BUTTHOLE SURFERS
Year: 1983
Genre: Punk Rock
Sub-Genres: Hardcore, Noise
Label: Alternative Tentacles
Tracks: 7
Length: 18 Minutes (Medium-Length)
Style: Funny
My Rating: 7/8
*feedback* "THERE'S A TIME TO FUCK, AND A TIME TO CRAVE, BUT THE SHAH SLEEPS IN LEE HARVEY'S GRAVE!!!!!"
If you were to actually hear this on the actual album, you would likely either go "what the fuck is this crap?" OR just laugh your ass off. Hopefully the latter. There are some people who avoid this band even because of the CONCEPT of listening to a band with the word "Butthole" in its name. As a result, it is a lot harder to find this band's records in stores than it should be (or at least they act like "Electriclarryland" was the only album they ever released). Well, it's their loss.
By 1983, mainstream music was beginning to get worse than ever before, and this album was probably one of the biggest slaps to the face of that in its time. Offensive, weird, and un-structured. This was also one of the first "slow-core" albums, as the Butthole Surfers were one of the first bands (alongside Flipper, Black Flag, and the Melvins) to take hardcore punk and slow it down to unconventional speeds (this eventually resulted in the "grunge" genre). I think that if I had heard this in 1983, I would have considered the Butthole Surfers kings. This was long before they got to the pinnacle of their weirdness, but it'll still definitely confuse a lot of mainstream music-lovers.
But there is a lot more to the album than that. Part of its appeal is its diversity of style. Tracks 1 & 6 are hardcore thrashers, tracks 2 & 4 are sort of trippy-sounding pieces, and tracks 3 & 7 are examples of slow hardcore proto-grunge stuff. Side 1 is good, but I think that the best part of the album is the entirety of Side 2. The album is only 18 minutes long, so it's easy to listen to the whole thing in one sitting, and there's very little filler. Anyways, here's the damn review...
1. The Shah Sleeps in Lee Harvey's Grave
This one is hilarious. It's basically a bunch of offensive weird rhymes about various culture figures from the 1960s, interspliced with thrashy sections that make nearly every so-called "rock" band today look like pussies. You can also hear some guy screaming "NO!" in the background. The songs slows down with the narrator (Paul Leary) talking about how God is 2nd to him, and after that, it's just some guy curled up in the corner screaming "SHUT UP!" in agony, as the screams turn to wimpers...
2. Hey
This is probably one of the songs I like less off of the album. It almost sounds like garage-rock or something, and this is the first song on the album where Gibby Haynes does the vocals. From the lyrics, I think it is supposed to be some sort of weird love-song. Halfway through the song, the speed picks up in the song and it gets slightly more edgy.
3. Something
This is a slow song. Paul Leary sings, and Gibby plays the saxophone in this song. There doesn't appear to really be any sort of theme to the song, just some random lyrics. There's a pretty repetitive-but-heavy bassline, and a lot of sax and guitar-noise in the foreground. Side 1 ends with this track, and we go on to the even better Side 2.
4. Bar-B-Q Pope
This is the song that got me hooked on the Butthole Surfers. It's a slower, psychedelic song about a guy who has killed the barbecue man, and is hiding. Also, the Pope has been shot. It opens with a mellow, mature-sounding bass and guitar line, but it suddenly interrupted by Paul Leary's maniac shrieks, as he sings the song in a way that makes it hard to tell wether he's feeling angry, guilty, or happy. It's a pretty funny song.
5. Wichita Cathedral
This is a song that you can dance to. It kinda reminds me of "cowpunk" a bit, as it has a country-ish bassline and beat coupled with punk rock fury. Gibby sings in this song, and it's about how he got wasted at the Wichita Cathedral and was chased by a dog. It has a nice mood to it. Maybe you should get wasted to this song as well.
6. Suicide
Probably one of the few serious-sounding songs that this band has ever done. It's basically a deep, poetic-sounding song sung by Gibby Haynes about, well, feelings of suicide and being trapped in a room of problems. It's pretty fast if that's what kind of stuff you dig, and you've gotta love the two great screams from Gibby that the song ends with. Shortest song on the album.
7. The Revenge of Anus Presley
Ya know "Pee Pee the Sailor" (a parody of Popeye the Sailor Man with an ass for a face) from the album's disc art? I'd like to think that these two are friends, or at least brothers of some sort. And while Pee Pee the Sailor comes off as being some sort of jolly fellow, Anus Presley is one of the angriest, meanest motherfuckers you'll ever hear of. He's got the nerve to rip off your toenails as if they were just Twinkies, or peel off your skin as easily as he'd peel a potato. I personally like to go with Wikipedia's explanation of this track, as it being a Black Flag/Henry Rollins parody, because if that was the intent of this track, this is a very good parody. It may not be musically great or anything (who cares?), but I think that it is very funny.
Well, that is the end of the album. It's not too short, but not too long, it's a solid listen, there isn't really a boring track on it, and don't mess with Anus Presley.
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