Fred Mann is going to knock you out. That's not a threat. It's a promise. The former drummer for the late-90s post-punk band Squatweiler absolutely punishes his kit on All Astronauts' full-length debut, Navigation Songs. But it is not just his power or hand speed that impresses. Like any good boxer or comedian, Mann has a finely honed sense of timing that's akin to jazz stick work. It's what propels All Astronauts' chugging June Of '44-style rhythms through the stop-start rush hour traffic of the band's math-rock arrangements.

A study in restraint and fury, Navigation Songs is a four-car pileup of drums that explode on impact, bass lines that bounce like rubber, vocals that shout to be heard and vines of guitar dissonance that wind about like poison ivy. On "Hidden Agendas," guitarist Kemp Stroble rains down black sheets of distortion, then momentarily clears the skies to trade vocals with another Squatweiler alum, Haydee Thompson, just before the clouds burst again. The instrumental tracks "I Heard Somebody Bombed Somebody Somewhere" and "Coping In A Modern World" seem to lurch forward like a car with a dying alternator and then, suddenly, the songs spring to life and take off when there's a break in the odd time signature bottleneck. Haydee Thompson's vocals on "Curing The Remedy" will raise the hair on the back of your neck. Whereas Mann's drumming is intricate and involved on "I Heard Somebody Bombed Somebody Somewhere", when Thompson sings "Ouch I got hurt again/ ouch ouch got it cut good," on "Curing The Remedy," Mann gives in to his primal urges and pummels away.

On Navigation Songs, All Astronauts earn their merit badges for orienteering. Somehow they stay the course, despite being blown about by swirling guitar cyclones and straight-line rhythmic winds. And they don't lose their heads while all about them in society falls apart. All Astronauts write about "searching for a better way to break my fall" in "Hidden Agendas" and pen lines like "bridges will be built/ bridges will be burned/ bridges will be built again" to imply a hope that mankind's future is brighter than it appears, provided we look ahead and not get wrapped up in what has already happened.

President Bush wants the U.S. space program to go back to the moon, presumably to get some of that delicious green cheese he's heard so much about. Somehow I don't think All Astronauts is NASA material, and that's good news for the world of indie rock because theirs is a voice that needs to be heard right here on Earth.