By Will York

'A NEW WORLD is born / From the ashes of the old / 2000 years of guilt and fear / The greatest lie ever told." These are the kinds of lyrics you might expect to hear growled out by some satanic, apocalyptic death metal band, but they're actually part of the processional opening track on Of Natural History, the new album by Sleepytime Gorilla Museum on Mimicry Records.

In these dark times, it's nice to see some folks from the avant-garde community stepping up and showing some teeth. Sleepytime's core members – guitarist-vocalist Nils Frykdahl, violinist-vocalist Carla Kihlstedt, and bassist-producer Dan Rathbun – are all pillars of the local experimental music community. They've played in respected bands such as Idiot Flesh, Charming Hostess, Tin Hat Trio, and Faun Fables.

But Sleepytime Gorilla Museum represents these musicians' darkest, most sinister sides at work. The 11-song, 75-minute Of Natural History features song titles such as "Bring Back the Apocalypse" and lyrical exclamations along the lines of "Mankind is a plague!" Even the parts that merely seem quirky on first listen often hide a darker underlying meaning. For example, there's the narrator's interjection during the metal-prog epic "FC: The Freedom Club": "Let us dream now, the impossible dream of a math professor." And that is?

"It's the idea that the human race can reverse its direction in terms of use of technology," Frykdahl says. "And that is, of course, referring to Ted Kaczynski, who was also known as the Unabomber."

Of Natural History isn't a tribute to the Unabomber, nor is it a concept album, but it nonetheless comes across as a unified statement. Themes of technology, progress, and civilization's current discontents pop up throughout the album, with "FC: The Freedom Club" as the most obvious example.

"Certainly, he was a sociopath who didn't have a lot of feelings for humanity," Frykdahl concedes in regard to Kaczynski, a man whose name would be nearly as frightening at a spelling bee as it would on a UPS package. "But as we move further into the environmental devastation of the earth, and these petty wars to maintain our technological status, I think his ideas are going to become even more obviously important."

Irony included

Meanwhile, "Phthisis," written by Kihlstedt, is an ode to the Italian futurists and plays the aggressive yang to "FC: The Freedom Club" 's earth-loving yin. "They basically said, 'We want nothing to do with the past, and you in the future should also want nothing to do with us. Take your ideas from yourselves, not from what comes before.' Which is a problematic idea," Kihlstedt says, laughing. "They all ended up also embracing [World War I] as the ultimate embodiment of technology, and of course, a lot of them went to war, and almost all of them died in battle. So there's kind of an irony built into their ideas."

Likewise, irony is built into History. The band spent several months, spread out over a three-year period, recording and mixing the spectacular-sounding, headphone-friendly album, piling on the overdubs and stitching the songs together into suitelike movements.

At the same time, there are also very primitive aspects to the band's sound. For one thing, they do a lot of loud banging on metal objects, many of which were custom-built by Rathbun. The contraptions include oddities such as the Slide Piano Log – a big piece of wood with a bunch of bass piano strings stuck to it – as well as found objects like springs and bicycle wheels rigged up with contact mics. The scrapes, clangs, and crunches give parts of the new album an early-'80s industrial feel, which is no coincidence, given Rathbun's appreciation for fellow instrument builders Einstürzende Neubauten.

"Some of the instruments are directly inspired by them," Rathbun confesses. "I went and saw them once, and they had sort of a cable stretched across a big piece of pipe, and I went home and made the Pedal-Action Wiggler with that specifically in mind."

Neubauten is just one reference point. The regimented, off-kilter thrash of Swedish tech-metal band Meshuggah is another, as is Red-era King Crimson, who used guitar-bass-drums-violin-percussion instrumentation much like Sleepytime do. Even so, there's a theatricality – and a sense of humor – to Sleepytime's delivery that distinguishes them from these more severe acts. The opening and closing songs on Of Natural History, "Hymn to the Morning Star" and "Cockroach," sound like sinister show tunes and were originally written for theater.

The theatrical element carries over into the band's live shows too. Idiot Flesh – Frykdahl's and Rathbun's old band – was even more into the variety-show approach, introducing puppets and dancers into their sets. Sleepytime have begun ramping up their live presentation as well, and on their current tour, they have a new set of costumes and are joined onstage by a butoh dancer.

Authenticity aside

The Bay Area has a long history of theatrically inclined experimental rock, going back to the Residents in the '70s and extending through Caroliner, Faxed Head, Mr. Bungle, Mono Pause, and now Sleepytime Gorilla Museum. Consider it brainy rock music played by people who distrust rock music and who could care less about the stale notions of first-person authenticity that so many folks continue to mislead themselves with.

"The things we're singing about are more archetypal or mythological," Frykdahl says. "We're talking about more universal or large-scale human dilemmas rather than ... our personal problems or issues. Not that that's not an interesting and a valid thing to do. It just doesn't happen to be where my interests lie. My impulses for making music don't come out of an idea of self-expression."

Besides, he adds, "I think you're always making a presentation of some kind. I just happen to feel more 'natural' – and able to access the emotions and the people that I have inside of me that need to come out to make these songs real – more easily if I'm not dressed like I do when I'm having breakfast."

Sleepytime Gorilla Museum play with Secret Chiefs 3 Wed/3, 8 p.m., Great American Music Hall, 859 O'Farrell, S.F. $15. (415) 885-0750.