Exactly 50 years ago at Kent State University in Ohio, the tear gas had barely cleared when a few scrawny, brilliant, sexually frustrated mandroids formed a hive mind of proto-new-wave brilliance with an urgent message: OUR SPECIES IS REVERTING BACK TO APES. They didn’t have a solution—hell, maybe it wasn’t even such a bad thing—but renegade art students Jerry Casale and Mark Mothersbaugh saw the trajectory and were driven to sound the alarms. Surprisingly, mankind was ready, and everyone from punks to critics to David Bowie embraced the starkly awkward band with open arms, as Devo became not only one of the eminent rock groups of the 20th century, but a legitimate cultural touchstone.

We sat down with Mothersbaugh and Casale upon the release of Art Devo, a multi-album set from Futurismo Inc. that spans the band’s unheard earliest, rawest, most ragged battle cries against humanity, to discuss the creation of the group and learn the truth about de-evolution.