Replicator

There's much to like about this record. Let's start with the song titles. "The Frogurt© Is Cursed" -- that's a good one, pretty self-explanatory. "It Seems Like the Real Deal, But the Citizenship Doesn't Hurt" -- hmmm, can't figure that out, but it's funny, no? Also, "Warrior Needs Food, Badly" -- a reference to the most awesome of awesome old-school arcade games, Gauntlet. So, then: Song titles = good. What else = good here? Oh, everything. Beginning with track one's opening sample, which announces, "Get mad you son of a bitches!," this album is a brooding bevy of rusty-razor riffs, 10-ton bass lines, hollered vocals, and drums that drive the whole careening mess like a rodeo clown taming a mechanical bull. Having tightened up their paranoid noise-tornadoes for this, their second full-length, the members of Oakland's Replicator soundtrack the schizophrenia induced by media overload as only those truly infected with the disease could. The effect is, to borrow the title of track seven, heavier than "The Weight of 3 Marlon Brandos."