There are albums, that no matter how many times you listen to them, you just can’t get your head around them. Ironically, a lot of them have come out on The End Records, and in the case of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum’s In Glorious Times, no amount of mind altering substances will ease the process of absorbing this hugely avant-garde, alternative rock trip of a record.

Is it ‘metal’? Not really, but if you enjoy the sonic challenges of the likes of Stolen Babies, Giant Squid, Unexpect and Mr. Bungle, SGM will confuse, confound and please you. Folks-this is some really off the wall stuff, stuff I truly have a hard time conveying into words. It sort of comes across like a Circus soundtrack and The Muppet Show getting an OBGYN exam from Neurosis and Mike Patton while Ennio Morricone plays in the back ground. Yah-it’s that weird.

Dreamy opener “The Companions” pretty much sets the template for the album, if there is as template-and I’m not even sure I can describe that single track, let alone the whole album. The disjointed, kaleidoscopic, sonic mind tea-baggery (it’s not a mind fuck as that presents a more violent visage), is just one lengthy genre orgy of lengthy instrumentation, off kilter, drunken male and female croons, occasional growls, lurching orchestration and a mix of hazy, lethargic riffs (“Puppet Show”, “Angle of Repose”, “Salt Crown”) with the occasional mildly spazzy, eclectic stammering (“Helpless Corpses Enactment”, “Formicary”, “The Ossuary”). The end result is not an album but rather an experience, a nerve rattling, synapse fraying, reality warping experience that will test the most ardent and frazzled listeners that will either be utterly brilliant of simply unfathomable depending on your state of mind.

When I’m in the right frame of mind, In Glorious Times completely blows me away with its orchestrated bedlam and makes bands like label mates Stolen Babies and Giant Squid look like Six Feet Under. However, in a more stable frame of mind, the album simply baffles and boggles with an almost random juxtaposition of sounds that hardly registers as ‘traditional’ music.

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