None of you will grok all these references, but the best way to say it is this LP is a dead-bang cross between The Eels’ Hombre Lobo, Danbert Nobacon’s Library Book of the World and Mind In A Box’ Dreamweb, which is to say it’s sometimes loud, sometimes techno-chilled, a little steampunky; there’s some cryptic spoken dialog and some mature techno stuff and it’s about a werewolf. The band’s bread-and-butter cabaret shtick may/should prevent it from being written off as a techno-leaning ripoff of Hombre Lobo, which, like this, starts off with a crazy-howling barroom-blues-brawler, something you’d yawn through during your average episode of True Blood. Now that I’m saying it, that similarity is going to bring out the haters like ants to an overturned Milk Duds truck, but TRTW are not The Eels, most certainly when you factor in the inorganic stuff, which glides and soars with the best of breed. Note that this is a companion product to a book of the same title written by Glen Duncan to be released simultaneously. A —Eric W. Saeger