ZibraZibra, 777

Cheesy guitar solos, nauseating high-octave boy vocals followed by non-sequitur lyrics and electro-manic music is what embodies spastic quartet ZibraZibra. Those things are not necessarily positive, yet the band uses these qualities to make themselves annoyingly endearing.

Why can’t I help but feel like I just walked into the self-indulgent ’80s, with all its fluorescent pop glory, while listening to these guys? Is this one of those fake bands that make up horrible songs yet exude charm that you can’t help but adore? I can’t pinpoint it, but they’re crafty.

T Kid Z, Vanilla, The Atomic Wolf, and Technosaurus Flex formed in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where they recently graduated from high school, which is crazy, but what’s crazier is that they’ve only been playing for a year and a few months. Their sound is contradictory, with its fragile hooks and erratic sense of time. These guys know what they’re doing — or, at least, know how to play it off as such.

777 is ZibraZibra’s second full length album (End of the Lion being their first), and is probably their weirdest by far. They dabble in a little old school hip-hop on the song “Kiss Kids,” along with ’80s synth-driven pop, corny metal, manic electro, and anything you could think of. With peculiar lyrics like, “Touch, touch my body with your fingertips and salty hands,” to childishly calling someone a “butterfinger face” to a seizure-inducing ode to the quintessential arcade games of years past, one can’t really seem to take them seriously, but I don’t think that’s what they’re aiming for.

They’re not trying to be groundbreaking — they’re aiming to invade and disorientate all your senses with laser sounds and out-of-tune vocals. Their main objective is to play loud and fast and irritate you in the process. Mission accomplished.