Music reviews. CD reviews. Critically hip!

With apologies to partially strangling a beloved band's name, this is the real international noise conspiracy. Five German gents who manage to squish most of the Strokes' alluring street urchin cool along with At The Drive-In's abandonment, then rammed with a good shot of that Big Chief/Zen Guerilla badass-rock boyz strut. 

Besides their sharpened sonics, Beatsteaks scribe some "katchy melodisches" within different factions of the band. With various solo, mixed couplings and group efforts, Living Targets bounds in many directions. From the cyber-kinetic warpage that detonates the opening "Not Ready To Rock" to the defenseless, Radiohead pastiche of "Disconnected" and the Stooges-like discharge of "This One," Beatsteaks contort their sound with keyboards and old school Berlin electronics to match the music's unconventional moods. 

While most of that Euro-punk that surfaces on US labels sounds stuck in a revivalist mode, Beatsteaks are forging some interesting revisions.