Houston's harrowing Pain Teens were one of the earlier bands to fuse the chilly gloom of goth rock with the harsh experimentalism of early industrial music, setting the stage for a hybrid that would become increasingly common as the '90s wore on. The Pain Teens' core was the husband-and-wife team of Bliss Blood and Scott Ayers; Blood played the role of goth chanteuse, while Ayers' murky, ultradistorted guitar work veered from creepy psychedelia to pure avant-garde noise, with occasional hints of Texas blues filtered through the Birthday Party. Also filling the role of electronics manipulator, Ayers' tracks were laden with pounding tribal percussion, tape loops, dialogue samples, and assorted found sounds. Like their main influences (Swans, Throbbing Gristle), or even to a degree their fellow Texans the Butthole Surfers, the Pain Teens' lyrical interests were highly provocative: kinky sex, murder, mental illness, child abuse, religious hypocrisy, and anything else that evoked the dark side of human existence. Much more than her forebears, though, Blood tempered those confrontational shock tactics with a tangible, underlying feminist and social concern. The Pain Teens were quite prolific over their decade-long existence, and although the goth/industrial/noise formula shifted its emphasis from time to time, much of their work was generally of a piece.