As a general rule, I have only disparaging things to say about genre classifications. The practice has enabled lazy music-writing and turned “core” into a totally meaningless suffix. Genres have become as multivariate as religious sub-sub-denominations and just as useless. They do provide an occasional road-map kind of helpfulness, but in general I think you can divide music into two types: the coat-and-tie affairs and the ones that let me drink a beer inside.

Even with my extreme dislike of labeling, I have always found “math rock” a little endearing. I’m not sure who invented it, but I like the idea that someone got frustrated enough with a type of music to decide it had to be described in terms of calculus or Archimedes with his mad geometry. A more cynical (and better) theory is that it became a catch-all term to describe anything more complicated than U2. Regardless, and at the risk of hypocrisy (there’s really no risk; this is me committing it, blatantly), the same determination could be applied to Bad Design. As cater-cornered as Bad Design’s second, self-titled album is, it might as well be a treatise on the parabola.

Denton group Bad Design suits the nerdy and aloof. They approach at oblique angles. They vent music that veers and dovetails, resisting plumb lines and boundaries. It takes some gumption to meddle this much with notes. Bad Design manages to do so without spilling over into unpalatable slop. In the end, this sometimes erratic album is a pleasure to hear.

Bad Design’s label, Gutterth, has built a reputation of iconoclastically stripped productions. The practice has allowed the label and the bands associated with it to forge an identity of thick-skinned ferity. Bad Design is no different. Their sound reaches back to a time when “alternative” was more literal. (As a scripted Doc Holiday would confess, my hypocrisy knows no bounds.) It is heavy, but recumbent, reminiscent of certain workmen of the early nineties who thanklessly forged new musical paradigms. Bad Design’s sound is that of petulant ruddiness angrily wriggling inside its pop-sensible Sunday best.

At times during the album, the roughshod approach becomes wearying, even at a brief twenty nine minutes. At its worst, Bad Design finds itself aimlessly hunting through its aggression. At its best, it is singer Steve Altuna’s uncorked vocal punch that holds it together. Altuna labors to bellow every line and manages to turn his limited vocal range and flirtation with off-key-ness into distinctive assets. And as “Little Tanks” aptly demonstrates, the band can fit in great melodies when they are called for.

Bad Design’s second album resists description, but not relation. It has inherited musical currency from the right benefactors and recaptures much of the loud and unruly tradition that, mercifully, refuses to bend to the pretty and mild.