Music reviews. CD reviews. Critically hip!

Before I ever experienced a live punk rock show I bought the first album by the Bad Brains. I put it on and my friend walked in saying, “This kind of music is useless on record. It only makes sense if you’re at the show.” I disagreed. I thought it was great. Then my friend took me to a show and the music made 1000% more sense and became equally more powerful.

Last weekend my friends and I arrived at an artist warehouse in Oakland, CA expecting to see a friend’s band rock their brains out. It wasn’t until returning from the nearby liquor store with tall cans in hand that we realized the show we intended to see was actually next door. It was just then that Triclops! turned on their amps and began what was to be one of the most intense musical experiences of our lives.

Triclops! includes former members of Bay Area avant-punk legends Victim’s Family and features Fleshies frontman Johnny Pseudonym on vocals. The band’s debut EP, Out of Africa gives merely a taste of what the band does live. Like just about any punk or hardcore band, the live show takes precedence over the album. That’s not to say that the album isn’t well made or it doesn’t rock, because it is and it does. But what we experienced at their live show takes the band to a level that any record can never achieve.

As the band began its first song, Johnny Pseudonym jumps into the crowd screaming into his mic while on the beer-soaked cement floor. From there a wooden chair is brutally sacrificed and abused by the backside of Mr. Pseudonym. How can that memory be recreated in record form? Well, it can’t. But Out of Africa does show off the Pseudonym’s screams complimented by loud distorted guitars. For the fan of heavy, at times sludgy, hard rock with a touch of hardcore and punk, Triclops! most definitely delivers and does not disappoint.

The CD includes six tracks with all but one clocking in at over five minutes. They go by a lot quicker when listening because there’s so much going on at each moment. It can be overwhelming for some, but to those in the right mindset , it can sound like Triclops! succeeds in making some epic punk rock songs. It is recommended, though, that you go see them performed live to fully appreciate what Triclops! is really all about.