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The Black Math Experiment is not a normal band. Sure, they make music, in a loose sense of the word. More than anything, they’re just evidence that all the members of those unpopular cliques from high school never really went away — they just started a band. The Houston group’s latest release, Last Transmission from the Blue Room, is at times gothic, often theatrical, and simply bleeding with nerdy pop-culture references. There’s a good dose of ecstasy-induced raving and mindless headbanging, and it’s conceited, as much as music can be. One time through the CD and the listener will know that these guys believe, to the deepest core of their being, that they rock.
Listing the highlights of the album is difficult simply because each track is so disparate from the others. The album starts off with “Science Fiction Double Feature,” a song that sounds like it escaped from a best-of compilation of old TV theme songs. Jef with one F’s monotone imitation-punk vocals start the song off energetically before switching into a lilting sing-talk that would make the B-52’s Fred Schneider weep with envy. Is the song obnoxious? Absolutely, but that’s the point. If you don’t understand yet, then you haven’t been listening.
The second track, “Ology,” is a song about — and stay with me here — geometry. The minimalist power chords that serve as the song’s musical backbone give it a Weezer-like charm that makes the listener want to dance around the room and blush with embarrassment at the same time. As the children’s-song style vocals slowly begin to layer themselves a la “Row, Row, Row Your Boat,” one can clearly hear the refrain, “God is purple” echoing into infinity. Musical intent has never been so elusive.
“Every Five Minutes” and “Alcohol” both represent the overtly comedy-oriented tracks on the album. The first of the two lends its charming commentary on essentially every hard rock icon of the past three decades, while the second espouses a little heavy drinking as a cure for everything from the annoyance of sitting in traffic to the pain of not getting chosen as Dungeon Master. The choruses may sound like nails on a chalkboard, but I have at least five friends waiting for a copy of Blue Room just to hear these comedy tracks.
About halfway through the album, one discovers that the real secret of the Black Math Experiment is that they are all talented musicians. Every glaringly simple riff and off-key lyric is painstakingly engineered to make the listener uncomfortable, confused, and intrigued. One faces this realization gradually, and in different places throughout the album. Listening to “Ruler of the Trance Robots,” it may suddenly dawn on the listener that the techno beat is amazingly catchy and well developed. While “Lost” slowly rolls along, the dark and soulful vocal work may, for a moment, raise an eyebrow. And despite one’s opinion of the rest of the album, anyone who doesn’t crack a smile as Jef emphatically proclaims that “Every five minutes/Cannibal Corpse wishes they had some of that fat Third Eye Blind cash” can be safely pronounced dead.
When asked to describe their music, BME simply said, “You know that feeling you get when you lean back in a chair, and then you almost fall but just at the last second you catch yourself? We sound exactly like that.” And they’re right. Between talking about Lemmy Kilmister’s libido and invoking the power of the almighty Konami Code, one begins to see through the insanity to the underlying structure that drives these misfits.
Yes, the music is nerdy, self-indulgent, and has more Theremin sounds than is even remotely necessary, but it’s also incredibly clever. The choice of juxtapositions fulfill the promise of catching the listener when they are about to fall. The band’s intent becomes clear only after hearing the subtlety with which classical music lines are tucked into the almost retardedly simple “Ology,” and the deftness with which the seemingly useless sound clips serve to set the tone for the subsequent cluster of songs on the album.. The Black Math Experiment is very serious about not taking their music seriously. They intend to repel the listener as much as possible without actually losing him, in hopes of catching a smile by the end. It may simply be a coalescence of 3rd generation nerdisms with some cheesy synth in the background, but after hearing the conviction of the players on “Last Transmission from the Blue Room,” one can’t help but fall victim to their conceit. This band rocks.
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