DIZZY SPELLS

Anyone familiar with the Ex's 20-plus-year history of punk rock, noise, social satire, and anarchism won't be able to help cracking a smile looking at the cover of their new record. The members of the band (G.W. Sok, Andy, Terrie, Luc, and Katrin) are clad in nature observation gear on a city street, set against a backdrop that includes Burger King, McDonald's, and Heineken signs, among other pop-cultural artifacts. As the cover suggests, the Ex center their social scrutiny on commercialism. The album is riddled with harsh and humorous lyrical attacks on consumerism and pop culture ("Walt's Dizzyland"). The music is a beautiful barrage: drums trapped in an unrelenting rolling march, bass that thuds and throbs, and guitars that riff and skree from every possible direction. "The Chair Needs Paint," a blatant stab at pop music, features a stark yet melodic bass line with a chorus composed only of that infamous pop-music word, "la." Tracks like "Time Flies" and "Fistful of Feed," though, are where the Ex really excel--they threaten to cut that final thread holding a song together, and just when they convince you that it's all about to descend into chaos, they skillfully pull everything together again, leaving you satisfactorily dizzy. --Oakley Atterson