!!!

!!! may smell like a jam band -- they're alleged to have done an entire U.S. tour without showering between shows, carving a wide arc of empty space into the audience -- but their musical cues come straight out of early '80s post-punk. Their bass- and cowbell-heavy grooves often draw comparisons to Liquid Liquid or A Certain Ratio; on the title track, they're straight-up Bauhaus. "Funk-punk" doesn't have quite the ring it used to, but here, the things that make these trisyllabic rockers different stand out even more, especially on oddball rave-ups like "Sweet Life" and "Yadnus."

Brooklyn's !!! (pronounced "chick chick chick") have been doing this groove-band shit
since early this decade, and they've honed some key tricks: Expertly modulated
tension-and-release and modest atmospherics are routinely deployed on their third album,
as are Tourettic hype-man vocals. Tunes? Not a ton, though there are more here than on
earlier efforts, including the damn catchy "Must Be the Moon." !!!'s dark grooves... More >