4 out of 5

Label: Head Records, Tremor Panda Records

Produced by: Christian Hilldebrandt and Henner Henzler (recorded by)

In a silly, uncaring universe, Yahweh-era Arab on Radar’s noodly assaults are even more Walter Weaseled with a bit of 2020s Luttenbacher instrumentation virtuosity, a mess which is Ex-Modelsed into small, constantly-shifting shapes, and then finally pounded into rock by Oxes-liked beats, and we call this many tentacled musical beast Don Vito.

Due to the name, is there a Don Caballero reference to be stuffed in there? Probably – something between American Don’s linearity and Don Cab II’s first attempt at ditching those borders.

I name drop all of these just to get you somewhere in the ballpark, but rest assured that Don Vito brings their own thing to the instrumental math rock scene, truly balancing a play-it-fast-and-weird mentality with an innate sense of melody, making sub-2 minute songs feel like epics. “Comment Ça Va Light My Fire” is a nigh perfect expression of this, only losing their footing when a song like Nonofletcher comes and goes as more of a sketch than a tune – on a short album, each moment really needs to earn its worth – and whiffing on a couple endings, where it’s like the group just gets tired of the riff instead of writing a conclusion. But for real: the way we get the silliness of some of the above-mentioned acts wedded to some somehow very emotive moments – that aforementioned melody, suddenly emerging from time change chaos, loud and proud – is an accomplishment amongst a very accomplished scene, and the album, taken as a whole or intra-song, knows how to pummel, tip-toe, or explode in due amounts such that this becomes a record you can just endlessly rock out to. And I guess I plan to, since the group has gone dormant since its 2015 release, aw.