Means - The Divine Right of CD

Factory stamped in the battered hull of America's rust belt, this Columbus, Ohio quartet weigh in with the percussive sway and jagged gift-bearing capacity of a piñata brimming with nails. Community Horse, the band's second album, and first for Reptilian, ups the abrasive ante from the previous full length, "Vil/Viol", pours acid on the bated hooks, and in the noise-rock sea it goes for a twenty-six minute thrashing swim. These twelve explosive tracks reel in a gilled, hybrid monster flailing with barely contained skronky Stooges wildness, the straight-faced, had-it-up-to-here noise-rock deconstructionism of Amphetamine Reptile's finest troops, and more rock than the proverbial garage can handle. The black and white, bare-boned artwork speaks volumes of the stripped down, fucked up musical approach on the album itself. The guitars screech and howl, but always serving a particular point, and always with the song, not against it, or around it, or whatever the sexless, post-post-post rock nerd set is doing these days. Lockstep rhythm section, and vocals like John Brannon's** kid brother up for a week on speed. Relentless in its sonic bombast, Community Horse is shatteringly loud and screamy from the starting gate all the way to the infirmary at the end. In between, songs are LSD-blessed with absurd sound bites culled from bizarre sources - good luck figuring them out. It's 2007, and sometimes rock actually DOES rock. The Means prove that.