Baboon

Secret Robot Control (Wind-Up)
by Austin Nash

Goddamnit! It’s so hot hot hot today that I have to keep my zipper open so I can reach in and pull my nuts out of my ass each time I sit down.

That said: I avoided this album last issue. Not because I was bored (with the album anyway), and not because I disliked it, but because my Grandmother liked it. She took it and kept it for six weeks and avoided my phone calls by claiming hearing aid failure (can’t hear a fart in a rain barrel). I pleaded with her, explaining that the disturbing screaming inside would remind her of the night Jessup burned in the Bassett St. house, or bring on the skitters. That the distortion would get inside her frail bones and disband them like so many Tucks pads in the wind… hold up. I can’t believe I’m saying this stuff about my Grammy. Screw this.

Baboon, while holding onto their comic book danger and intensity, (Venom would make a great mascot), and a tune or so from the Numb EP (the release coinciding with a brief appearance on Walker, Texas Ranger with Chuck Norris, he thought they stunk, I could kick his ass), sees fit to take the knife out of the toaster halfway through Secret Robot Control. I love this. Simple fact: He who learns not, progresses not, becomes uninteresting and eventually sucks (old Kalamazooan proverb). Baboon has succeeded in interjecting some high-quality, palpable, and richly if not delicately textured material into Secret Robot Control. One minute you’re listening to six Komodo Dragons quarter a goat, the next you’re riding the chicane of a wave in Newburyport.

Baboon gets two beers up on the Austin & Nash rating system.