Threat.Meet.Protocol‘s ‘Mindless Consumption’, an album by the drums/keyboard/bass punk trio from Tauranga, is Muzai Records’ latest release. That’s right, there’s no guitar in there. This leaves Austin Cunningham, the bassist, free to perpetrate some driving Mike Watt-style bass lines while keyboardist Luke Turner gets a whole lot of room to cut loose with crazy synth noises. Another thing, it leaves a lot of sonic room for the vocals, so even when things get rowdy the lyrics don’t get lost in the mix, unlike almost every band with a distorted guitar in the line up. This is extremely refreshing. Makes you wonder why more people aren’t doing it. The band have an aggressive sound but still cram in a lot of melody, with some great angular post punk basslines on a few songs. Stefan Braunias’s drum beats are interesting without falling into the trap of being so willfully ‘different’ that they stop serving the song. There are some cool dirty keyboard sounds happening too. To top it all off, they might be the only band around whose description on Facebook is written as a parody of the Beverly Hillbillies’ theme song. That deserves your attention, surely?