Oh God.
"Yes, son?"
"What does regret mean?"
I really don't know why this wasn't the first Butthole Surfers album I listened to. I suppose song titles like "I Saw an X-Ray of a Girl Passing Gas" and "The Fart Song" found on Hairway to Steven appealed to the inner fifth-grader in me. It was a fine album, as was Rembrandt Pussyhorse and the Cream Corn from the Socket of Davis EP (although the vomiting at the end of "Comb" is still a bit much.) Still, some of the finest albums in the world don't necessarily leave a fine aftertaste, so I decided to stay a bit away from the Buttholes for a while.
This mindset maintained until I decided to, out of sheer curiosity, check out this bastard spawn of a record on my way home from work last summer. Exhausted and sleep-deprived, I had no choice but to stiffle immense amounts of laughter and shock upon first listening to this, seeing as how I was on a crowded train. And if by chance, the poor soul next to me asked me just what I was listening to that was humoring me so much, and I placed the earbuds in his head only for him to hear the dreaded c-word repeated ad-infinitum at different speeds at the same time, he would call security, run to the next car and barricade the door.
Locust Abortion Technician is an album that nobody in their right minds (or really, in any mind) should like. That is why it is so great.
The ideas of anti-music have obviously been explored for years. John Cage's "4:33," Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music and many other works have all tampered with the idea of non-music being music. Locust Abortion Technician however, seems to be a different matter altogether. It's something of an anti-album, a collection of actual songs with (mostly) recognizable song structures and forms. Because the songs are so inherently fucked, and because they're all slammed together mercilessly on the same album, it just shouldn't work. It should be a disturbing, vile, unlistenable mess, but it winds up transcending reason and being brilliant on the virtues of its own pure insanity. There's nothing else like it (which is good, because this world can only handle one Locust Abortion Technician) - it's an anomaly, a strange catch-22 of rock and roll where it works because it shouldn't. Why? Because it absolutely shouldn't.
Maybe it would be best to observe some of the songs on their own, and the album's lead-off track, "Sweat Loaf," sums up things quite nicely. It begins uncharacteristically, with some peaceful synth-string chords that fade in slowly. It's relaxing for about the first thirty seconds, but then it seems to just go on for a bit too long to stay comfortable. With each second from then on, it slowly becomes unnerving, leaving the listener waiting for something to happen, whatever that may be. Finally, the voice of a little boy (or rather one of the Surfers' voices altered in pitch) asks his father (Gibby Haynes... could you imagine Gibby Haynes as your dad?! Gahh) about the meaning of regret. It's a strange but somewhat normal question, although when the boy stutters in different pitches on the word "what," it is clear that something is desperately wrong.
Now, I'm not going to give away the father's response, but it sure caught me off-guard and makes for (no exaggeration) one of the greatest album-opening moments in the history of popular music. And then the band launches into a hellish take on Black Sabbath's "Sweet Leaf," with Haynes shouting, in his pitch-altered "Gibbytronix" vocals, the phrase "Rape a desire" over and over. Occasionally, the song will break down into a sort of pastoral, clean-toned guitar section for some reason before it goes back into the Sabbath riff. Yeah. I can't really figure it out either. And that's just the first song.
Throughout the course of the album, we visit ugly, blues sludge ("Pittsburgh to Lebanon," both incarnations of "Graveyard"), proto-grindcore ("The O-Men," in which Haynes spouts out nothing but indecipherable gibberish at lightning fast speeds) and a few tunes that are basically unclassifiable. (the frightening "U.S.S.A.," the sonically warped "Hay") "22 Going on 23," which has the nerve to close the album out, features a riff courtesy of guitarist Paul Leary that would make the Melvins tremble in fear, while the audio track of a woman calling in to discuss her sexual assault on a radio program will make the rest of us squirm in discomfort. Thankfully, the woman calling in turned out to be a pathological liar and would call the show every night (Don't think I'll ever say that again in my life), so it's not totally tasteless, although the endless repetition of the radio host's words, "depression, anxiety, rape programs," goes beyond the limits of taste into pure absurdity.
And how about that normal song? "Human Cannonball"? It's a fantastic tune! And no, that's not just because it's a miraculous breath of fresh air into recognizable tonality on an otherwise batshit insane record. Taken out of context, the song still retains its intensity and, believe it or not, catchiness. It features some of the best dual drumming that King Coffey and Teresa Nervosa contributed to a Butthole Surfers recording and additionally, it proves that these guys know how to emote! "Pardon me/I'm only bleeding/But you cut me/To the bone," sings Haynes, trying to get across the idea that beyond the incessant acid trip of a life that he led, he still bleeds like the rest of us.
Oh, and the inner fifth grader in me? The one that thought (and still thinks) that hearing things sped up and slowed down was (and still is) hilarious? Well, the infamous "Kuntz," in which the Surfers take some Thai pop song (completely uncredited in the liner notes) and warp the Thai word "kan" (which translates to "itch") so it sounds like a certain word in the English language, repeating it on top of itself, sped up, slowed down. The whole thing is one of the most bizarre, puerile and downright hysterical pieces of music I have ever heard. And the band doesn't even play on it!
From the ominous synths that start the album to the inexplicable crickets-chirping-and-cows-mooing that ends it, and taking the album cover into account (clowns are okay and all, but on an album like this it just seems like a sick homage to John Wayne Gacy), Locust Abortion Technician is an album like no other. And thank God there's nothing else like it out there. As it stands, the album hardly has a right to even exist; if it were any less bizarre, if its drug-addled pretensions had been any less severe, if the band decided to restrain itself in any way at all, it would just come off as an ugly mess, and an ugly mess it still is, but a brilliant ugly mess it is. It's not only a sonic nightmare of a record, but also a paradoxical nightmare of one, and for that reason alone, it is important and worth listening to, if you dare to, even if you will regret it after it's over.
"Well, son, a funny thing about regret is..."
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