It's time to offer up a hearty "welcome back!" to Japanese avant-prog quartet Happy Family. Listeners last heard from them on 1997's sophomore outing Toscco, and the band broke up the following year, re-emerging 14 years later in 2012 with three members of the Toscco lineup -- keyboardist Kenichi Morimoto, guitarist Takahiro Izutani, and drummer Keiichi Nagase -- joined by new bassist Hidemi Ichikawa. Morimoto, Izutani, Nagase, and Ichikawa hardly skip a beat between then and now as they extend the Rock in Opposition-influenced Happy Family sound into the 21st century on the group's third Cuneiform label release, 2014's Minimal Gods, a set of ultra-tight high-energy complex instrumentals complete with rippling keyboards, metal-crunchy guitar, gut-punching drums, and speaker-challenging deep Magma-esque bass. Literally speaking, however, Happy Family's complicated time signatures skip plenty of beats, beginning with the demented rhythms -- partly in 11/8 -- of opener "Slide," with Nagase and Ichikawa locking tightly together, Izutani Frippishly riffing and then throwing out choppy chords for Morimoto to toss back in counterpoint, and everything fitting together like crazily angled puzzle pieces. Amidst all this, Izutani still manages to nail a pair of brief but fiery solos to the skewed structure surrounding him. With its retro-squelchy keyboard tones and memorably catchy riff/melody, second tune "No Talent, No Smell" suggests a twisted but high-spirited form of proggy alien space funk, while Izutani's jabs of metal guitar, exploding over Morimoto's Present-like arpeggiated keys, bring a headbanging intensity to "Rodrigo." Headbanging in an irregular tempo, of course.

1		Slide
2		No Talent, No Smell
3		Rodrigo
4		Portal Site For Sightseeing
5		Doggy-Human Contest
6		Animal Spirit
7		Cat Riding On Roomba
8		Celestial Illegal Construction
9		Tibidabo
10		Feu De Joie