If innovation and internal tension are signs of genius, then Pittsburgh quartet Don Caballero have been rock's most consistently brilliant band since their 1991 inception. Even after disbanding in 2000, only to return today in a controversial new lineup, Don Cab remain musically untouchable—and, after 15 years of watching the "math rock" upstarts he's influenced steal his polyrhythmic thunder, it's good to hear drummer and sole original member Damon Che finally tooting his own horn.
"There's nobody else doing anything like what you get when you come out to see us," he begins, "and I don't mean that in a pretentious or condescending way. It's just the truth; it's as complicated as being proud of your own tomato plants. If you've got a green thumb and you're good at it, you're gonna come up with something nobody else is able to do quite like you."
The analogy may be a stretch, but the truth isn't. While their angular, mixed-meter attack acknowledged both King Crimson and '80s art-metal progenitors Honor Role, Don Cab arrived in the summer of '91 as a fully formed beast, and from there, they never stopped progressing. Recorded by Steve Albini, 1993's For Respect was an audiophile document of the band's early sound on which Che, all octopus limbs and extended fills, clearly drove the material. But 1995's Al Sutton–produced Don Caballero 2, with its weird, extended song structures and contrapuntal finger tapping, was the record that seemed poised to "break" the band to a wider audience. Oddly, Don Cab capitalized on the exposure by not touring in support of 2, which meant it'd take another three years for the public to catch up.
Though it appeared on 2, Don Cab's finger-tapped filigree peaked with 1998's What Burns Never Returns. And though he likely nicked it from minimalist composer Steve Reich, you can thank former guitarist Ian Williams for the contribution. Now employing similar ideas in the funkier Battles, Williams joined Don Cab in 1992, kicking into gear what would become the band's trademark guitar style. Hell, by the time of 2000's American Don (the lineup for which, tellingly, was Che and two-thirds of Williams's side project Storm & Stress), Williams's presence had become so dominant that Don Cab's apparent four-guitar lineup was actually just him and an Akai Headrush pedal. With that sort of ego running unchecked, and with Che's equally large personality serving as the mongoose to Williams's cobra, doom was inevitable.
After collapsing in a now-legendary on-the-road flameout, Don Cab quietly reappear in 2003, the lineup now comprising Che, guitarists Eugene Davis and Jeff Ellsworth, and bassist Jason Jouver (all of the Pittsburgh art-noise group Creta Bourzia), and the sound being a veritable "return to form" that largely ignores Williams's specter for the polyrhythmic crunch of the band's salad days. Not surprisingly, Che and company have found a sympathetic new label in Pennsylvania's extreme-metal juggernaut Relapse Records.
"[W]e could've been on some other labels that I've worked with," Che says, "and another 1,000 years could've gone by before some of the things [Relapse] has made happen in a year did... Then again, maybe it's just hard to make instrumental music work."
Released in May, World Class Listening Problem has received mixed reviews so far: some lament Williams's absence; others accuse Che of capitalizing on the band name. The album's cheerleaders, however, call it a powerful, condensed history of Don Cab with the ego clashes finally purged. All of the above are valid points, but to the fortysomething Che—who, despite being one of the most respected drummers in rock, still crashes on strangers' floors—the idea that he's somehow "cashing in" seems to sting most. The truth is, like Richard Gere's character in An Officer and a Gentleman, the dude's really got no place else to go.
"All of us have had multiple projects and they're fun," Che says, referencing his own work in the wall-of-guitar combo Thee Speaking Canaries, "But you go on tour, and no one comes; no one cares. You put out a record and no one buys it. This band, it's our fuckin' inheritance; we can't blow it off. I certainly can't." 
