While the debut EP’s tech, grind, screamo, techno pop-punk fusion was a happy go lucky, psychedelically discordant affair, the follow up album, Dead Mountain Mouth merged the elements more symbiotically, while being a bit darker and this album continues that route with a more somber and less trippy, less colorful take on the band’s unique and creative melding of modern grind and programming.

While still at times having caustic spasms of chaotic screamo cum grind melded with off the wall beats, 64 bit FX and Moog programming, the album, at times comes across as more introspective with longer moments of spacey emptiness and drifting insular eclectics rather than sheer noise with the occasional dance beat. Tracks like “Recursion”, post rock meets Pet Shop Boys styled “I Won’t Come Back Alive”, “The Whips Blow Back”, “Ergot” and 11 minute, orchestral/choral closer “Relief” clue you in on the band’s slightly more expansive thought process, with rangier, more atmospheric hues.

Of course, there are bursts of feral, techno tinged screamo/grind furor as heard on “Endless Teeth” and “The Feast” (aided by Dillinger Escape Plan’s Greg Puciato) and which allows the Kurt Ballou production to blister skin. But the focus is on the sublime tracks that meld the two such as standout tracks “Board Up the House”, “Things Don’t look Good”, “City On a Hill” and “Colony Collapse”. Generally, I like the more somber Church like/orchestral tone that some of the programming direction has taken, though some of the clean vocals I could have done without, though they are sparse and the main vocal assault is the expected harsh howls of Mookie Singerman.

Board Up the House is a convoluted, challenging, eclectic and yet brilliant listen, and definitely a listen for OCD, neurotic, paranoid individuals whose synapses are firing on all cylinders all the time as the band can shift from jarring, techno grind spurts of abrasive noise to dreamy electronics and back again in a heart beat.

Utilizing drum- machines, keyboards, theremin, lap steel, and (gasp!) an electric guitar, Genghis Tron nonetheless manage to create a real base heaviness that you wouldn’t expect given the ingredients in this heady broth especially when the mix flows seamlessly from mind-funking screamy speed bursts to stark, thumping beats. There is almost not a moment or era from the last 30+ years of rock music in all its manifest forms (extreme or otherwise) missing here. Run-DMC bumps heads with Necrophagist on one track, sappy 80’s pop harmonies tangle with electronic black metal in raver hell elsewhere. Somehow this is all held together by some twisted sanity which through the use of a wide-open consciousness of the dynamics of space, manages to turn these frenetic exercises in unlimited creativity into something resembling cohesive and unique songs.

I can see where the musical ideas brought to life on this brief recording could provoke accusations of silliness from some and even outright offend others. The later would be those genre purists of whom even the most open-minded to diverse musical styles would argue for ‘a place for everything and everything in it’s place”. Cloak of Love gives a new chaotic meaning to that old cliche as literally, everything is in place here barring the two or three musical genres left out (where’s the country and opera””), which seem to be casualties of the brevity of this recording and not any intentional exclusion on the band’s part. For those who have an ear for the innovative, a ridiculously short attention span or a life-long dream of listening to all their CD’s at the same time, this quick and quirky little fella is manna from heaven.