Pow! - Shift [CD]

Just when one thought one knew what to expect from POW! They surprise everyone with a vigorous and rabid album's worth of moody cybernetic punk that's frankly their best yet. Their fourth album is oil-dipped in a rainbowed slick of dread, yet the songs are buoyed by tight tunes that seem to have a lot of fun among the ruins of the future, perhaps with an eye to a less gloomy horizon? Melissa Blue's sharp elbowed synths jostle with Byron Blum's zap gun guitar in an ominous fog of oscillations, and yet somehow it gets the toe a-tapping. The band got darker and more catchy at the same time, for which some credit is due to the excellent drumming of Cameron Allen and the fantastically future savvy production by Byron Blum and Tomas Dolas. Lots of sticky punk heart resin-layered in a futuristic-scanning bionic bop.