in review / By Julianna Boggs

Out of Africa

(June 26, 2008)  Triclops!

Alternative Tentacles

GALLERY >

Alien-baby vocal phaser, check. Underwater flanger, check. Four SF Bay Area musicians melting down their collective experiences from a flurry of substantive groups such as Bottles and Skulls, Fleshies, Lower Forty-Eight and Victim’s Family into a single, righteous offering to the lords of punk; check. Commence rock.

With a battalion of wailing guitars, pounding drums and epic bass lines, Triclops!’s Out of Africa is like a George Clinton album on a bad acid trip, or a face-melting love child begotten by a one-night stand between the Mars Volta and Jello Biafra then raised by Perry Farrell. It’s a prog-rock, acid-punk dream with the tightest rhythm section you’ve ever heard, and it releases on you unforgivingly.

Following up their acclaimed 2006 Cafeteria Brutalia EP on Sickroom, Out of Africa has nothing to do with Isak Dinesen, nor with Paul Simon, Africa or any other affiliation with world music, but rather concerns itself with savage megablasts to the skull, reverbed guitar progressions, and ranting, raving lyrics that stay in keeping with their parent label, Alternative Tentacles, without becoming bogged down by finger-pointing politics. When you can even understand what the singer is saying, that is.

It’s time for the rundown: track one, savage. Track two, savage. And then we get to “Freedom Tickler” — “Americans can see from our lofty SUVs/ to survey all the freeways we command/ Individuals all/ so rugged and so tall/ is full of blood and guns and Adderrol./ I am one I wont deny it,/ if I want it I will buy it/ I don’t even need to like it/ it is there so I must try it/ I am so hungry!” Johnny No Moniker croons through an on-again off-again underwater vocal flanger effect before Christian Erik breaks into a riff so uncannily reminiscent of At the Drive-In that you have to bite your tongue not to leap into an Enfilade breakdown of “freight freight train coming!”

The subsequent “Duende War” features an anthemic intro worthy of head-banging praise as it breaks down into another consistently epic Triclops! drum line joined by Johnny’s ragged and exasperated shouts. With “Cassava,” the album takes a more serious turn, the vocals becoming an exorcism of apocalyptic anguish.

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