Dweezil Zappa Wanders Through Self-Made Wilderness

SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO —  Dweezil Zappa and his band have a number of things going for them, but their Coach House performance Saturday gave the impression they have little idea where they want those things to go.

Zappa has a new album, “Confessions,” full of well-crafted melodic metal. The 21-year-old is a fine slash-and-burn metal guitarist following in Eddie Van Halen’s wide swath, mixing a firm command of his ax with a fair level of personality and taste.

He’s got a band full of techno monsters: Second guitarist Mike Keneally and bassist Scott Thunes are both veterans of Frank Zappa’s incredibly demanding band, while 18-year-old drummer Josh Freese--who looks more like he should be on a bike delivering papers--plays with a staggering technique and enthusiasm.

Unlike most deadly serious metal bands worshiping speed and Spandex, Zappa’s group plays with an abundance of levity, particularly when joined by vocalist brother Ahmet Zappa. The group owes a large nod to the brothers’ dad, Frank, borrowing his penchant for both wild tempo changes and musical parody.

Yet it just didn’t add up in concert. The group’s efforts splayed in so many directions, with so little focus or sense of purpose, that its 90-minute show left only an emotional vacuum in its wake. And Dweezil, particularly when Ahmet was bounding haphazardly about the stage, often gave the impression of being more a sideman than a bandleader.

One shortcoming was that the group spent far more time lampooning bad ‘70s hits than it did playing songs from Zappa’s new album. And those it did play, “Bad Girl” and “Vanity,” were hardly its best. Meanwhile, covers like the encore “I Think I Love You” (Was it done by David Cassidy? The mind recoils from certain memories.) displayed a band with plenty of chops, but not much wood to cut.

They fared somewhat better with a pair of Frank Zappa songs, “Dirty Love” and a highly reworked version of “My Guitar Wants to Kill Your Mama” (the title song from Dweezil’s 1988 album). There also were impressive musical moments in the show’s opening instrumentals, which included a playful, country-ish, front-porch version of “Purple Haze.” The group’s grand showpiece was a 20-minute medley of about 121 songs from the 1970s. It was a dizzying display of technique and more clever than anyone needs. Days, if not weeks, of work clearly went into the precise dovetailing of such disparate titles as “Macho Man,” “Miss You,” “Kashmir,” “Jet,” “War Pigs,” “Jesus Christ Superstar,” “Don’t Fear the Reaper” and “Having My Baby.” The look on Dweezil’s face suggested that even he might have been wishing the rambling thing was over long before it was.

While the last thing the world needs is another formulaic band honing to the tried-and-true show biz ruts, Zappa might do well to pull the reins in on his group and set it in a more definite direction. Their current show is certainly frenetic but sadly lacking in the engagement and intensity needed to keep one from wondering, “Do these guys feel any of this? And if not, why bother?”