Hella

There’s No 666 in Outer Space (Ipecac)
by Craig Regala

Well, shit, there aren’t only a jillion bands I know dick about the last dozen years, but a couple dozen genres I couldn’t dowse with Mike Watt’s dick. Big fucking deal. If you can’t grasp the deal as a regular citizen, it’s bunk. This is not bunk. It was a two-piece for years, developed from a four-piece with those attendant chunks re-added, plus a butcher to sing. Singing butchers’ll usually drive it home. Well, the driveway these guys land in has a bumpity eye-flickering surface that throws key changes and 32nd notes at your nose in a fractious rockin’ manner like they’ve decided math rock, ’90s emo (Braid! motherfucker) prog rock antics, pomp punk, and old King Crimson records can all be culled and cuddled into a soul yearning that fits today’s youth like a warm Jell-O mitten.

Call’m No Means No to Mars Volta’s Yes if you need to. And if you need to get someone’s sister/mother/father/brother to buy the goddamn thing so you can “borrow” it, so be it. If you demand a settled groove to sit and ponder (hell, I’m a stoner rock dude, man), it may take some concentration. If you’re a lively, caffeinated citizen, jump in the boat, we’re hoppin’ waves in the winter!

Got a six CD changer? This one, Faith No More’s King for a Day, King Crimson’s Red, No Means No’s Small Parts Isolated and Destroyed, Stinking Lizaveta’s Caught Between Worlds, and The Mars Volta’s Deloused in the Comatorium. Should please the multi-generational wha-hoo fest you have the next time your uncle gives you a couple oz’s of ‘shrooms.
(www.ipecac.com)