Frank Lenz needs no introduction, especially if you've been listening to independent music for a good amount of time. His amazing drumming, arranging, and producing talents have been lent to musical efforts such as Starflyer 59, The Lassie Foundation, Charity Empressa, Cush, Richard Swift, Kat Jones, The Dingees, Pony Express, Fold Zandura, as well as many more. Lenz's music has been played on TV, and he has crisscrossed the continent touring in support of the many projects he’s been involved with. It comes as a shock that a musician held in such high regard by so many other bands actually has the time and creativity to come up with his own music, but Lenz has found a way to do just that. Lenz has impressed with his sporadic solo efforts, such as his neo-soul The Hot Stuff released on Northern Records, and his self-released stoner-folk full-length The Last Temptation of Frank Lenz. However, with his latest release for California label Velvet Blue Music, psych-folk-pop full-length Conquest Slaughter, Frank Lenz truly comes into his own. The CD finds Lenz writing his most memorable songs and infusing them with the near-rampant experimentalism that marked his previous solo releases. With Vilelenz And Thieves our favorite renaissance man orbits within his home studio cosmos, creating a Technicolor cloudburst of homespun ballads channeling Neil Young and early Built To Spill, with a drizzling of folk, bombastic orchestral pop, and head-over-heels lyricism. REVIEW: “Hey, something's turned him into a mellower, less-danceable guy probably all the Neil Young and Flaming Lips records he's spent the past four years listening to. So this one is jacked with sweeping orchestral touches, sad piano ballads, dreamy acoustic guitars and atmospheric organ noodlings, and its great, especially when Lenz hurls that voice of his up into the stratosphere you swear he could hold a note up there for a good half-hour… This is sort of Lenz's own Smile album, only without the 40-year wait time, the weirdo therapist/caregiver and the unusually potent psychedelics.” (OC Weekly)

ALL MUSIC GUIDE REVIEW:
"Though not explicitly imitative of any one or two icons, the low-key, quirkily confessional pop of Frank Lenz can bring to mind the aura of the late-'60s Beach Boys, Elliott Smith, or some of Pete Townshend's more auteurish early solo work. Lenz is more tentative than any of those figures, however, which puts his third album on the attractive yet slight side. The homespun, mildly goofy spin he brings to the form would be at home on the K label, though the production is more refined (if hardly slick) here than it is on the usual K release. He doesn't have heavy messages to import, sometimes seeming to opt for disengagement rather than facing down the core issues, particularly in his lilting "I just wanna get high" refrains in "I've Got Other Things to Do," lamenting that he's "always been a fucking poseur" (in "Bad Art") without any real sense of regret or frustration. The mood's predominantly acoustic and folky; he even sounds a bit like a light Neil Young, if such a thing's possible, on "Bullets in the Wall." But there are also occasional dabs of effective orchestration and, on "Bad Art" in particular, spacy sustained and eerie tones. It adds up to a fitfully charming record, though not one of great gravity." (Richie Unterberger)