When you get right down to the nitty gritty, the music world is a lot like high school. The RIAA is the principal; he's the one who sentences you to detention for stealing MP3s from the blackboard or listening to pirated music in the bathroom. The teachers are the record labels. They either get on your case about poor record sales or let you coast through four years. And so on (MTV=the stereotypically vapid, leg-spreading cheerleaders; hot bands=the football team, which offer musical melvins to bands smaller than themselves; Pitchfork= the yearbook editors, etc).

Following that metaphor, "popularity" in high school roughly translates to "relevance" in the music biz. These terms are poorly defined in their respective contexts, but both determine the relative importance of the individuals in their similar worlds. I can either dismiss the new Thrones EP two-fer as "irrelevant" (picture the "bitch clique" at your high school putting some poor four-eyed soul in her place), or simply say what I honestly think about it, leaving myself open to the inevitable atomic wedgie. In the name of integrity, I choose the latter.

Thrones is the name for former Melvins and Earth bassist Joe Preston's solo project. What's that? You don't remember Joe Preston? He was on the cross country team. Kinda scary looking kid. He was voted "most likely to commit homicide by age 25." Instead, he just turned out some of the oddest music I've heard yet this year, in the form of Thrones' Sperm Whale and White Rabbit, White Rabbit, White Rabbit EPs, compiled here into album format. The tracks have been re-sequenced for maximum doom 'n' gloom, sort of like the patches on Joe's jean jacket.

The first thing about this album that really struck me is its eminent bass power. I mean, sure the guy's a bassist by nature, but you wouldn't expect the low-end to overpower the more typical rock/pop ingredients. Not so, here. Preston slathers most of these eight tracks with some of the nastiest fuzz- bass you've heard since "Everyone I Went to High School with is Dead," Mr. Bungle's paean to post-adolescent disaffection. It's all reasonably well executed, but obviously, there's no Stu Hamm-esque flashwankery. And at times, even the spastic drum machines and effects-drenched vocals disappear in favor of a solo bass death march, like on the excellent "Ephraim."

But despite the slight lack of variation in the instrumentation, Preston manages to imbue every track with at least a modicum of uniqueness. "Oso Malo" breaks off a nice piece of freak-sludge that resembles a Melvins record played at half-speed. "Nuts and Berries" is almost poppy in a bizarre, time-distorted way. "Acris Venator" offers some innocuous detuned synth noodling. "The Anguish of Bears" begins like another grease dribble from the musical frying pan, but then breaks out into a quite prog-like interlude and conclusion.

The three standout tracks, however, each stand out for different reasons. "Manmtn" answers the unasked question: "What if the bastard child of Type O Negative was fed through a Seattle grunge filter?" The song is absolutely hilarious, and I believe it was intended as such. Then, Preston waltzes in from left field with a straight-faced cover of the spaghetti-western theme "Django," and actually surprises with skilled Italian vocals. Who knew ol' Joe could belt 'em out? Finally, "Obolus" closes out the album with clean- sounding vocoder, carefully structured sturm und drang, and 34 minutes of crickets chirping. No, I'm not kidding about the crickets, but quit your whining. That's what the stop button is for.

So, at Music High School, what is Joe Preston's niche? Most likely freaking out his classmates, when they pay attention to him. The sad part is, they don't, and probably never will. A record like this is really great to hear once in a while, but I doubt it's going to end up on anyone's Top 10 list. Preston seems satisfied cooking up some of the weirdest house-quaking noise yet heard, rather than creating a unified, coherent statement for all to marvel at. And it's this lack of lofty ambition that actually makes the album work.

-Craig Griffith