" This is so strange I can’t even look at it, " notes guitarist Adam Buhler. You’d figure there’s any number of things he could be saying that about, since the Castle von Buhler — the remodeled Allston dwelling he shares with his wife, the visual and performance artist Cynthia von Buhler — has become a rallying point for local artists and creative minds. But he’s talking not about any of the pieces of art in the house, but about something far stranger: the premiere of the new Michael Jackson video. And sure enough, the King of Pop’s reconstructed face on the TV stands as proof that mainstream Hollywood is still weirder than anything fringe artists can come up with, and more perverse than anything Cynthia dreamed up when she led the performance troupe Women of Sodom.

That, in a nutshell, is what Cynthia & Adam’s new project is all about — except that it’s funnier and louder. Shooting Star, the new album by the Countess, is notable for a few reasons. It’s the first flat-out rock album to be released on Cynthia’s CVB label, which is known mainly for dark and elegant pop (Annette Farrington, the Moors) and the Soon series of AIDS-benefit compilations. It’s Cynthia’s debut as a lead singer. And it’s the first time the couple have collaborated, with Cynthia as singer/lyricist and Adam as guitarist/composer.

Finally, it’s the best — or at least, most entertaining — revenge any local artist has taken against its record label. The disc includes a savage Britney Spears parody, a bunch of hard electronic rockers, and even some commercial alterna-rock ( " Rapunzel " could have fit on Hole’s Celebrity Skin). What holds it together is the sheer bad temper. " One Hit Wonderland " suggests Cynthia may have a future as a rock critic. And on " Liar Liar " the reading of a contract leads to a torrent of screams from her and from Tree frontman River. It’s less a duet than a simultaneous tantrum. " I started off wanting the album to sound like Elastica, " Cynthia notes. " And being visually oriented, I had to let it get out of hand. " There will be a release show at the Linwood Grille on October 27.

The grudge dates back three years, to when Adam’s band Splashdown, whom Cynthia managed, were aligned with a hotshot producer and signed to a major label. After nursing the project for years, the producer fell out of favor with the label, the album was shelved, Splashdown ultimately broke up, and Cynthia was pissed. She took to the stage last year with Adam and a few Splashdown associates and performed the Countess material as a rock opera, putting their Hollywood odyssey in metaphorical terms. Her heroine is Alicia, a blond-wigged fame-obsessed innocent who gets nastier as the show goes on. WBCN’s Oedipus appears as the voice of evil; go-go dancers throw garter belts and dollar bills into the crowd; and the story ends with California falling into the ocean. As for Alicia, she gets hung Alice Cooper–style, has an on-stage breakdown, shoots herself and a few other people, and winds up brain-dead — which of course ensures her stardom.

" We absorbed the Los Angeles entertainment culture and had a violent allergic reaction, " Adam notes when we sit down at the Castle. (Because the Buhlers don’t want to ruffle feathers or get sued, the following names will appear nowhere in this interview: Capitol Records and producer Glenn Ballard.) " I had to talk to people I didn’t like, every day for two years, " Cynthia adds. " I’m young and female, so I got hit on a lot. There are people out there that know nothing and do nothing, but they still get to eat fancy lunches on corporate accounts. " Asked when the Splashdown project started to sour, Cynthia says it happened a few minutes after they arrived in California. " We had to watch a movie created by the producer. He wasn’t even there and it was a very disappointing experience. We gave them the benefit of the doubt because there was a famous producer involved [he was at the time riding high with Alanis Morissette], but he’d lost his Midas touch when it came to us. "

" They didn’t even screw us over, " Adam concludes. " They couldn’t even lift a finger to do that. "

But here’s where the ironies come in: now that Cynthia and Adam have taken the gloves off, the Hollywood types like them again. An unnamed major-label source poured some development money into the Countess album, and that label may wind up re-releasing it. And though a lot of Cynthia’s art has reflected her disgust with the celebrity system (she even built sculpture out of alleged deposits from various stars’ dressing-room toilets and paraded with them as a New Year’s Eve performance last year), she’s arguably one of the bigger celebrities in the Boston underground. Being gifted, outspoken, and photogenic has ensured that she’s never wanted for media attention.

" I don’t think I’m famous, " she counters. " People know me in Boston, and I’m probably respected as a visual artist and painter. But I’m not a celebrity like Carmen Electra, who gets famous before she’s done anything. " And she’s still known with the rockers and the fetish crowd for the Women of Sodom; it’s hard to give enemas on stage without getting a bit notorious. " We started doing that as a fun project about sex, but it wound up growing a message. People still remember it as being a sex show, but what attracted me was the idea of women taking control of their lives. "

In the past, Cynthia has tried to keep her performing and her illustrating life separate, but she’s relaxed that rule lately. Two weeks ago, she opened a one-woman show at the New England School for Art & Design (the gallery is at 75 Boylston Street; you can still catch the exhibit if you go today, October 11). Her canvasses offer fear and beauty in roughly equal measures. A recent one called America’s New War, with a bloody stuffed dove flying through a tattered flag, is particularly haunting (it’s hung opposite Hope, which has a deep-eyed woman bearing a candle). But she also pulled a Countess-like move by including a vending machine, the Cynth-o-Matic, that dispenses genuine hair and bodily fluids. And she let the art crowd see a photo of herself in Countess guise; she’s wearing a T-shirt with one of the album’s catchphrases: " Fuck you, you fuckin’ fuck! "

" There’s already some crossover, " she admits. " I just illustrated a children’s book for Random House; the editor and the publisher wanted to come to a Countess show, and I said, sure — I decided not to keep secrets any more. It all turns into one thing for me, it’s all about expressing yourself. "

MUSICIANS FOR PEACE. So far, the musical community’s responses to the disasters of September 11 have ranged from righteous (Wilco setting up Quaker information booths at their Avalon show last week) to ridiculous (Live rush-releasing " Overcome " as a single and video). What remains to be seen is whether musicians will meet the current crisis by taking up their traditional role as voices for pacifism and dissent.

The local folk/rock duo Damon & Naomi have been taking that tradition to heart. " Everyone agrees that a horrible thing happened in New York and that something needs to be done, " Naomi Yang acknowledges. " What frustrated us was seeing the coverage in the Times and the Globe every day; it was always about how the entire country was unified and eager to drop bombs on someone. It seemed there was no room anywhere for discussion of other alternatives. "

Thus Damon & Naomi found themselves at the helm of Musicians for Peace, which began as an informal e-mail campaign and is turning into a full-fledged organization. Last month they led a group of 30 musicians as part of a peace march in Washington, DC; those who joined them or sent support include Thurston Moore, Richard Hell, Fugazi leader Ian MacKaye, and singer/songwriter Dana Kletter (who recently moved to Boston from Chapel Hill). They’ve since registered the Web domain musiciansforpeace.org and will launch a site this month. " Most of the initial response was positive, " Damon Krukowski notes. " But I did get one really angry note from one of the record labels we work with [not their US label, Sub Pop]. So I assume it’s the last royalty check we’ll see from them — not that they would have paid us anyway. "

The DC protest proved to be a fairly typical peace march — songs were sung, signs were carried, and non-violent order was maintained — but the overtones proved a bit more disturbing. " We were being watched very closely by the FBI and the CIA, " Krukowski says. " A group of 30 people in a park being surveyed by helicopters — and that’s not a paranoid thing, it’s reality. You can read everyday about how the government is trying to curtail our civil liberties, and we saw that happening. The moment when people have to apologize for speaking their minds is exactly when we should be doing it. " The icing on the cake, for them, was the headline in the New York Times that Monday: " Protesters in Washington Urge Peace with Terrorists. " As Yang points out, " There were 25,000 viewpoints there, and not one was urging that. "

Neither are they urging any particular course of action, Krukowski says. " We just feel it’s our responsibility to remind people that violence is not the answer. What we’ve just witnessed is violence, and nobody should have to witness that anywhere in the world. There is no need to respond to atrocity with further atrocity. "

In other words, all they are saying is, give peace a chance. " Exactly, " says Krukowski. " And I remember that people wasted a lot of energy attacking John and Yoko for being naive and unhelpful. But sometimes a naive thought is the necessary one. "