�There were broadly speaking two genres of concept album: those that were essentially thematically-linked song cycles such as The Beatles� Sgt. Pepper�s Lonely Hearts Club Band, which did not claim a storyline, and those that presented a narrative story that threaded the songs�such as The Who�s Tommy.� — from the Wikipedia entry on concept albums

I�ve never been big on concept albums. Though my emergence into contemporary music came through a rockist method�there was a point in time when NoFX was my favourite band, for goodness� sake�I viewed concept albums as the worst of rock�s excesses, pretentious bloated crap that purports to tell a story, but often butchers it through either musical wanking (too much) or conceptual wanking (not enough).

So, I�m not sure how I came upon it but at some point I discovered, to my surprise, that sometimes bands don�t necessarily tell stories with concept albums. Instead, through repeated passages, lyrics, and conceptual motifs, they unify an idea or a style under the umbrella of one album. Sometimes, they don�t even really serve to unify ideas so much as provide a kind of structure to the album itself.

Over the next few weeks, my goal is to hopefully provide interesting examples of this method of turning the ordinary into a concept album. First up, the A-Frames� Black Forest.

Everything about Black Forest�s packaging reveals the uniformity of ideas within, stark tones and clip-art cutouts and a small paragraph with a feeling of technology gone awry. It�s dark and uncomfortable, and just looking at it gives you an idea of its mood; a little research and the discovery that they�re a three-piece post-punk/noise rock band gives you a good foreshadowing of its sound.

The first time you hear the album�s main theme, it�s titled �Black Forest I.� Clocking in at a little over a minute, it�s an instrumental based on a tremendously menacing bassline, ominous drums, and abrasive, searing yet miles-distant guitar. Minimalists through and through, the A-Frames frequently capitalize on a sense of paranoia and fear induced through the Information Age, and �Black Forest I� sets the tone for the first half of the album splendidly.

Yet despite all of this, the track time betrays a sense of brevity. And making it instrumental? Okay, the music sounds intimidating, but considering how laser-precise they are, how threatening can they really be? Songs like �Death Train,� despite their horrifying subject, well, they�re almost fun.

�Black Forest II,� midway through the album, answers that question with �really Goddamn threatening.� Clunky, ugly guitar introduces the song, and the drums have taken on a more tribal quality. The bass remains steady, but it�s been kicked up, present and furious. Erin Sullivan, lead singer, begins to articulate on the theme: �Humanity is erased / Black forest left in its place.� They�re not singing about any death trains. �No organism left to grow / Black forest and fallout snow.� They�re talking about the End Of The World As We Know It. The music steps into a steady rhythm and �Black forest� becomes the band�s voodoo chant. Four beats and they�re gone, from the centerpiece aside back into the album proper.

And holy hell. The next six songs are abrasive, heavy, a steady decline into sloppiness and insanity; though the A-Frames have one of the tighter rhythm sections in noise-rock, they�re able to make everything come across as harsh and raw. By the plain terrifying �My Teacher,� they�re done toying with you. They�re out to actually scare you, and possibly knife you in the mind. And by �Negative,� there�s nothing resembling order left, just three and a half minutes of buzzsaws and fury.

Then �Black Forest III� kicks in. The same guitar that started �Black Forest II� enters, but it�s gone out of tune, deranged, driven mad. Sullivan�s singing, but there�s something wrong, fundementally wrong with it. The music is grinding and scraping up against itself, machine-like, churning out black smoke as the instruments quit caring. The final minute of the album is a rhythm section buried underneath incredibly loud, grating sonic death, humanity under a black forest of waste, technology, and paranoia. �Black forest,� they chant again, but now it�s turned from a zombie-like chant into something rife with malice.

If you meet �Black Forest III� at night, it will kill you. Plain and simple.

The A-Frames are noise rockers, so they�re likely used to the phrase �musical pranksters� by now. And with Black Forest, they use that to their advantage: they lull the listener in with promises of a heavy but non-threatening experience, and then they finish with an unhinged, chaotic declaration of humanity�s close-at-hand self-destruction. �No punks, no garage bands,� and they mean it, themselves included. The difference between them and us is, they�re laughing.

But they�re not kidding around.

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