I SLIDE INTO a corner formed by the stage and a huge, nipple-high speaker box at Bottom of the Hill, trying to find a semi-enclosed space to shelter me from the press of bodies here to see Akron, Ohio, duo Black Keys. I'm here to see Santa Cruz's psychedelic shock troops Comets on Fire.

A diminutive woman with a digital camera squeezes her way to the front of the stage. Guessing that she might be Bay Guardian photographer Jessica, I introduce myself. She asks me what Comets on Fire is like. Though I've got both of their CDs, Field Recordings from the Sun (Ba Da Bing, 2002) and this year's self-titled release on Alternative Tentacles, I'm still a relative newcomer to their music. The only word that comes to mind is maelstrom. Not wanting to sound like a total dildo, I say, "They're pretty obnoxious."

Directly in front of us one of the Comets unloads cables from a metal box marked "AMMUNITION FOR CANNON WITH EXPLOSIVE PROJECTILES – COAST GUARD CLASS IV." He's got a keyboard stand in front of him, with two effects processors of some sort next to it. The keyboard, however, never materializes; instead he sets a smallish, vaguely ominous black box with knobs all over it, perhaps an encryption device from a WWII German submarine, on top of the stand.

I lean over and ask Jessica: "So does this guy just mess with effects for the whole set? He just twiddles knobs the whole time?"

"They like to call it 'programmer,' " she says.

The band erupt into a furious sonic assault, low-end '70s super-rock meets bad acid trip: imagine Bad Company and Pink Floyd in an airport bathroom directly under the flight path of a 747, beating the shit out of each other over a Quaalude deal gone awry. Guitarist Ethan Miller furiously yanks on the whammy bar of his baby blue Fender Jaguar, while on the other side of the drum kit the Bens, guitarist Ben Chasny and bassist Ben Fleishman, are lined up with their backs to the audience, hip shakin' and headbangin' – the petulant aloofness of Miles Davis meets the heavy metal chorus line of Judas Priest. Already, though, my favorite member of the band is the "knob guy," Noel Harmonson, who's banging his head like the lead singer of a speed metal band, twisting the dials on his black box to maximum mind-warping effect, like a dozen wah-wah and delay pedals being stepped on at once. I'm starting to feel like I had too much to dream last night.

"Programmer?" I say to Jessica between tunes. "He's a knob twiddler."

"You're going to get some shit for that," she warns.

I don't mean it as in insult, per se, as Harmonson twiddles like nobody's business. "Knob guy is all heart," one of my notes reads. The term programmer seems too staid and precise to truly capture the essence of what he does.

"Beneath the Ice Age," from Field Recordings, cranks up, and the room speedily descends into the aforementioned maelstrom. Miller, wearing a long-sleeve polyester photo-print shirt of what looks to be the inside of a half-empty glass of Coke on the rocks, hits the mic for the first time: his yowling, echoed-out vocals add a distinctive antisocial edge to the interstellar overdrive of the mix. Rest assured, Comets on Fire may be psychedelic, but they're also psycho. And though they're from Santa Cruz and Miller, with his long locks, chops, and handlebar mustache, resembles that friend of your older brother who gave you your first bong rip when you were 12, ain't nobody gonna be twirlin' when you see this band. They're plutonium: wiggly with radiation, but heavy as hell and dangerous.

"I have to go to the back before I lose my hearing," Jessica tells me before the next song, "ESP," also from Field Recordings.

As I watch Harmonson whack the crap out of his black box, which turns out to be a piece of '70s rock machinery known as an Echoplex, and not from a German U-boat, I start to wonder what he calls what he does. Effects guy? Technician? Frequency modulator? Far from being a silly sideshow to the more conventional instrumentation, he seems to be the central figure in the band, the eye of the sonic hurricane. Everything is routed through his knobs; he's Mission Control. Which explains the cover of Comets on Fire: Harmonson stands in the foreground with the Echoplex for a head, its wires emanating into space, holding his human head in his hand. The rest of the band is in the background, looking on. By the time the Comets burn through their final jam, "The Black Poodle," curiosity has gotten the better of me, and I'm forced to ask, as he folds his chords back into the explosive ammo container, "What do you call what you do?"