The Triangle

Issue date: 2/17/06 Section: Entertainment

Media Credit: reptilianrecords.com

My first apartment was a narrow plaster shack behind the park at 39th St. and Powelton Ave. It was 2003, and I lived with my good friend Steve and a squinty film guy I barely knew named Sanchez. We had stove mice, leaky pipes and more than a couple bands play in the basement over the course of our stay. Usually it was an outside proposition from a friend, and usually it was a screamo band or something of the angsty and bassless sort. Not really our collective bag - but what the hell - it was better than beer pong. Nearing the end of our lease was Steve's 21st birthday, and he wanted some 3-piece band he saw down at the Tritone to play. The band was Clockcleaner.

To make a long story short, we got them to play and it was totally sweet. To justify the inclusion of the preamble - allow me to share a bit of the play-by-play. The band went on a little after midnight and started things off with about 10 minutes of feedback and megaphoned absurdities. Just as they kicked into their first number, some bearded jackass barreled down the steps and punched out the light bulb a foot or two from my face. That left a single dim bulb behind the band to compete with the dust cloud kicked up by eight sauced goons engaged in mock man-slamming.

It was a weird scene visually and audibly. Bellowing through the haze was a truly bowel-moving swell of bass coupled with drumming fit for the caveman stomp 'n' club. On the front end was a vicious mesh of riffs, fret-board shred and penny-for-a-pick scrapes. Hollered inaudibles took a backseat to the thud. Tempo shifts kept it interesting, and so did the grizzly boozer that picked up the fire extinguisher mid-set to do God's work - at the expense of some unsuspecting onlookers. I think he originally intended to douse the smoke bomb but quickly lost interest in lieu of polo shirts. A second smoke bomb conspicuously lit in the living room, and an empty 40 oz. chucked from a passing truck capped the post-show festivities with style.

For Clockcleaner, related tales of hijinx included the distribution of high-quality firecrackers to deviant patrons of the Tritone, pisses taken into Bad Wizard merch bins at the Khyber, from which they are now banned, and the desecration of a mounted poster of Sarah Jessica Parker at Silk City, where brandished road flares singed more than a few show attendees. My personal favorite was when the singer made prior arrangements with the kid - who's disabled - that runs Hit-Dat Records in Baltimore to kick him off of his walker in the middle of the set. That went over really well with the locals - especially when said singer hopped off-stage for a squealing saxophone bit while slowly dragging the helpless kid latched onto his leg. A somewhat similar gag was deployed when they opened for Jello Biafra & the Melvins last October at the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia.

In the fall of 2004, Clockcleaner put out their debut EP entitled The Hassler on Manic Ride Records. It's a total scorcher and clocks in at about 16 minutes. The opener, "Hands are for Holding," sets the tone right off the bat by summing up in 79 seconds my best attempts at accurate "rock journalism" via thesaurus spew. There's pumping bass up front in the mix, riffing scrape guitar and propeller drums just behind it - and way in the back's the endearing black-out drunk vocals. But that was more than a year ago.

This week will mark the release of their first full-length album on Reptilian Records. For clearly obnoxious purposes, it's entitled Nevermind. From even a cursory listen, it's immediately apparent that, in a year's time, their sound has mutated and expanded beyond pummeling noise-punk into something much more vile and cathartic. Every song on the record is indisputably different from the next, yet all nine of them literally flow into one another. It's streaked with tasteful nods to the Brainbombs, Flipper, Black Flag and the Butthole Surfers - but, in the end, it reeks of its own unsettling originality. And in that, Nevermind really weighs in as one of the most ambitious punk records to come out of anywhere, let alone Philadelphia, in quite awhile. Frankly, nobody else is putting out records like this.

They're set to tour the Midwest in early April with SXSW dates and a spring-summer tour of the West Coast to follow. Three 7-inch singles on Parts Unknown Records and Hit-Dat Records are set to come out in the next couple of months, and Bob Weston (Shellac, Volcano Suns) has agreed to record their next LP over the summer. Clockcleaner's Web site is http://www.clockcleaner.net.

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