Trio Feral - Dont Feed (2019)

Right from the opening notes of Trio Feral’s debut, you know you’re in for a wild ride beyond the confines of everyday harmonic clichés and artificially imposed no-fly zones. No matter which galaxy thousand-limbed keyboardist Barney McCall visits, however, fellow Groove Collective lifer Jonathan Maron’smighty bass magic is never far from Earth, and his mind-lock with drummer Bill Campbell is simply heavenly. A handful of short interstellar excursions—to robolandia in “The Medium Is the Message,” a twinkly star world in “Summertime Chocolate,” and an abandoned planet in “Phrzn Frby,” for example—leads to meltdown, humor, and ominous horror before reaching the album’s bass-tastic destination, “Tell Me,” and then powering down, sometimes ferociously, to a blissfully floating conclusion. If Maron’s ridiculously full-bodied grooves and super-stank solos don’t inspire involuntary neck spasms and that “what’s that smell?” look, check your pulse—you just might be out of oxygen.