The future of music that will never come to pass. The climax of rock music. This is outsider music for our entire dimension. No band has had this sort of vision since Beefheart marinaded us with tales of Big Joan's anatomy (and what a serenade that is). In fact, go look at any performance of Beefheart right now (or listen to Trout Mask... no, both). Catch a note of the spastic rhythms and atypical.. everything. It's a blues-rock, free-jazz, genre-destroying cacophony caught in a blender. But the reason we cherish Beefheart isn't because he's a gimmick that had the crazy idea of making unpop and somehow we ran with it, it's because somehow beneath the blimps and motherships there is an undeniable structure. A brooding intelligence that guides every misstep into a rightful position. A stealthy constructed masterpiece. But how dare I compare some obscure midwestern punk band to the some of the greatest minds in rock history? But dear reader, this band is no ordinary band, and for better or worse, you will certainly notice that from the first seconds of this swirling masterpiece. "Spastic spidery-thin guitars blurt and blast against each other over an equally spastic, rhythm-busting drummer." There's my review. That's all I can say without twisting my mind as insanely as they twist music. It's relentless and beautiful. It's a fourth dimensional god appearing once before you for a microsecond. You recognize it, and you sense its beauty, but any question about the encounter invariably ends with an apologetic "I don't know".
But something you can relate it to... take your Hellas and Flying Luttenbachers, then cut their music into brief microsecond sections, and spend an infinite amount of timing piecing the pieces together in a post-deconstructionalist masterpiece, and maybe you'd have a fraction of this 30 minute freakout.
I used to get upset that this is all we've seen from this band, three years removed from a projected sequel, but I've noticed that in the dozens of times I've probably listened to this album I've never heard the same album twice. But it won't stop me from begging for them to return from whatever dimension they hang out in.
