There's funny, and then there's great.

Hundreds of genuinely funny albums, movies and songs are released each year, but few make a lasting impact. While Weird Al just released yet another enormously successful comedy album, it will most likely go the way of his last (remember Poodle Hat, anyone?), relegated to the dusty disc rack until the rare occasion someone takes it out to revisit the highlights of 2006.

I'm talking about the kind of greatness that goes beyond "cult status," an attainment that elevates an artist into the pop culture pantheon, forever safe from snooty critics and the producers of VH1's "Where Are They Now?" It's exactly this kind of rock (or as Jack Black would say, "rah-ha-ha-ha-hock") greatness that the two men behind Tenacious D have within their powerful grasp with the release of the soundtrack to their film "The Pick of Destiny."

To see the kind of effect the duo can have firsthand, just throw a copy of the group's 2001 debut on the stereo at a party. By the time the soft acoustic strains of "Fuck Her Gently" waft across the room, nearly everyone in the place will be singing along. The level of audience participation experienced during a Tenacious D listening is seldom rivaled, the only serious competitors being "Baby Got Back" and "Bohemian Rhapsody."

The duo of funnymen Jack Black and Kyle Gass are the obvious heirs to both the Arthurian comedy crown of Monty Python and Queen's sing-along throne. They're absurdly funny, surprisingly talented and irresistibly entertaining, half Cheech and Chong and half "Wang Chung," with a little Bach rock thrown in for good measure.

Black and Gass, who both started as actors in L.A., aren't the first of their kind — the Blues Brothers first did the comedian-turned-musician thing back in the '70s, and Adam Sandler was writing popular comedy songs around the same time the D emerged. But the members of Tenacious D are in a class of their own, as the previous example illustrates. When was the last time you listened to that Adam Sandler album with "The Chanukah Song" at a party?

Likewise, the group's self-titled debut wasn't the first successful mixture of music and comedy, but it sounded completely unlike anything that had come before. Instead of creating masterful parodies in the style of Weird Al, Tenacious D parodied pop culture and rock 'n' roll in general with well-crafted tunes about sex, weed and the "greatest song in the world." Black's distinctive vocals, which were as much about delivery as lyrical content, dwelled on the recurring themes of satanic demons, magic powers, his sidekick Kyle and his idol Ronnie James Dio (who makes a cameo appearance on their new album). With no particular intent besides pure rockage, Tenacious D's sound was tongue-in-cheek yet impassioned, an absurdly serious musical counterpart to TV's Stephen Colbert that ridiculed rock 'n' roll excess even as the duo reveled in it.

But while the self-titled debut album placed Tenacious D on the fast track to party sing-along glory, it also set a hard-to-match precedent for their recent follow-up. Rather than try to reinvent themselves musically, the duo simply does what they do best on The Pick of Destiny, drawing upon classic rock, metal, folk and pop styles to create the perfect background for JB's frenetic, aimless, yet wildly amusing lyrics. To accomplish this, the two enlisted the help of Dave Grohl, who, along with Phish keyboardist Page McConnell, played on much of the first album. Destiny finds Grohl providing the voice of the devil in a full-throated growl. The album also features Meat Loaf as JB's overprotective father and Ronnie James Dio as himself.

Many of the same themes crop up on Destiny: On "Classico," Black sings expletive-ridden lyrics over recognizable classical melodies much as he does on the first album's "Rock Your Socks Off;" on "POD," he references the infamous cock pushups of the debut; and the song "The Government Totally Sucks" brings to mind the life-lesson on the corrupting influences of power contained in the first album's epic closer "City Hall."

The new songs don't always match up. Destiny's ode to companionship "Dude (I Totally Miss You)" pales next to the obvious comparison "Friendship." Whereas "Dude" features little more than a few F-bombs to liven up the Black's sentiments, "Friendship" managed to pair lyrics about a battle with a bear and friends "lying naked in the sand" with a soft folk-pop melody.

But the promise of tracks like "Master Exploder," where the spiraling ascent of the opening vocal thrillingly competes with the preceding guitar solo, makes up for the shortcomings. "What we got is gonna turn your brain into shit," JB proclaims on the end of "Car Chase City," and it's an apt way to describe the full effect of some of the new songs.

"Beelzeboss (The Final Showdown)" plays like an epic rock opera, shifting musical styles schizophrenically to match the dialogue between Tenacious D and Satan. But the most entertaining is the final track "The Metal," which chronicles the assaults of upstart musical styles on the genre of heavy metal, all doomed to failure, explains JB, as they are "stricken down to the ground." To match their bold claims, Tenacious D comes up with a huge assemblage of face-meltingly heavy riffs that truly will "strike you down with a vicious blow" should you deny their power.

Overall, the songs on Destiny aren't as consistently amusing as on the group's debut, but that's only to be expected. These songs were written to accompany the half-baked plot of the movie, not to drive an entire album on their own.

So while you'll have to wait for the real follow-up to see if Tenacious D can ever match the impact of their first album, Destiny firmly establishes the group as a musical force to be reckoned with, with the ability to rock the socks off of Weird Al, Sir Mix-A-Lot and Stephen Lynch alike.

Alec Luhn is a sophomore intending to major in journalism. Send any questions, comments or hopes for the future of Tenacious D to [email protected].