Thee Knaves

This is brutal. There was a time, maybe ten years ago, when Preserving the Mindshield would exist only on a crappy demo tape, recorded during a Friday night rehearsal in The Knaves' parents' rec room after the guitarist bought his first distortion pedal. Those days are gone, thanks to the cheaper and more durable compact disc. Every computer in suburbia has a CD burner, so bands like The Knaves have access to flawless digital technology -- which, in this case, is absolutely absurd. It wouldn't be a surprise to find out that these boys recorded Preserving the Mindshield with a homemade microphone constructed from chicken bones, floss, and pieces of a broken Atari 2600. I also wouldn't put up much of an argument if you attempted to convince me that The Knaves made these songs up on the spot. Bo Anders Knutson and Matthew William Perzinski are the men responsible for the noise herein. The pieces are mostly composed with a couple of heavily affected guitars and a pair of voices -- one deep, one high and screechy, both out of tune. On "The Searcher" and another couple of songs that may or may not be called "How Many Lambs" (the CD's track listing is horribly inaccurate), there's a drum machine pounding away beneath the madness. The programming, thankfully, does not steal attention from Knutson and Perzinski's maddingly dissonant and off-tempo strumming. The lyrics are pretty clear, too: "Who the hell are you? -- I need an angel. We are beset by fragrant people." By clear, I mean that you can hear every syllable. As for contextual clarity of meaning...well, wouldn't you rather put together a jigsaw puzzle upside down?-- Philip Stone (from Splendidezine)