Treblemakers

Montreal’s Treblemakers are back with another full-length, all instrumental, non-stop slugfest of a surf record. Making the move to cool international garage heavy Dionysus for the release of Versus The Doomsday Device, the Treblemakers easily surpass the already high standard set on their previous two albums. The main difference from the earlier work is the amount of variety in the songs, and the more confident yet relaxed playing. They move around style-wise a fair bit here without losing their focus or central sound. “The Great White Lunch Hour” sounds like a steroid enhanced Pyramids, the “Exploding Bikers From Hochelaga” like the Ventures and Davie Allan all in one, and “Ebola” is a speedy Dick Dale-like blaster. A nice extra touch is that almost all the song titles have clever surf “in-joke” titles, such as “The Dentures in Space,” “Organ Failure,” and “Lawnmower Drag ’99.” These guys have pretty much mastered their genre and it’s great to see that they’re not so overly reverent of it that they can’t have a little fun with it.