Kevin Bronson on August 15th, 2019

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“Reptile Super Show,” the title track to the new album by Jagged Baptist Club, is one mean beast. On an album full of menacing guitars, spat missives and sonic clatter suggesting “Transformers” being chewed up by metal teeth, the pulsing 6 1/2-minute track is the heartbeat.

Is it a dark heart? Only in the way main man Blake Stokes and bandmates Morgan Ponder, Josh Boyd and CJ Ramsey frame it. Stokes, once beset by alcohol problems and living in the Vernon lockout where JBC’s music was conceived, has turned noise-rock inside out, making it a cathartic vehicle for newfound optimism.

The title track, then, sees the songwriter glancing back over his shoulder to where’s he’s been. “‘Reptile Super Show’ is the sonic thesis statement of the album,” Stokes says. “It’s also the purest distillation of the themes of the album: dread, hopelessness, numbness, rage. It’s the black elevator descending down the psychic mineshaft that is Jagged Baptist Club. Cold, serrated, unforgiving, bottomless.”

While the very album might suggest there is a light at the end of the tunnel, “Reptile Super Show’s” video, directed by Styles Wolf Baker and shot by Danny Valentine, stars a pink throne. It’s a concept piece, worth the long walk down a deserted hallway.

||| Watch: The video for “Reptile super Show”

||| Also: Stream the whole album in full

||| Live: Jagged Baptist Club play the Buzz Bands LA stage at Echo Park Rising on Saturday (7 p.m., Taix Champagne Room).

||| Previously: “Running on Synthetic,” “Entertainment Tonight” (as TEST)