Blisteringly loud, politically engaged, full of stops and starts and broken by bizarre samples, Replicator's second full-length delivers on the promise of 2002's untitled EP, while adding new textures to the band's mathy, driven anxiety. Each member of the SF-based trio brings his own brand of insanity to Replicator -- Conan Neutron is behind the frenzied political rants and stabbing guitar, Ben Adrian's thundering bass drives every track into the wall and beyond, and Chris Bolig's drums hold the whole thing together -- except when he, too, explodes.
Replicator have become, if anything, more political than ever in the two years since their last record. Before, the issues were economic and social -- the collapse of the dotcom economy, unemployment, estrangement from the system -- and you can hear a bit of that on "Epoch" (the EP's best track, which is also included on You Are Under Surveillance). On the newer songs, however, the targets are more specific. "Get mad, get mad, get mad, you son of a bitches," says the sample that introduces "The Frogurt Is Cursed", opening fire on the Bush administration, the war, the restrictions on civil liberties, the religious right and any other target that happens to raise its head. "You've released the fuckin' fury," a voice with a city accent observes, against a head-banging assault of guitar, bass and drums, and given the rest of the album, it's hard to argue. Later on, there are samples of President Bush's voice mixed before and under "It Seems Like The Real Deal, But The Citizenship Doesn't Hurt", spouting his usual self-justifying pieties on terrorism, but Dubya gets buried under the traded shouts of "Go back / We'll take you to camp x-ray," which may refer to Guantanamo. It could all too easily go over the top, but there's a goofiness here that undercuts the commentary. How seriously can you take a band that names one track after a frozen dessert and another ("Warrior Needs Food, Badly") after a line from a video game?
The production here is clear enough that you can hear every element all the time, interacting, underlining, egging the others on to new levels of intensity. Moreover, there's sudden, startling space built into the wall of noise, instances of silence that are as physical a presence as the cacophony that follows them. The Sabbathy interplay of bass and drums in "Mutually Assured Repulsion"'s intro is great, not just because of how Adrian and Bolig fill the spaces around each other's notes, but because of the stops that have you leaning in for whatever's next. The song thickens to a metal-tinged crescendo, stomping on the on-beats with guitar and bass and drums, then backs off again to a stripped bassline and vocals. An increasingly frenetic chorus of "We're ready / Our wills are honed" is a march turning into a riot, a fractured firestorm that ends so suddenly you gasp.
The biggest step forward comes near the end, with "The Weight Of 3 Marlon Brandos", a tightly coiled meditation on integrity. It is more restrained than anything else on the album, with guitar lines that feel almost lyrical, yet pushed forward by the same intensity as harder-rocking cuts like "The Frogurt" and "Alert Status: 0". It's like a loud song being pushed through a thin straw, concentrated and made relevant by its constraints. The song ends with a really beautiful piano solo from Ben Adrian, which somehow transforms the tune's initial anger into sadness.
This is smart, angry music, played as hard as possible by people who are mad as hell but also prone to the occasional fit of giggles. If that sounds like your cup of tea, you could hardly do better than You Are Under Surveillance.
