Naturally, a set of unfamiliar, unremittingly gloomy material didnвЂ™t make for ideal Friday-night entertainment for many of the 30,000 in attendance, but CoyneвЂ™s static position onstage is a fitting visual metaphor for his performance on the record. Last month at South by Southwest, the band previewed the album in its entirety at AustinвЂ™s Auditorium Shores with a set-up that deemphasized CoyneвЂ™s usual carnival-barker cheerleading in favour of an all-out video-screen sensory assault (and random acts of hair-pulling), the singer held in place by a custom-made synthesizer molded into a baby doll sprouting massive tentacles that extended to the stageвЂ™s backdrop. Tellingly, The Terror has resulted in a complete rethink of the LipsвЂ™ stage spectacle, one designed to disorient rather than delight. The first song may be called вЂњLookвЂ¦ The Sun is RisingвЂќ, but itвЂ™s less cheery proclamation than grave warning, its stuttering drum beat and dentist-drill shocks conjuring ominous images of a not-too-distant future where the mere act of going outside will require the use of a gas mask and protective suit. For all its claustrophobic tension, Embryonic still offered much in the way of thunderous rock catharsis The Terror presents no such salve, drowning its meditative, melancholic melodies in a suffocating, smoggy haze of buzzing synth frequencies, with little rhythmic release. The bandвЂ™s unrelentlingly bleak new album relates to its predecessor much as Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots did to The Soft Bulletin, retaining its antecedentвЂ™s weighty mood but deconstructing the instrumental bombast into more skeletal, mechanical forms. ItвЂ™s just that the former aspect inevitably overshadows the latter- even on the tours for 2009вЂ™s dark, disorienting Embryonic, volcanic salvos like вЂњWorm MountainвЂќ and вЂњSee the LeavesвЂќ simply got subsumed into the LipsвЂ™ usual onstage circus and became the backing soundtrack to more bunny-costume dances.Д«ut with The Terror, the Lips take the bold step of bursting their own bubble. And then the other, you have a band that, over the past few years, has entered the most fiercely experimental, stridently anti-pop phase of its long and storied career. On the one hand, you have the merry pranksters that have remained a constant in music-new feeds for the past decade, whether theyвЂ™re doing rails with Ke$ha, beefing with Erykah Badu, or taking the concept of a physical album release to literal extremes. It effectively split the Flaming Lips into two bands. When Wayne Coyne opened The Flaming LipsвЂ™ 2004 Coachella set by crowd-surfing in a giant inflatible bubble, it represented more than just another gimmick to add to the bandвЂ™s ever-increasing arsenal of theatrical parlour tricks.

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