Spray Paint

Spray Paint

When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth stomps a wild rumpus of double everything – guitars, bass, drums, and shriek. Satellite Austin trio Spray Paint not only strips back the Dinos' gargantuan clatter, guitarists/vocalists George Dishner and Cory Plump with drummer Chris Stephenson (also Dikes of Holland) nudge post-punk from its latter-day soft/loud axis to a more old-school minimum/maximum paradigm. Shards of song – chugging, chopping riffs, and gang vocals just below the red line of clang – wind out not in length but in a progressive tangle of end runs that often build to jet engine density. Live, think Butthole Surfers, but on debut LP, the smatterings of funk punk ("Funeral Upskirts") recall original Austin punk imprimaturs the Big Boys. Not that these 11 land mines detonate avant-garde noise rock to the exclusion of vocal hooks in the near jangle of "Yawn Factory" and "Nose Whiskey" ("she's at the bottom of the river"), which strips back the cacophony for a nervy through line that gets ever more propulsive. Side two of this spray-painted record (the CD adds both of the group's 7-inch singles) spasms the herky-jerky thwack of early Devo ("Jimi's Apartment"), while howling through cellar rock ("Down to Party"), dank chank with clean vox ("Lap Swimming"), and late-Eighties needlepoint ("Neighborwoman"). Insert appendage into electrical socket here. (11:30pm, the Hideout)