First things first. Yes, this is a new double-album from that Deadbeats, one of Los Angeles’s first, hardest, and flat-out weirdest punk bands. Sporadically active over the decades, they’ve been seen in recent years blowing other bands off local stages with shows that look like they were the result of some sorta collaboration between Freud, De Sade, and Herschell Gordon Lewis—chomped brains, femme fatale nurses, leather masks, blow-up dolls, and a laundry list of delightful debauchery. The twenty songs here are much along the lines of their “classic” material: dissonant noise mongering providing the base, with heavy doses of swing, free jazz, complex rhythmic changes, and maybe even a bit of Kurt Weill thrown in for good measure, meted out by an ensemble that’s more orchestra than traditional “band.” Like their legendary live performances, the tunes are sure to challenge the sensibilities of the average punter who’s looking for exactly the same formulaic sonic and lyrical bullshit they get from every other band, but those willing to dive in will find much here that rocks with the kind of crucial chaotic abandon that attracted so many to this “punk” thing so long ago. Good? Shit, I’d go so far as to say this is one of the best albums outta Los Angeles’s underground in years. –Jimmy Alvarado (Deep Six Albatross, [email protected])