtles defeating "The Shredder" (who was really just someone dressed up in a costume from Wal-Mart), finding ways to milk these mutated hell-spawns to children became increasingly difficult.

They even tried making turtle caskets, but KISS already beat them to it.

But tonight would be different. When Splinter, the turtles' strangely named rat mentor, walked out of a bar after several hours of continuous drinking, he decided that it would be a good idea for his sons to form a rock band. Luckily for Splinter, the nearest music store was only a few blocks away. Before he entered, he devised a rough plan for which instruments would be the most appropriate for the "awesome foursome."

First, he considered everyone's personalities. Raphael was a stupid jerk, Michelangelo was an even stupider jerk, Leonardo was an honorable jerk and Donatello was actually a pretty nice guy. Because of Donatello's deformity, he was forced to play keyboards and ordered to stay 50 feet away from girls at all times.

In comparison, his brothers were able to perform with more reasonable instruments such as electric and bass guitars. Raphael handled most of the vocals and even learned how to play the freaking saxophone.

"Even novices know that a saxophonist is way more important than a drummer!"

When Splinter finally came home after a long and excruciating day, he lit a candle and found that the turtles were still awake and wrestling each other for no apparent reason (Except for Donatello, who was cowering in the corner while simultaneously trying to sleep.)

After several minutes of having to chase the remaining turtles through the sewers, Splinter managed to make them sit down by using methods of brute force. He then explained to the turtles that ever since the defeat of the Shredder, they had "honed their ninja skills to near perfection." Of course, Splinter knew that in reality the turtles could be brutally beaten by a four-year-old, but he had to keep everyone feeling good about themselves.

With that out of the way, Splinter gave a brief but encouraging speech:

"It's time you learned the balance and harmony found in music! These are the instruments through which you will learn to create... and in creating you shall grow... and bring joy to others!"

The turtles reacted with insane enthusiasm, and after years of learning how to properly hold their instruments, Splinter decided that they were finally ready to play stadiums.

"Dancing while playing an instrument on top of a huge speaker? Where's the danger in that?"

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles immediately managed to get gigs at small clubs, and promotional posters began to spread all over town.

50 people came for the music, but 50,000 came for the toothbrush.

Predictably, these early gigs ended up being complete disasters. Afterbirth would always start the show with fiery and explosive performances, but it wasn't that simple for the headliners, who forgot that they had to write original material or even learn covers. As a result, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles would come to the stage, hit random chords without tuning their instruments and attempt to satisfy the audience by trying to play songs from their favorite album of all time: The Butterfly Ball and the Grasshopper's Feast.

"Love is all, yes, love is all at the Butterfly Ball!"

The only reason the turtles made it through those nights alive (besides the free toothbrush) is because Splinter had a certain trick up his sleeve...

Basically, he paid people millions of dollars to "cheer" for them.

Even though these first shows left something to be desired, MCA Records saw that there was a huge demographic for the artistic visions of four "ninja" reptiles who did nothing but eat pizza and make corny jokes.

In early 1990, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were officially signed to the label. Shorty afterwards, they were crammed into a studio and forced to write and record an entire album's worth of material with a session drummer so they could go on their first international tour. This stressful situation was made even worse when it turned out that Afterbirth had broken up and the turtles were no longer allowed to give out free toothbrushes.

The result of these sessions was Coming Out of Their Shells, a ten-song opus that was only released on a Pizza Hut sponsored tape. Its sound has been described as "psuedo-glam metal", which is really just another way of saying "false false metal."

But once you consider the double negative...

The opener, "Coming Out of Our Shells", is a two-and-a-half minute long acoustic bore-fest that never builds up to any reasonable climax. The lyrics (based on the two lines this band wrote for it) are about how exciting it is to be musicians, which in turn makes them "come out of their shells." Great metaphor, guys.

"Sing About It" begins with some completely unnecessary choir backing vocals accompanied by a kick drum and needless orchestration. This continues throughout the whole song, but it does build up to something, even if nothing new happens after the first half (not even a solo!) and it's filled with useless overproduction. The lyrics continue the streak of stupidity introduced in the previous track, with gems such as "Maybe it's awesome and you know you're on top / Feel like out of your shell you're going to pop."

I'm starting to consider the possibility that Ralph Wiggum wrote every song on this tape.

"Tubin'" is supposed to be about surfing. That's all we'll ever know.

"Skipping Stones" is a ballad featuring vocals performed by Splinter himself. His singing sounds extremely strained and the music is somewhat generic, but it gets the job done. Surprisingly, the lyrics are actually pretty good, especially for an album of this caliber. Would you ever expect lines such as "The search for happiness / reaching for peace of mind" and "Water surrounds you / But the time for rings has past" to turn up on a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles record? I still wonder what the point of having Splinter appear on this number was, though:

"Well, it's either this or pretending to meditate again."

The album returns to dimwitted stupidity with "Pizza Power", which is one of the worst song titles I've ever heard in my life. Musically, it's a slight improvement over the first three tracks, but the drum beats sometimes sound similar to those in "Sing About It" and the words are pretty much what you would expect at this point.

"Eat enough of this processed crap, and even you can grow up to be a teenage mutant ninja turtle!"

Just when you think that things couldn't get any worse, the hip-hop influenced "Walk Straight" comes in to completely destroy any hope that this album might turn out decently. There's even a pointless sing-along section in the middle which never develops past "[insert verb here!] [insert verb here] straight!"

The following track, "No Treaties", tries to be an anthemic rock song, but fails due to mediocre songwriting and a completely unenergetic performance. It's about standing up to a certain Wal-Mart super-villain...

"Cowabunga" (another hip-hop song) is unique for one reason: it is officially the worst song that will ever be featured on this site. Nothing else here even comes close to the careless, shallow lyrics (which were probably improvised on the spot, complete with random pauses for no reason at all) and the horrible, extremely repetitive "music."

"Congratulations! You didn't even have to be a heavy metal band!"

Fun Fact: Based on this track, Splinter wrote all the band's music and Raphael added the lyrics. So much for "turtle power", huh?

The next song is a ballad sung by April O'Neil (a newscaster and a friend of the turtles), creatively titled "April Ballad." Now, how come the turtles always let other people handle these types of songs, and of these people, why did they have to be their dad and some random reporter?

Their long lost second album prominently featured excerpts from Jesus Christ Superstar as interpreted by their lawyers.

On the surface, this is a completely ordinary ballad as sung by a typical third-rate Pat Benatar clone. However, the music is legitimately emotional and the vocal performance here is excellent, which is especially impressive considering that O'Neil managed to make lines such as "A turtle's a friend / a friend to the end" sound genuinely sentimental.

This leads us to the grand finale, "Count on Us." Like "No Treaties", the song tries to be anthemic, but this time, the band actually succeeds in making inspiring music in the uplifting, unashamedly cheesy style that only the 80s could provide. Beginning with a triumphant acoustic guitar riff, the track instantly erupts into AOR heaven. A chorus consisting of "We're the turtles / You can count on us!" actually works in this one and only reptilian masterpiece.

After the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles released their first (and only) album, the following tour ended up being mildly successful, even though the band had only 2.5 good songs and the performances were obviously lip-synched.

Due to a combination of bad management and complete laziness on the turtles' part, the group was unable to perform again until two years later, when they started the horribly titled Gettin' Down in Your Town tour. Unfortunately for them, no semi-respectable venue in the United States would even think about booking gigs for what was now a slowly dying fad. Besides, all of the band's former fans had either grown out of them or were more interested in seeing Afterbirth's long-awaited reunion concerts.

So, to make a long story short, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles performed at a few amusement parks and ultimately decided to call it a day after the sad but inevitable death of Splinter, who ended up jumping off a bridge after realizing that America wasn't God's country anymore.

Over the next few years, fate was not kind to what still remained of the band. Michelangelo died of a fatal pizza overdose, Leonardo went into debt in order to "help the economy" and Raphael's body magically shut down because he was bored.

Donatello, however, is still alive. You can find him dressed up in a Santa hat and carrying a drum every Christmas, singing carols to anyone who will listen (or pay him.)

"Thanks, Obama."