Land Grab

n their third album, Seattle’s Unnatural Helpers stay true to punk’s loud, short, and snotty aesthetic while injecting enough personality to separate them from their peers. Lead singer Dean Whitmore and his cohorts dive in with plenty of relish, reveling in the sort of gleeful nihilism that inspires grins rather than angst. The band sounds clean-edged but not antiseptic, gnawing on the songs’ riffs and hooks with admirable intensity. The horror of normal humanity is the dominant subject, whether captured in cracked family portraits (“Devil Is a Liar”) or snapshots of everyday disaster (“Stiff Wind”). Anthems of adolescent alienation like “Hate Your Teachers” are juxtaposed with more philosophical (but still ferocious) tirades like “Toil.” For all its mouth-frothing mania, Land Grab stays surprisingly melodic, as pop-inflected tracks like “Medication” and “Waiting Girl” show. Whitmore and company bust out of their self-imposed sonic confines for “Julie Jewel,” a nearly 10-minute garage-rock workout with the bleary swagger of the early Stooges. Throughout, Unnatural Helpers never lose their collective aggression or cheeky spirit.