Individualistic New Metal in Bushwick This Weekend

Metal trio Earnest Gallows may call their debut release a “three song demo,” but it has an understated, chrome-plated polish. What most distinguishes them from the legions of headless axemen on an endless gallop toward Mordor is frontman/guitarist Richie Pace’s vocals. “We brought this upon itself…conveniently bought, at the cost of critical thought,” he belts in the second track, Man Made Hell, a purposeful, tightly crystallized anthem that clocks in at less than four minutes. But that delivery is unexpectedly down to earth – no cartoon characters or phony opera here. The ep is up at Bandcamp as a free download, and they’re playing the Cobra Club in Bushwick on Aug 5 at around 9. The venue doesn’t list whether there’s a cover charge or not, but if there is it’s usually pretty cheap here, no more than ten bucks.

The ep’s first track, The Nearby is a contrast of crunch punctuated by the occasional guitar flare; Pace puts the bite on for extra cynicism in places. The final track, Secular Peace, is the band’s most ambitious number and a mishmash of rhythms, bassist Philip Tavadze climbing and then finally joining the sprint down the battlefield in tandem with drummer John Naeder. You can hear echoes of Iron Maiden but also artsier 70s rock and even 80s goth in the group’s music: if catchy, heavy sounds are your thing, keep an eye out for them.

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Deliciously Dark Heavy Psych Sounds in Gowanus Saturday Night

This Saturday night, June 23 starting at 8ish there’s a monster heavy rock triplebill at Lucky 13 Saloon in Gowanus. Deliciously dirgey, hypnotic Brooklyn doom metal band Neither God Nor Master open the night, followed by darkly artsy boogie band Hogan’s Goat and then haunting heavy psych band Matte Black. The venue’s calendar page doesn’t list a cover charge, but it’s usually ten bucks here. 

Much as the night’s two later bands are excellent, the most intriguing act could be Brooklyn’s own Neither God Nor Master. When’s the last time you heard a doomy heavy psych band with a cello and a woman out front? Their debut release – you could call its two epic tracks either an ep or a maxi-single – is up at Bandcamp as a free download.

As the nine-minute dirge The Weedeologue gets underway, guitarist Mike Calabrese looms ominously, throws bloodsplatters of blues in between his chords a la Tony Iommi and lets the feedback grow and then recede over the slow, unstoppable wave motion of bassist Paul Atreides and drummer Angela Tornello. Singer Valerie Russo walks a steady line between echoey clarity and mystery, a somber, distant presence.

The second song is Who Placates the Fire. The rhythm section sway along, driven by Atreides’ Electric Funeral chromatics and cellist Chelsea Shugert’s creepy fuzztones, Russo’s voice slowly sliding around the midrange. Calabrese eventually hits his wah pedal and channels Ron Asheton at halfspeed. Fans of classic and newschool doom, from Sabbath and Sleep to Electric Citizen, will love this band. If they get a chance to hit the road, they have a global audience waiting for them, lighters raised, reeking of weed.

A Relentlessly Savage New Horror Noiserock Album and a Williamsburg Show From Guitar Shredder Reg Bloor

Guitarist Reg Bloor – wife of the late, great Glenn Branca – writes bloodcurdling industrial metal instrumentals with dead-on accurate titles like Theme From an Imaginary Slasher. Don’t listen to her deliciously assaultive, aptly titled new solo album Sensory Irritation Chamber if you have a headache. On the other hand, if you need a shot of adrenaline, you have a sense of humor, and you can handle her nails-down-the-blackboard attack, this is your jam.

Although her husband’s influence is obvious- Bloor played in his noisily enveloping guitar orchestra for seventeen years – her compositions are a lot more succinct. She runs her Gibson Les Paul through a dense wall of freezing-rain reverb. Tritones – the so-called devil’s chord – are her thing: she’s got more of them on the new album than most artists use in a lifetime. The album isn’t officially out yet and consequently not up at her music page. She’s playing the release show tomorrow night, May 18 at 11 PM at Muchmore’s; cover is $10. Shrieky, pounding but surprisingly catchy no wavers Radio Shock open the night at 9, followed by the grimly theatrical Samantha Riott; downtown vets God Is My Co-Pilot headline.

Sarcasm and cynicism reach redline immediately in the new album’s deceptively catchy opening anthem, Hilarity Ensues. Bloor’s inventive use of octave and harmony pedals give this quasi-fanfare an epic, orchestral quality that persists throughout the next nine tracks.

Rhythmic, loopy Hitchockian shrieks kick off the title cut, then Bloor fires off a sardonically frantic panic theme: amid all the hysterics, there’s a very patient serial killer at work here. From there she segues into Projectile Bleeding – how’s that for evocative? – adding a coldly loopy, mechanically waltzing rhythm to the incessant tritones. Then her venomously precise tremolo-picking and sardonic chromatics get up in your face in the relentless Present Dystopia.

(You’ll Feel) A Little Pinch veers more toward Branca-esque white-noise orchestration, while the epic, slowly sirening 122 Zeros (And Then a 1) howls with feedback and the clatter of a blown-out speaker before Bloor kicks into a rhythmic drive, throwing up a cloud of toxic dust as she rides the shoulder.

Desiccated Survivor – which could be you, needing a drink after one of her shows – is a series of increasingly desperate variations on a staggered, loopy riff. Heads on Pikes is more hardcore – if you can imagine that. Raison d’Eath is a twisted study in wave motion, while Molotov Cocktail, a rehearsal for a suicide jumper, speaks for itself – and for the rest of the album. The final cut is the writhing, tongue-in-cheek The Wrath of That.

This isn’t for everybody, but as noise goes, it’s unbeatable. Just don’t play this too loud in your headphones – seriously. You could hurt yourself.

The Irrepressibly Fun Klazz-Ma-Tazz Radically Reinvent Classic Yiddish Vaudeville Themes

Klazz-Ma-Tazz’s lusciously Lynchian 2016 album Tangibility was one of the half-dozen best releases of the year. Violinist Ben Sutin’s group bring fearless jazz adventurousness to an individualistic, darkly electric sound that draws equally on classic klezmer, Balkan and Middle Eastern sounds. Interestingly, their forthcoming album Meshugenah – streaming at Bandcamp  – is mostly reinventions of iconic Yiddish vaudeville tunes. Sutin’s objective here is to do with that repertoire what Charlie Parker and John Coltrane did with Broadway songs, in other words, establish a new Great American Songbook for future generations of jazz players. To say that the new record is as astonishingly original and irresistibly fun as the last one isn’t an overstatement. They’re playing the klezmer brunch at around 11 AM this Sunday, April 8 at City Winery; cover is $10, kids under 12 get in free and there’s no minimum. You better believe that this blog will be in the house.

Ben Rosenblum’s dark washes of accordion underscore Alec Goldfarb’s flickering guitar as the enigmatically tropical take of Alexander Olshantesky’s Mein Shtetele Belz gets underway; violin and guitar solos keeps the edgy bounce going, the latter edging toward Django Reinhardt territory. Elijah Shiffer’s clarinet veers from a party in the Pale to dixieland and then back. A Hawk and a Hacksaw and 3 Leg Torso come to mind.

Sutin’s arrangement of Svalava Kozatshok has a suspenseful trip-hop pulse anchored by Shifffer’s baritone sax, up to a shreddy fireball solo from Goldfarb; Sutin adds devious hints of bluegrass, then the band make Hava Nagila metal out of it. Are we having fun yet?

Drummer Tim Rachbach kicks into thumping techno mode in Cyberbalkanization, a suspensefully pulsing Turkish-flavored metal tune by bassist Mat Muntz, bristling with high-voltage tradeoffs and intertwining solos. They take it out with Beninghove’s Hangmen-style metal and then a psychedelic accordion outro

Sutin’s remake of the traditional tune Tumbalalaika has a desolate, glimmering poignancy, Rosenblum’s starry piano against Goldfarb’s languid Romany-tinged phrases, Sutin takes the energy up between a forlornly dancing Muntz solo and Rosenblum’s graceful, elegaic conclusion.

Astrid Kuljanic sings the first of two Joseph Rumshinsky numbers, Sheyn Vi Di Levone, a sardonic noir Vegas tango of sorts: her jazz kazoo solo has to be heard to be believed. Then they make Balkan metal out of Im Odessa – but with Rosenblum’s accordion, Shiffer’s airy alto sax and Sutin’s wild spirals interspersed up to a punchline that’s too good to spoil.

Sunrise, Sunset gets reinvented as a slinky, distantly lurid Twin Peaks Red Room theme, lit up with Rosenblum’s cascades, Shiffer’s summery alto trading off with Sutin’s knifes-edge violin before things get really crazy,

Pretty much every klezmer band does Rumshinsky’s Builgar; Klazz-Ma-Tazz’s epic version blends Hendrix, hints of an Appalachian dance and Balkan metal into a colorful salute to the song’s theatrical origins. And the take of Bei Mir Bist Du Schon is surreal to the extreme, balmy Rachelle Garniez-esque balladry bookending hard swing with Sutin at the center; Zhenya Lopatnik sings

Sutin’s only original here, the diptych Letting Go, is the album’s most cinematic track. A lushly vamping, edgy Middle Eastern groove gives way to a rippling Rosenblum piano solo, then Sutin gives the music in a brighter, more latin pulse, Golfarb’s icepicking signaling a return to an insistent attack. This band has a huge ceiling: fans of jazz, metal, Jewish folk, David Lynch soundtracks and all other things noir will not be disappointed. You’ll see this on the best albums of 2018 page if we make it that far.

You Can Lead a Bushwick Crowd to Water But…

The Man in the Long Black Coat turns through the entryway and enters the Bushwick bar. Other than a few gaggles of gentrifiers, it’s pretty empty. The walls are festooned with leftwing slogans, but the beer prices don’t match the decor. Nor should they, really. This is all for show, the man decides. It’s a Kafka short story, The Department of Protests. You see the bureaucrat, you sign up to rally about your favorite issue: the weather, catcalls, cruelty to pet marmosets. Anything you want, really, unless that might impede the steady flow of income upward from the working class to the gentrifiers’ parents.

This bar has a reputation for things starting late. Nublu late. Which explains why nothing’s happening yet. The man decides to take a walk around the neighborhood, a dubious choice considering that it’s nine in the evening. On his way out, he almost bumps head-on into a friend, who’s carrying her axe. They greet each other; he swings the door wide so that she can make her way in. “See ya in a bit,” he says brightly.

He’s lying. He has no intention of coming back til showtime. When he reaches the corner, he decides to take a left on Irving for once. Walking toward Myrtle, he stops in at a couple of delis to see if they have his favorite beer. But they don’t carry it.

The Man in the Long Black Coat doesn’t even like beer. But it’s cheaper than anything available at the yuppie wine stores – which at this hour are still open, even if nobody’s in there. Just as well, he thinks. The sidewalks may be deserted at this hour, but the cops always put undercovers out in front of the luxury condos.

Past the park, a guy with a backpack approaches from behind. Suddenly he’s a little too close for comfort. The man weighs the possibility of danger, pulls to the right, then with a quick backward glance takes his phone out of his pocket.  He puts it to his ear. “What?” he asks sharply.

There’s nobody at the other end. But that doesn’t matter. “I’m on Irving and, um, Hart Street,” the man says with a hint of aggravation. He prepares for plan B.

But there’s no need. The guy with the backpack – a blue-collar kid in cheap work boots, jeans and a vinyl winter coat – passes on the left. The man puts his phone back as the kid shuffles along.

As he gets closer to Myrtle, the man brightens as he passes a couple of lowlit Ecuadorian delis. Brightly colored bags of snacks, tropical fruit soda and dried chiles are visible from outside. The man considers going in – he’s running out of hot pepper at home – but decides it would look weird if he brought a bag of groceries into the bar. Out here the new arrivals don’t shop anywhere but Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s, or from the expensive Korean delis.

He turns around when he hits Myrtle, retracing his steps, one eye over his shoulder. Luxury condos, undercover cops or not, this is still a dangerous neighborhood. But none of the delis have his first choice of beer – and by now he could use one.

Returning to the bar, his timing turns out to be perfect. The roughly eighteen members of Funkrust Brass Band file from the back room to the front: first the reeds, then brass, then the drummers. They all wear black costumes. The horn players’ valves are all lit up in white like little Christmas trees. Their frontwoman has a bullhorn and leads the band in a chant as the horns pump out a catchy march. They have a theme song! Slowly, one by one, they march back to the inner room.

Several of the customers from the front follow them in, mystified. If they’ve ever seen a street band before, they’ve never been this close. And this group is very theatrical. In formation like a phalanx of soldiers, they crouch, and leap, and strike poses. One of their trumpet players climbs way up by the PA system, balances precariously on something extruding and plays a mean solo. For a moment, the crowd is into it.

For a band who don’t tour much or even play out a lot, they’re very tight. Just as impressive, the man thinks, is that half of their members are women. Even by punk rock standards, that’s noteworthy.  Although they use a lot of minor keys, their songs are closer to punk than Balkan music – and they’re catchy.

The man finds himself nodding along as the trombones blaze and snort and the drums rumble. “Why are we alone?” the group sing in unison throughout one of the quieter vamps. Out of biological necessity, the man wants to tell them. If we were telepathic, it would kill us. If we could feel everyone’s pain, we’d be dead in a nanosecond. But he doesn’t say anything.

The novelty wears off, the crowd starts to filter out and two catchy, thumping numbers later, the band is done. Though what they play is obviously dance music – or at least you can march to it – nobody dances. Afterward, their singer mingles with what’s left of the crowd, handing out buttons and taking emails. The kids seems receptive – that’s a good sign, the man thinks.

Greek Judas play afterward and pretty much completely clear the room. The man finds this amusing, considering that they packed Hank’s the last time they played the place. But this is Bushwick, and the newcomers obviously have no use for loud heavy metal versions of Middle Eastern flavored crime rhymes from the 1930s Greek gangster underworld.

From the first few notes of the first song, it’s clear that singer Quince Marcum – who sings in Greek even if he doesn’t speak it – is way too low in the mix. Afterward, he turns up – and so do his bandmates. Wade Ripka eventually switches from guitar to lapsteel for extra marauding resonance while Strat player Adam Good plays gritty chromatics and some oud voicings – which makes sense considering he’s also an oudist. A mask hangs from the back of Marcum’s head; Good wears a Batman-style mask. Bassist Nick Cudahy plays simple, hypnotic intervals on a big, beautiful Gibson Firebird model and sports a deer mask. Drummer Chris Stromquist is also some equine creature, and makes it look easy as he follows the songs’ tricky meters. He should be the group’s Minotaur – he knows this labyrinth by heart.

Marcum gamely explains a few of the narratives – a guy lusting after a cute Romany girl in the adjacent public bath; two smalltime crooks planning on resuming their music careers once they get out of jail; and a crack whore on the streets of Athens in the 1920s. But there’s hardly anyone there to explain them to. The band soldier on, determined to have some fun even if nobody else is there to share it with them. That’s ok, the man thinks. This isn’t their turf anyway. Or mine either. After their last song, he exits without a word.

Nuclear Family Fantasy Bring Their Scorching, Cynical, Catchy Songs to Williamsburg

Nuclear Family Fantasy play heavy, punk-inspired rock with catchy, anthemic hooks and a great sense of humor. Frontwoman Mossy Ross is a one-woman wrecking crew: she plays both bass and drums and is also a first-rate singer, with an understatedly pissed-off, chilly delivery. William Wilcox handles lead and rhythm guitars with equal parts punk snarl and metal slash. They’ve got a couple of Williamsburg gigs coming up, on Jan 19 at 9:45 PM at the Gutter in Williamsburg for $5 and then on the 25th at 10 at Diviera Drive, 131 Berry St (N 6/7th Sts).

Their debut album is streaming at Bandcamp. The opening track is Everybody Loves You When They’re Drunk: #bestsongtitleever, right? Ross cynically fills in every detail in a dead-end life, desperate to get out: “This is the place great minds go to meet…getting thrown to the wolves without being thrown a bone…” Wilcox’s solo out matches Ross’ withering commentary.

The duo go in a stoner boogie direction in Done, which sounds like a heavier Spanking Charlene. It’s easy to see where this one comes from: the album is inspired by a dysfunctional relationship where the guy went AWOL and remains on the missing persons list more than a year later.

Coulda, Shoulda, Woulda is faster, with an acidic early Siouxsie new wave feel. Anger Hangs On Her has an icy, implied ba-bump groove, Ross painting a picture of the kind of barfly girl we all know medicating herself to passout point. Ross hits some neat syncopation in the more low-key Left Me Lonely Again; the album winds up with Ross’ heaviest and most rhythmically tricky number, So Many Maybes Ago. An awful lot of people are going to relate to these gloomy, doomed, but indomitably catchy songs.

Brooklyn’s Creepiest Metal Band Hit Barbes Tomorrow Night, Golden Fest on the 13th.

Greek Judas have the creepiest, most twistedly psychedelic sound of any metal band in New York. They play electrified rebetiko music. Rebetiko was to Greece in the 1920s and 30s what metal was in the early 70s cinderblock slums of Europe: the default music of a disenfranchised criminal underworld. Rebetiko songs celebrate getting stoned, smuggling hash, running from the law and dealing with the consequences sometimes – what’s more metal than that, right? Greek Judas play those feral, frequently macabre, chromatically slashing anthems wearing animal masks, with their guitars turned up to eleven. Their debut album is streaming at Bandcamp; they’re playing Barbes tomorrow night, Jan 4 at 8 PM, then they’re at Golden Fest on the 13th where they will probably be louder than any of the blaring brass bands.

The album’s first track is Young Hash Smokers (the video is here). Adam Good’s sludgy growl anchors bandleader Wade Ripka’s nails-down-the-blackboard shrieks over the steady thud of bassist Nick Cudahy and drummer Chris Stromquist. Dressed in a monk’s robe, frontman Quince Marcum sings in Greek for a strong, expressive celebration of cannabis resin.

Ripka’s guitar prowls and slashes around the upper frets in How Long the Night, up to a sly trick ending. The band bookend the darkly sirening, slide guitar-fueled I’m a Junkie with ominously lingering pieces of the Beatles’ Within You and Without You, and the unexpectedly tasty addition of a string section.

Roma Girl comes across as a mashup of late Beatles clang and smoky Keith Richards riffage, with more darkness than either of those bands – suddenly it hits you that it’s a one-chord jam. The album’s high point and most recent number here, Kokkinia 1955, pulses like a desperately dying quasar, Ripka making evil tremolo metal out of what could have been a bagpipe tune in a past life.

The smugglers’ anthem Contrabandistas is both the album’s most broodingly catchy and epic track. Syndrofisses is a launching pad for the most hydroponically intertwining, Iron Maiden-style guitar here and an especially unhinged Ripka solo that Good leaps out of and takes the song into slyly sunbaked early 70s territory.

The most evocatively desperate number here is Why I Smoke Cocaine, a crack whore’s sad story – that stuff existed on the streets of Athens in the 20s. The final cut is I’ll Become a Monk, the closest thing to a poignant breakup anthem here. Best album of 2018 so far by a mile.

Fun fact: before they were Greek Judas, the core of the band were in a stately, more traditionally-oriented rebetiko trio, Que Vlo-ve. You can still get their singles as free downloads from Bandcamp.

New York’s Best Heavy Psych Band Play a Rare Intimate Show at Pete’s This Saturday Night

The idea of New York’s best acid rock band in the cozy, comfortable confines of Pete’s Candy Store this Saturday night at 10:30 PM is just plain sick. Are Desert Flower going to play an acoustic set? Or are they going to rip the roof off the room like they did at Sidewalk one Friday night in the spring of 2016, when they opened for one of Lorraine Leckie’s quasi-rehearsals in between Bowery Ballroom gigs?

Maybe it was the OMFG moment right before that show when it looked like lead guitarist Migue Mendez’s pedalboard had suddenly died. But even if he hadn’t managed to bring it back to life, the show would have gone on – and on, and on, relentlessly, wave after wave of sonic assault. Classic psychedelic intricacy and interplay and world-class chops, punk rock volume. It was like being transported back to an imaginary Isle of Wight in 1972, right on top of the stage and the crushing banks of Marshall stacks.

As loud as the guitars were that night, frontwoman Bela Zap Art would not be denied. She can sing tango and blues with the world’s best, but this gig is where she gets to cut loose and let that otherworldly, crystalline wail rise to the rafters. Belting to the top of her register, she channeled righteous rage and distantly horror-stricken angst back-to-back with an uneasy allure, at the very edge of terror. LSD is scary stuff. Obviously, it’s not clear if anyone in the band is experienced that way – and nobody onstage was tripping, But that’s what gave this music its initial surreal jolt of microcurrent back in the 60s.

And Desert Flower’s music was sublime. Like a lot of bands with roots south of the border, they like minor keys. In a particularly strange stroke of irony, the best song of the night was Traveler, Mendez’s ominously lingering phrases and furtive pull-offs opening it over Paola Luna’s stately, carefully articulated broken chords. Bassist Seba Fernandez, playing through the house amp, didn’t have his usual crackle, so he stuck with looming ambience. Drummer Alfio Casale was the one guy in the band who treated this like the small-room gig that it was: he knew he didn’t have to hit hard to fill the space. As the majestic 6/8 anthem peaked out, Zap Art’s voice went with it, solace to anyone on what seemed to be a trip that would never end.

The fury of the rest of the set was something that room has probably never seen, at least since the days of popular punkmetal band the Larval Organs there about fifteen years ago. The blast and syncopated crash of Sube, with Zap Art’s enigmatic “going down on the grey skies” chorus was matched by the carnivalesque strut of Warrior. On that one, the band brought up a guest trombonist who put the bell of his horn around one of the vocal mics and then blew feral snorts, a psycho hippo’s death song. It will be worth the trip – in every sense of the word – to see what Desert Flower are going to to do in an even more intimate and far more sonically welcoming space this December 23.

Revisiting a Heavy Psych Milestone by Electric Citizen

Today’s Halloween album is Higher Time by Electric Citizen, streaming at Bandcamp. One of the few female-fronted heavy psych bands, the Cincinnati group’s 2016 second album is the band’s best and heaviest so far.

It opens with the uneasy gallop of the gloomy, regret-infused opening track, Crux, Andrew Higley’a organ doubling Ross Dolan’s distorted guitar lines, up to a bluesy guitar solo on the way out. If Tony Iommi had stuck with Jethro Tull through Aqualung and had convinced Ian Anderson to take a backseat to a charismatic woman, Devil’s in the Passing Time might have been the result. Likewise, if Blondie and Sabbath had a bastard child, it would be Evil – the Electric Citizen song, that is.

Frontwoman Laura Dolan’s Ozzy-on-oxy vocals float over the galloping fuzztone blast in Ghost up to a a couple of fryolator organ breaks. Likewise, her achingly bluesy bends elevate Golden Mean above the legions of well-intentioned but derivatively riffing Sabbath imitators. The album’s title track blends swirl and crunch through a punishing attack that disintegrates to an echoey haze; a bittersweet guitar solo reignites everything.

Heavy blues riffage fuels Misery Keeper, which the band takes on a doublespeed sprint midway through before drummer Nate Wagner gets some bludgeoning tradeoffs going with the guitar. The band’s frontwoman gets philosophical over the crashing, slow hammering chords of Natural Law: everything is a dialectic, up to the careening chaos of the twin-tracked guitar solo out.

Social Phobia throws a savage riff or two back in the direction of a classic from Sabbath’s first album, anchored by Randy Proctor’s fat, distorted bass; it’s also the point where the guitar finally cuts loose with some supersonic blasts. The album’s final cut is Two Hearted Woman: imagine the early MC5 with a woman out front. Wouldn’t the world be a better place if metal bands would give up the cartoonish pigsnorting for the kind of vocals that Laura Dolan does here? Wouldn’t it be cool if other guitarists took a cue from this band, made their solos count for something and didn’t waste notes?

You Bred Raptors? Bring Their Cinematic, Instantly Recognizable, Individualistic Grooves to Drom Tomorrow Night

If you pass through the station at Union Square at night, you’ve probably seen one of New York’s most distinctive, high-voltage bands. You Bred Raptors? typically hold fort over the N and R platforms there. Just the sight of Peat Rains, Bryan Wilson and Patrick Bradley wailing on eight-string bass, cello and drums, respectively, is enough to make pretty much anybody stop dead in their tracks. Then there’s the relentless barrage of riffs, and textures, and epic cinematic vistas that transcend any concept of a cello-metal band, let alone what those low-end instruments can typically do. Are these irrepressible instrumentalists a funk band? Sometimes, sure. Postrock? Why not? Prog, too? Umm…while there will probably be some hobbity old men in Gentle Giant tour shirts from 1974 who will dig this stuff, not really – You Bred Raptors? are too tuneful and purposeful. They’re playing the album release show for their new one International Genetics tomorrow night, June 15 at 8 PM at Drom; advance tix are $15 and are still available.

The album – streaming at Bandcamp – opens with the slinky Bayonette, Rains switching between anchoring Wilson’s dancing cello lines and burning with big distorted chords: imagine Break of Reality but with a metal edge. The second number, Polkadot has a playful, catchy minor-key Balkan-tinged groove with tasty, baroque-tinged harmonies between the cello and the high strings of the bass, peaking out with a sweet new wave of British heavy metal.

Ringing and resonant glockenspiel from Bradley carries the melody in Bellflower, an unexpectedly summery soul tune that builds toward a brisk highway theme. Stalemate has a trip-hop sway and more intricate baroque exchanges between bass and cello; Jethro Tull only wish they played Bach as tightly as these guys do this, all the way to a starkly fiery early ELO-ish peak.

Lagoon has an easygoing giraffe-walking pace, tinges of Afrobeat from the bass, then shifting to a muted suspense. Sharks & Minnows follows a bucolic, brisk stroll fueled by Wilson’s rustic lines, then predators loom in from the shadows and eventually all hell breaks loose. The band brings the glock ripples back for Vault, a wryly strutting baroque-rock number.

The crescendoing, anthemic Hyperbole is the album’s funkiest track. Melancholy cello contrasts with janglerock guitar lines from the bass and bright glock touches in Eyehole of a Domino. There’s gritty frustration boiling over into rage and hints of flamenco in the growling 6/8 phrases of Kowtow circle around.

Smithereens, the album’s most epic track, begins as an bittersweet, elegaic march – a wartime parable maybe? – and morphs into an art-rock take on a folk hymn theme of sorts. The album winds up with Ass to Ass, most likely the only trip-hop art-rock canon ever written. Pound for pound, this is one of the catchiest albums of the year – and as tersely as the band plays here, they take these songs to some pretty crazy places live. Recommended if you like Radiohead, the Mars Volta, Los Crema Paraiso and Rasputina.