If one thing can be extracted from BLK JKS’ (pronounced Black Jacks) debut, After Robots, it’s that this South African troop are mind-blowing musicians. Their live show is a storied revelatory experience built around a scorching brand of Afro-punk-tribalism that jack-knifes from heady prog to dub reggae in blinding, hairpin turns. And sometimes, the record sounds like that too. But sometimes the record sounds like Queensryche — which is an extremely difficult thing to write. Though take one listen to the screeching high-end fretwork of the 2-minute guitar solo rounding out “Molalatladi” and try to disagree. Follow it up with the falsetto vocals and rolling, minor-key acoustic fingerpicking of “Standby” and you’ll find that the record starts to drip with an unfortunate amount of proggish melodrama.

And yes, virtuosity is an inarguably impressive thing — and BLK JKS twist through it with a thousand times less pretension than say Maybe, The Mars Volta. But in the end, this is prog-rock: a showman’s universe.

Dizzying, frenetic poly-rhythms bleeding out of Rocksteady chug is a fancy trick, no doubt. All smoke, drift and then flash spun up in a worldly mysticism we’re most certainly not accustomed to. It’s a promising thought to know there are musicians this deft and so easily able to push themselves through so many sonic boundaries at once — but in the end, the overt and ultimately, stifling seriousness surrounding it proves to be the largest boundary BLK JKS stand before.

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