**1/2 Course of Empire

TELEPATHIC LAST WORDS

(TVT)

When you consider where modern rockers from Jane's Addiction to Tool have taken hard guitars, there's little that could reasonably be called groundbreaking about Course of Empire. The Dallas quintet do boast two potent drummers, a ripping guitarist, and a savvy ability to rework rock idioms with an ear toward industrial, club, and world-music influences. The metallic crunch and thudding electro-drums on "The Information," the Reznor-esque "Automatic Writing #17," and the spaghetti-Western/dub/Middle Eastern deconstruction of Rodgers & Hart's "Blue Moon" suggest that Course of Empire might not be ready to dive headlong into techno. But the band are ambitious -- check the darkly drum 'n' bass-inspired hidden track -- in their pursuit of recombinant possibilities. The results on Telepathic Last Words are occasionally (unintentionally?) bizarre. "Ride the Static," with its woozily flanged guitar, sounds like a Soundgarden outtake channeled through a Ween-like genre exercise. All of which gives the disc an oddly futuristic depth.

-- Mark Woodlief