The Apes are not afraid to be loud. They are not afraid to be weird. They are not afraid to be abrasive. Should you be afraid of The Apes? Only if you need your music to be pretty and unobtrusive.

At a time when it seems like a lot of bands want to be pleasant, and seem content to provide listeners with some vaguely edgy but ultimately bland background sounds, The Apes refuse to bleed into the wallpaper; they’re gloriously dissonant and in your face, and without a single guitar in the mix. Their live shows, the stuff of legend after nearly a decade together, are always memorable events, as the band seems never satisfied giving anything less than a balls-out freakshow of a good time.

It’s a new day now for the band: vocalist Joe Halladay parted ways with the group in 2006, and the band was left to decide what to do next. But a situation that would have disbanded a lot of groups was not unfamiliar to the Apes, who’d already replaced a vocalist once before after the departure of original singer Paul Weil. After recruiting artist Breck Brunson on a whim at a house party, the Apes have been reborn again. Tomorrow night at the Black Cat, they celebrate the release of their fourth full length (and seventh record, counting their 3 EPs), Ghost Games, the first recorded with Brunson. Bassist Erick Jackson took some time at the tail end of the band’s frigid February tour of the northeast to answer a few questions for DCist.