SAN FRANCISCO--Listening to Battles' current Warp Records album Mirrored is akin to watching a four-headed robot in action.

Seeing Battles live is like cracking open its casing and seeing what makes it tick.

The quartet brewed its unusual brand of sound at a sold-out Great American Music Hall, and even though the performance gave keys to the inner workings of the band, the technically demanding music shouldn't be attempted at home.

Given the slacked-jaws and hypnotic trance the crowd was in, it seemed most were content to stand back and let the professors do their thing--fuse a variety of extreme genres in a shockingly funky way.

Battles is most accurately lumped into the math-rock category (likely the chaos theory subgenre), though it's a result of the sum of its parts: metal, electronic music, and progressive rock. Its live parts are also four gifted musicians, each so technically sound that one could easily mistake the result as a product of well-crafted machines.

The anchor of Battles is the band's metronome John Stanier, former drummer of Helmet, who unleashed relentlessly on the skins (and vigorously shook a set of jingle bells). Positioned front and center with a crash cymbal raised six feet in the air, Stanier warbled between standard breakbeats and arrhythmic drumming, all patched together with awe-inspiring, inhuman fills.

This is by no means a one-man show, though. During the performance's most intense moments, each member produced multiple sounds thanks to loads of sampling, looping equipment, and a bevy of pedals. The apparent modus operandi: blow people's minds, loop, repeat.

The band's use of digital loops created textures that wouldn't be possible otherwise, and when built upon the jazz-like instrumentation, the music launched into the stratosphere.

Looping wasn't confined to instruments. On "Race:in," well-coiffed multi-instrumentalist Tyondai Braxton looped his voice several times over, going up an octave with each successive sample and creating a stuttered, otherworldly harmony.

"Atlas," the band's first single off of Mirrored, drew the greatest response from the predominantly male, hipster crowd. The moment the rolling drums erupted, the audience's already anxious mood jumped up a few notches into a frenzy as Braxton lifted and swayed to his own vocals.

Battles is by no means just a simple set of lunacy; the primitive repeating rhythms and unusual synthesized sounds (see "Bad Trails") can be likened to the work of the current princes of weird, Animal Collective. The band's jagged rhythms and at times gleefully abrasive soundscapes stir tribal responses, as evidenced by the stomping feet and nodding heads.

As solid as Mirrored is, Battles' music is best consumed in a live setting. If last night's performance is any indication of where they're headed, it's best to get your tickets early.