Lovely is a strange word to use for something that tromps through your eardrums like an enforcer mech with arm-cannons blazing, but it’s the right one for this release. Don’t let the fuzz fool you: the distortion is turned up high, but these tracks are tightly constructed.

“Mayor Machino” starts by establishing a slow-ascending, monumental motif on fuzzy, distorted guitar while a second, brighter guitar glistens and shreds in counterpoint. The drums, when they enter, lend shape to the theme and let it ramify before smashing it to bits, reassembling it a meaner shape than before, and smashing it to bits one more time.

“Cannibal Cop” is a more anarchic creature. It begins in a dust-storm of noisy atmospherics and percussive guitar, explodes into a cyclone of precision guitar work, lollops through a modified Reggaeton beat, coheres thrillingly into a menacing surf-rock ostinato, and finally comes apart at the seams before screeching to a halt.

Listening to the release right through with the title (2200CE) in mind, we found ourselves in a brutal, post-apocalyptic world, on the run from something in a metal exoskeleton. Not somewhere we’d want to live, but a wildly colorful place to visit.