Band’s CD release party Friday at Outpost

“Check it out man,” said Kevin Gerity, Aviatik’s guitar player, as he pulled a CD out of a cardboard box.

Depicted on its black and red cover, a pilot stares out over the skyline of a city and “Reconstruction/Deconstruction” lurks near the bottom where a gravestone juts out of the ground.

“It’s a concept album about a failed revolution in a 20th-century totalitarian regime,” said Michael Watson, lead singer, keyboardist and guitarist.

The figurative government of the album, which the band insisted has nothing to do with America’s present government, was the result of an unsuccessful revolution, which led to corruption.

In Watson’s basement-turned-studio, the framed album hangs on the wall in the tracking room above a progress board on which everything is checked off, implying completeness.

The two-disk set contains intricate, layered electric and acoustic pieces.

When the two fuse together in the same song, the result is what Watson refers to as “bizarre hybrids.”

Visible from the tracking room is the cramped, gray space where the band plays.

A piece of duct tape stuck to Gerity’s gold, glittery guitar reads, “Thanks Les!” He tunes it, attentively strumming each chord.

Michael Hausknecht taps cymbals and drums in almost melody and Alex Herman strums his bass just once.

A sticker on Hausknecht’s drum set asks, “What is an Aviatik?”

Aviatiks, which are fighter planes from World War I, “were so crappy they would fall apart in midair,” Watson said as he explained how it relates to the theme of an “upward struggle against insurmountable odds” and “dehumanization.”

The band said they are not trying to be political.

It’s “politics as a metaphor,” Herman said of the album’s concept, “for human interaction.”

Watson interjected.

“Ready?” Watson asks the rest of the band as they finish tuning their instruments.

“Once I had friends,” he begins to sing, his voice interweaving with the music. “That’s over now.”

Aviatik will be premiering their new CD at 8 p.m. tomorrow at The Outpost. Tickets are $5 for individuals 21 and older and $7 for those under 21.

Contact features reporter Nicole Hennessy at [email protected].