Fake Dudes (Transparent Mauve Vinyl)

If ever a moment in history called for the caustic, corrosive rantings of guitarist-composer-poet Todd Clouser and the abstract grooves of his combustible beat-skronk band Magnet Animals, it's this one. With our collective headspaces dizzied by a nearly yearlong pandemic induced isolation and battered by an unceasing barrage of political insanities, the serrated wit and surrealist insights of Fake Dudes arrives with the kinetic force of a madcap sermon. Fake Dudes reconvenes the geographically scattered members of Magnet Animals - Minneapolis-born, Mexico City-based Clouser, Mexican drummer Jorge Servin, and Abraxas bandmates Eyal Maoz (guitar) and Shanir Ezra Blumenkranz (bass) - four years after their bracing debut, 2016's Butterfly Killer. The startling dreamscape imagery and throttling grooves will be familiar to fans of that initial outing, though Fake Dudes trades its predecessor's occasional airiness for a far more ferocious and claustrophobic concoction.