Why do you know the name Red Monkey? Well, you may have seen them open for Fugazi a while back. Or you may recognize Pete and Rachel as members of Pussycat Trash and mainstays of Slampt Underground. But more likely, you caught a glimpse of an album cover while fueling your secret shame by scrolling through Troubleman's new releases on their nifty webbar catalog. Hell, they may even be old hat to you now, after six odd years and three albums to their name.

Alright, I was fucking with you. You don't know the name. And, after careful deliberation, it is my considered opinion that you should not ever want to.

I suppose since the title is a line from a familiar-to-Brits nursery rhyme about proto-terrorist Guy Fawkes that gets chanted every November 5th, we're supposed to start with assumptions of a politicized worldview. But as it turns out, this record is more about alienation-as-politick. (Seriously, if the terrorists aren't alienated, who is?) Here, on Gunpowder, Treason and Plot, the requisite and anticipated socio-political observances would have had a somewhat mullable quality to them if they weren't flavored with such self-mutilation-inducing, quasi-poetic lyrics.

The lazy half-speaking here is of an especially grating sort. I admit I have a pretty low threshold for shit like that, and tend to give special dispensation to famous "spinkers" (e.g. Lou Reed, Travis Morrison and Mark E. Smith) to get at the quality music behind the tone-deaf frontmen. Red Monkey isn't quite in that class. Pete and Rachel take turns sputtering or droning into the mike. The apathy they display in their voices transliterates 100%: I soon no longer care one whit about what they're singing, and only digest the lyrics through the chore of reading them apart from the listening experience.

Jerky rhythms that do nothing more than prove these simians can count to five instead of four are used, overused and abused on each and every song. Hey, free advice: if you're interested in subverting the traditional rock reliance on 4/4, try not immediately setting up another crutch in its place. It didn't work for the El Salvadoran government and it's not going to work for post-hardcore, either. We liked Gang of Four, too, guys. Please respect their memory.

When the music and unmelodies almost work, the lyrics don't ("Sewing," "From Ground Down"), and vice versa ("Jazz Step Forwards"). The result is an album out of sync with itself. Perhaps Red Monkey got too distracted worrying about trying to nail their time shifts to miss the fact that the separate components of the album were evolving away from each other. Or maybe they just haven't figured out yet that while art can be a vehicle for political expression, a guitar isn't a megaphone and an amp isn't a soapbox. Either way, it results in a incredibly trying, forced and uncohesive ten songs.

Hearing to this album, I get the sense that Red Monkey is a much better band to experience live. As bad as this material is, they do have a good sense of dynamics going for them, and a presence more apropos to the stage than to plastic. For example, the single noteworthy track, "Courage in This Now," is an epic blast and has a bring-down-the-house potential that could very likely be positively incendiary in a sweaty, shoulder-to-shoulder environment.

But after reflecting on Gunpowder, Treason and Plot via the headphone experience, deprived of the boosting charisma inherent in a live setting, I realized what it is that I now find intolerable about bands like Red Monkey. For all their efforts to be different, they're all playing the same notes and riffs over the same stock "edgy" beats, and singing along to it with the same adolescent gripes. Same as their own other songs; and the same as other bands. So what makes this approach inferior to, say, an equally blunt-to-a-fault throwback punk band like Anti-Flag? Anti-Flag sound like they're enjoying themselves.

-John Dark, February 26th, 2002