I wonder how long Tub Ring will be able to keep this album-naming convention going. Zoo Hypothesis is the band's third release in a row to reference speculative models concerning alien intelligence in the universe (the other two are Drake Equation and Fermi Paradox). Zoo mines the same rich, unique vein of sound and lyrical themes as did Fermi, and while longtime listeners may now be used to the whiplash changeups that are TR's stock in trade, all of the magic of that release translates nicely to this one.

Those who are new to the party should be warned: while the band is geeky through and through, they also rock fucking hard. They are fluent in thrash. Hardcore's speedy tropes are their lingua franca. They are not afraid to screech. Piercingly. Then again, they're just as comfortable in a gentler mode. And most importantly, they are not bound in any way by the standard rules of any of the aforementioned genres. In the space of one four-minute track, you might hear them jump through four different tempos/time signatures. Or you might hear them genre-hop from gentle pop to hardcore to broken-down weirdness without changing tempo at all. Or they might do all of the above. Or none. Even on a second or third listen, there are still surprises to be found.

Tub Ring is focused, with laserlike intensity, on the future that humanity is building for itself, and with the implications of current trends in technology, politics, family, interpersonal relationships and foreign policy. Taken line by line, the lyrics are nothing to write home about, but their cumulative effect can be greater than the sum of their parts. Opener "Tiny, Little", which indulges TR's considerable oom-pa-pa Weimar Republic jones, goes from example to example of small solutions to big problems, inevitably ending with the apocalyptic "you'll redeem yourself at the end of everything / a tiny little atom's all you split." The split-atom-as-metaphor-for-global-destruction thing is hoary, but it's hoary for a good reason, and the song's solid construction makes it work.

"Death of the Robot" introduces the rest of Tub Ring's sonic arsenal in broad strokes. From power-chord-churning opening riff to speedy verse groove, returning to that first riff for a scream-along chorus, to syncopated change to chanted bridge breakdown; rinse and repeat. In and out in ninety seconds. It's breathtaking.

The best is yet to come: "The Promise Keeper", "I Could Never Fall In Love With You", "The Night Watch", "Alexander In Charge", "We Are The Righteous", "Return To Me", "Wealth of Information", and "Vehicle" are all as strong as the first two, if not stronger. And "Raindrops" (whose theme is, as near as I can tell, the dying thoughts of a soldier on a battlefield), is the finest of them all. It's a miracle of restraint, pulling back from the band's signature freak-outs, going in for a near-disco feel, dropping into thrash mode for, like, two beats, and conducting the majority of the track in a midtempo shuffle. The effect is a vaguely resigned irony. While this subject has been treated with more emotion, Tub Ring deal with it very honestly.

There are very few missteps ("Viking" just seems silly and gratuitous) among these sixteen tracks, and the album as a whole is a miracle of concision -- the whole thing takes just under 39 minutes to get through. It's another forward-thinking album from a very of-the-moment band.