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BLACK FOREST
(Sub Pop)
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In forbidding future-times, hulking cyborg-driven bulldozers will grind across the post-apocalyptic wasteland, eradicating every last vestige of greenery and humanity as their exhaust fumes ooze into the soot-colored sky. At least, that’s how Seattle’s technophobic trio A Frames envision it on their deliciously bleak third album. "No burgers, no sports, no jokes/Civilization was a hoax," singer/guitarist Erin Sullivan intones on "Black Forest II," in a grave tenor whose ice-veined detachment makes Joy Division’s Ian Curtis seem giddy in comparison. Sullivan doesn’t come off as the kind of guy who drops 15 percent into his 401k every year in the hope of a bright tomorrow, not when he’s singing two-minute tunes about crippling alienation ("Experiment"), plague- and Pompei-style devastation ("Flies"), and the many evils of industrialization ("Age of Progress," "Quantum Mechanic"). Wringing every last drop of austerity from the hallowed post-punk canon, A Frames often sound like one of those old Soviet propaganda posters come to life, with Sullivan’s sinewy riffs, drummer Lars Finberg’s mechanized clangs and clanks, and bassist Min Yee’s iron-jawed vigor conjoined like the factory worker intertwined with the pistons and gears until he’s one with the machine that will swallow his soul.
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