Funland
Unknown Instructors
Smog Veil

"Side projects" are often vanity projects at best and a jumbled miasma at worst. Yet, somehow the Unknown Instructors have avoided either classification through three albums worth of material. The group is but one of dozens of side projects taken on by former Minutemen and fIREHOSE bassist, songwriter and vocalist, Mike Watt. And while I'll take the ensemble cast pedigree of his debut solo effort Ball-Hog or Tugboat? anyday of the week, Funland is a pretty solid, 12-track affair that features members of Iggy & the Stooges and Cle iconoclast, Pere Ubu's David Thomas. You do the math -- yep, it's brilliantly edgy (and occasionally scary) cacophony.

Funland is the third album by the Unknown Instructors (2005's The Way Things Work and 2006's The Master's Voice paved the way) and it's a post-punk stunner that careens and caroms between spoken-word brilliance and the avant-noise/protopunk charging-and-lurching one might expect from such a project. By the time you hit "Frownland," you might actually need a breather. The two leading cuts, "Maji Yabai" and the 8-minute epic "Those Were the Days" are nothing short of apocalyptic in their scope and sound; the latter's manic, plinky guitar work underpinning machine-gun bursts of snare drum would have made a better soundtrack for Watchmen than any music in the movie. To wit, if the Doomsday Clock chimed hourly, it would sound like this. Rorschach woulda loved that.

From Cool Cleveland Managing Editor Peter Chakerian peterATcoolcleveland.com

Wanna get reviewed? Send your band's CD (less than 1 year old) to: Cool Cleveland, 14837 Detroit Avenue, #105, Lakewood, OH 44107

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