Robotech.

Since I was but a toddler in 1985—with tastes that skewed closer to the cut-and-dried plot lines of Transformers and Gobots—I missed out on this robot-driven Japanese animated drama when it was actually on the air. Instead—roughly seven years later—I experienced Robotech through a stack of old VHS tapes that other family members had abandoned at my grandmother’s house, and I pined for Veritech fighter toys long after they had dropped out of production.

These tapes have long since disappeared and my memories of this show have faded into an abstract cartoon robot blob looming at the edge of my mind.

And also apparently on the cover of the new record by Baltimore’s Wzt Hearts. The band’s Threads Rope Spell Making Your Bones is presented amidst a collage of chopped-up robots with a heavy emphasis on the “New Generation.”

Which is appropriate since the accompanying music is a similarly striking jumble of neo-psychedelic ambiance that resides halfway between man, machine, and Invid alien terror. Give it a listen:

DOWNLOAD: Wzt Hearts, “Hearth Carver”