KWCW

By all counts, Early Man are an atavistic band ahead of their time. Hell, they make no claim that the primitive should be avoided: from their sexist moniker to the embryonic and skeletal album art, every indication is there that the band is looking retrograde. And an exploration of the album only confirms such a suspicion, with the first tracks assailing ears with riffs worthy of Iron Maiden and Sabbath. The new thing about this recovery of 70s and 80s awesomeness? It’s not at all ironic. The clincher? Only two guys are thrashing around and creating this veritable cavern of Stone Age sound.

The names of the tracks are as ominous as the motif of the album, with “Feeding Frenzy” no less intimidating than “Death is the Answer” and “Raped and Pillaged”. And the rock is loud, shunning the recent trend of fragmented sub-genres like ‘grindcore’, ‘doom’ and ‘metalcore’ or even ‘hardestcore’.

So grow out your hair a few more inches, break out your old dirty black shirt and bang your head around. Like you did earlier.

If anyone hates glee clubs as much as I do, it might just be Oxford Collapse. No, they’re not from the fine English college town, but yes, they do play instruments, or rather, assail and attack with trebly guitar riffs, pokey drum fills and nary a downtempo beat. Sure, you might argue that something without vocals would make a better antidote to the poisonous evils of a cappella, maybe that new Explosions in the Sky record or even a John Zorn piece, but be realistic: some of us prefer catchy rollicking indie rock to self-indulgent experimentalism. And A Good Ground gives you many more-than-modest helpings of that ol’ down home jangle pop, even country-fying the album with titles like “Dusty Horses Practice”, “Empty Fields” and “Flora Y Fauna”.

As for the singing, there’s certainly no vocally-imitated guitar solos, falsetto is rare and shy yelps are preferred to mediocre grandstanding. And instead of arranging some banal Top 40 song with a beatboxer, Oxford can make even the simplest melodies, like that of “Cracks in the Causeway”, float over a light 4-minute jam.

Check out “Proofreading” first. For some reason it reminds me of Pete and Pete, the episode where the boys hire Artie to beat up the local vocal group.