Every so often, some brave or foolish or utterly unhinged band comes along and tries to reinvent punk rock, making the attempt to push the genre in new directions while trying to get the old beast snarling again. While most bands are content to call it a day after roughing things up a little, its clear that for Detroits Human Eye, thats simply not enough. On their third album, They Came from the Sky, the band doesnt just get in there and slap punk around a little, but rather they feed it LSD and wail on it with whatever happens to be lying around while shouting that the sky is falling, running the whole thing through some kind of ad hoc MK-ULTRA experiment designed to test the genres limits. This psychedelic approach pays off for them as they run the raw power of punk through a garage-psych kaleidoscope, with driving jams like Alien Freaks alternating between pedal-to-the-metal intensity and Zappa-esque space rock freak-outs. Whats really surprising about this stylistic collision is how effortless the whole thing appears to be. Human Eye isnt showing off, theyre just letting their freak flag fly and going where the winds take it, as if theyre on a mission to change punk, but theyre not really aware that theyve been given the job, giving They Came from the Sky a nonchalant weirdness thats hard to match. – Gregory Heaney
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