I used to work at a shockingly lame magazine in Miami Beach, Florida, which will remain unnamed. A couple of years before I became employed there, a prankster with a morbid bent sent their offices a plain envelope with a note enclosed informing the unlucky recipient that he/she had just been exposed to anthrax spores. Faceless men in moon-suits straight out of E.T.'s sickbed scene materialized lugging sci-fi looking equipment and quickly exposed the hoax for what it was-- a medically benign joke in lethally bad taste.

Fitting the bill of "bored suburban asshole teenagers," a friend and I came up with an idea for a follow-up prank: mail the same magazine office a cassette of the heavy metal band Anthrax, with a similar note enclosed. Given the severity of the threat, they would have been forced to check whether the Anthrax tape actually had any dangerous spores on it. Fucking ha ha. Of course, five or so years in lockdown is a hefty tag for some fleeting yuks, so we never actually went through with it. But in looking at Atombombpocketknife's name, it occurred to me just now that bandnames which include weapons of mass death (traditionally the province of metal and grindcore bands) have gone really out of vogue.

[As an aside, my hypochondriacal self just finished reading up on the very current threat of anthrax-- the affliction, not the band. It turns out that the inhalant variety (the favored method of dispersal in bioterrorism) has a 99% percent mortality rate! Glad I'm in NYC. Anthrax jokes have gone out of vogue, too, quite suddenly.]

Look closely at the GIF of this album cover and you'll see a flock of soviet-made fighter jets whizzing over the slowly eroding pyramids at Giza. It's not a bad cover; taken with the album title it's very evocative, and the muted greys and blues are beautiful. And yet-- considering that, even as you read this, the largest showing of military airpower since WWII is shaping itself into a holocaustal swarm somewhere "over there"-- it's not quite what I want to be looking at right now. Still, the powerful juxtaposition of sleek, steel, modern shapes against the massive and silent tombs of pharaohs sets the dramatic stage for an amazing rock album.

Only, this record is nowhere close to amazing.

It's merely pretty good. Like many before me, and many to come, I will state the obvious: Atombombpocketknife sounds like a low-budget Unwound. The singer is even called Justin, only in this case, he's a Sinkovich not a Trosper. It's a hard similarity to live up to, and these guys make a valiant attempt. In some cases, they even heroically transcend the facile comparison, sounding not so much like Unwound as a self-indulgent Quicksand.

Sinkovich's even, Thurston Moore-ish delivery carries the majority of these rhythm-centric songs, but only so far. "Gamma Rays Forever" elucidates this point perfectly. A quick-tempo, frenetically riffy song, it grips your attention well into the improbable five-minute mark. Unfortunately, the song extends two minutes past there, in a mess of crackling feedback, guitar harmonics, and a pointless re-rehashing of the once catchy, now just irritating chorus.

"Scan Dramatics" begins marvelously, with an ornate and strangely dancy beat, over which Sinkovich sings Satisfact-style melodies and enigmatic phrases: "Under asterisks and departures is a cadence/ So I've settled for broken placecards and that's erratic/ Navigations and immigrations they seem impressive/ Until they're stapled to the boredom of this stasis." Sure, why not? It is, after all, the album's unequivocally great track.

There's something uneconomic and unfulfilled in ABPK's two-guitar approach. Guitarists Che Arthur and Justin Sinkovich clearly have a great ear for unconventional riffage and harmony, but something in their dual approach seems underdeveloped. "Pair of Evil," a rich sonic deluge of a song, illustrates this problem. Its entire multi-minute introductory section seems to only use one guitar, over brushed drums and dubbed-in "wind" noise. It aims, I'm guessing, for a desolate, sparse feel. And it would have worked pretty well if not for the sheer length of the part. After the five-minute mark (these guys are pretty epic for punks) they redeem themselves with a lush, fuzzed out mid-section which includes some second-guitar noodling that grounds the murk of the main guitar. For the most part, though, the intriguing but unsteady vocal melody is left out to dry, where it could have used some bolstering guitar melody.

ABPK recovers on "Tripwire Tonight," a track that boasts the album's coolest verse section, as well as dissonant guitar jangle reminiscent of Sonic Youth's essential first album and the disc's most driving moments. The truly epic final track, "Violet Encryptions (We Only Move Backwards)," is not the closer I'd have hoped for, but it's close enough. It's still very much Unwound-lite, of course, but the guys manage to sound like they're navigating within a tradition instead of just sounding plain derivative. After a blistering volley of verse-and-choruses, and a sort of weak mid-section with radio-voice overdubs, the album ends with a beautiful six-minute instrumental outro that recalls the feel of Fugazi's Kill Taker-era gem, "Sweet and Low," if a tad more melodramatic.

On that note, I've got to go. The smallpox FAQ I just dug up somehow seems more relevant than this album ever will.

-Camilo Arturo Leslie, September 25th, 2001