According to not totally reliable sources, rocket scientist and father of the Apollo space program, Wernher von Braun, spent his dying moments in 1977 confessing a dark secret to his closest colleague. The former Waffen-SS officer alleged that America’s path toward space-based weaponry was being carefully engineered by its very own national security apparatus. A population already made pliable through the Cold War menace of communism would eventually face an even more insidious foe in the shape of global terrorism, he predicted. That would be replaced, finally, with the biggest, and phoniest, bogeyman of them all—the threat from outer space!

Sitting in Café Roma on Commercial Drive, Threat From Outer Space frontman Tameem Barakat emits a roar of laughter when he hears this story. The Vancouver-born MC actually took the name of the five-piece outfit he’s fronted since 1997 from a line in The X-Files, but he’s familiar with the apocryphal tale of von Braun.

“Yeah, if I ever see an alien land on the White House lawn, I’m not gonna believe it,” he says, drawing on a big cup of coffee. “Although it looks like they’re tipping towards the environmental apocalypse right now. They found one other move before we get to the UFO thing.”

At 31 years old, Barakat has already crammed a criminology degree, a short stint in the Canadian Forces Army Reserve, a career in social work, and even a bid for mayor of Richmond into his young life. As a naturally political monster and inveterate motor mouth, he turns a 30-minute interview into a hugely entertaining two-hour journey through his mind. Like the bullhorn-wielding conspiracy theorist Alex Jones—for whom he confesses some admiration—the Muslim-raised Barakat isn’t afraid to wade into the muck, making the stark declaration, “9/11 was an inside job” during “Guesswork”, from Threat’s newest album, Bleeding the Dying Elephant.

“I’m impressed that the Harper government gave me a FACTOR grant,” he says with a smirk, about an album that appends Barakat’s left-leaning, socially conscious rap to Threat’s unhurried, live-off-the-floor grooves and signature horns. The endowment—which, strictly speaking, is awarded by a nonprofit foundation that extracts some of its funds from the Department of Canadian Heritage—came just in the nick of time for the outfit, after it made a last-ditch effort to raise its profile with the Stay Fluid EP in 2006.

“Nothing happened,” recalls Barakat. “It fizzled. We’ve been going for nine years, and no one cares. I remember I was at a party, and I thought, ‘You know, Tameem, you’re just a better youth worker than you are a musician. Get over it.’ So I turned to my man [drummer] Dennis [Chan], who was deejaying the party, and I said, ‘Man, I quit.’ ”

The very next day, Barakat received the $20,000 grant.

“Dennis was the first guy I called,” he says with a smile.

Threat reconvened for three months of preproduction, building the new album from the ground up with producer Felix Fung, who would also take an additional credit for his guitar work.

“Felix had such a hand in shaping the sound on this album,” says Barakat. “We were hanging on tight to our roles, and Felix really smashed those old modes of thought. He made a real effort to get us outside ourselves and have us relinquish control, and I loved it. And Felix is a hard cat. I was actually hesitant to work with him because I’ve known Felix for 13 years. He actually came to our first show in ’97, and he was critical from the get-go.”

Capturing the organic sounds of a live band was key to Fung’s approach. Barakat remembers the producer telling him, “Give people the drums. You have a drummer. He’s not an 808, he’s a drummer. Make it sound like drums.”

The results, on tracks like “Worldwide”, recall the hip-hop/rock crossover of the Beastie Boys on Check Your Head, or a sexier, jazzier Rage Against the Machine on “Space Out”. Bearing out the band’s “psychedelic, antipop, bomb-beat, rock and roll, hip-hop” tag, Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention could have been responsible for the dandy horn-section punctuation in “We Like to Fight”. In all cases, Fung’s tones would give the flutters to any analogue-infatuated rocker.

All that was left was Barakat’s contribution. “I was giving all these guys a hard time,” he says. “ ‘You better not fuck this up, there’s a lot of money on the line!’ Then it comes to me, and I have all these excuses. I got writer’s block, I don’t feel well that day, I ate something that disagreed with me. And Felix is yelling at me: ‘You call yourself an MC?’ ”

Barakat came through well enough that he can confidently assert, nine months down the line, “It’s the best album we’ve put out, for sure.” This is a boogie-down uplift of a record that floats the lyricist’s heavier political concerns with warmth, humour, and a deep pocket. Of course, given that Bleeding the Dying Elephant arrives courtesy of a grant system that would never be mistaken for anti-establishment, should we wonder if financing resistance is in fact a way of controlling it?

Barakat chortles at the idea, nodding. “Cap ’em at the knees and give ’em a career?” he muses. “Try me!”

Threat From Outer Space plays the Grandview Legion on Friday (March 7).