A handful of high school bands were active during my four years at Exeter High. Of those, I remember the names of only two. One was The Rockoholics, whose frontman, Trafton Waldrop, now leads Satan's Teardrops. The other was Beatnik, later reincarnated as Blue Bus, which featured Chris Kiper and Will Schebaum, currently of Burlington band Manifest Nexto Me.

I think I still have a Beatnik tape lying around somewhere, its shoddily recorded alternative rock tracks somewhere in the archives. The CD that Kiper handed me at Manifest Nexto Me's show at The Stone Church last Friday night, May 20, is possessed of a very different sound. Forever From Now On, the group's second album, is characterized by psychedelic hip-hop that delivers truckloads of heavy lyrics.

From the opening lines of Forever, Manifest seems afflicted with a ponderous sense of their own mortality. "I'm gonna die./ I'm gonna try to stay alive,/ in the end though I won't survive," Kiper repeats with rhythmic candor. Kiper also plays Rhodes and synth on the CD, as does his vocal sidekick Mike Morelli. The two lyricists/keyboardists are accompanied by Schebaum on bass and PJ Davidian on drums. Together, the musicians ferment a Jazzmatazz brew with a slight reggae flavor that prods the boundaries of hip-hop.

Though the band is based out of Burlington, they have booked some stage time on the Seacoast this summer, with upcoming gigs scheduled at the Muddy River on June 17 and at the Barley Pub on July 2. This is good news-they're at their best in the live dimension, where the gravity of their lyrics is counterbalanced by inspired instrumental jams. The studio has a tendency to emasculate certain groups, and while this is not entirely the case with Forever, the full panorama of Manifest's energy and originality is more evident on stage than on record.

Nevertheless, the new CD is definitely worth a listen. It plays like a soundtrack to the weighty and sometimes morbid meditations of a young group struggling to spread a musical message. The sober lyrics belie the positive energy that infuses each band member's playing and produces an upbeat, danceable tempo. There is a spiritual intensity to the music, magnified by political angst, that spins off the disc like a convection current.

"Know we're best friends 'cause we both got the same enemies./ I can be the vitamins but you need your own energy./ Something in the water is depleting all of these memories./ I can be the medicine but you need your own remedy," sings Kiper in the chorus of "Mystic Moth."

As Manifest Nexto Me has developed in the studio, they seem to have gotten deeper into versified hip-hop. Forever From Now On is somewhat less jazzy than the group's previous disc, Victim Oblivion, but there's still an obvious rock presence. If Rage Against the Machine had replaced Zack de la Rocha with Aesop Rock, you might have heard something like Manifest. (In fact, the band sneaks a fragment of a Rage line into "The Fountain.")

But Manifest's lyrics are more symptomatic of fear than rage, and over the course of nine tracks the words can get a bit cumbersome. It's largely for this reason that they are best heard live, where the band's passion for living and playing music is thoroughly evinced. Forever From Now On represents continued explorations in hip-hop, the musical form that currently has the most breathing room for experimentation. There are some potent tracks on the CD, and the band deserves recognition as a regional gem.