pantsgoblin vs. '90s alt-rock's most unsellable albums

The Flaming Lips - Hit To Death in The Future Head (1992, Warner Brothers)



Full album playlist

Who They Were: Formed in Oklahoma City in 1983 by guitarist (later singer) Wayne Coyne, bassist Michael Ivins, and others (Coyne and Ivins would go on to be the only permanent founding members). The band released four albums for indie label Restless Records; the final one, In a Priest Driven Ambulance, was a collaboration with Jonathan Donahue and Dave Fridmann of fellow listees Mercury Rev (guitarist Donahue would stay on with the band through the recording of Hit To Death…). They signed with Warner Brothers in 1991.

How They Got on a Major Label: An A&R guy pushed for Warners to sign the band after attending a show in Norman, OK on their 1990 tour (oddly, the show almost saw the venue burned down from the band’s pyrotechnics).


I don’t believe I’ve listened to a Lips album dating prior to Transmissions from the Satellite Heart years ago. The Soft Bulletin was covered by one of the TI’s Record Clubs a while back and, while I admired the complex production, the band’s wide-eyed psychedelic jubilation often gets tiresome for this old curmudgeon. Let’s find out if they had more rough edges in the early days.


1. Talkin’ ‘Bout the Smiling Immortality Deathporn Blues (Everyone Wants To Live Forever)
I see from the song’s video that the band’s predilection for female partial-nudity cheesecake was there from the beginning (at least, of their tenure in the majors). The main hook is facile (some deep-voiced guy saying “Ooh Wop Wop Ooh” repeatedly) but the production adds some welcome female choir behind the alt-rock buzz. I wonder if it’s the same sort of Mellotron sampled choirs famously employed by albums later in the decade (OK Computer, Tidal, etc.).

2. Hit Me Like You Did the First Time
Noisy if polite early-‘90s psychedelia, tricked out with a bunch of funny noises by producer Dave Fridmann. Coyne’s voice carries the melody capably.

3. The Sun
Makes an explicit connection to the pop of the ‘70s by directly quoting “So Far Away” from Carole King’s Tapestry. Quite out of step with their grunge-crazy American counterparts at the time but arguably more in line with the contemporary U.K. psych-pop bands (Teenage Fanclub et al).

4. Felt Good to Burn
Acoustic guitar, bongos, and a queasy oscillator make this sound like nothing so much as a precursor to what Beck was doing in the mid-‘90s. Fittingly, the band would go on to tour as Beck’s backing band for the 2002 Sea Change tour.

5. Gingerale Afternoon (The Astrology of a Saturday)
Coyne’s voice has been remarkably restrained on this record for the most part as compared with his “keen-to-the-rafters” style on later releases. A swirling mélange of guitar effects on this one create a pleasant, if not earth-shattering, shoegaze reverie.

6. Halloween on the Barbary Coast
Mercury Rev-ish production redeems this ramshackle track that I would guess harkens back to the band’s earlier indie records, complete with the preciously nonsensical lyrics from Wayne Coyne that have often been his weakness.

7. The Magician & The Headache
A surface-level rocker, not all that distinguishable from all other indie rock of its time despite the deployment of odd noises around the margins. Nice use of double tracked vocals, though, plus that deep-voiced guy trick from the kickoff song.

8. You Have To Be Joking (Autopsy of the Devil’s Brain)
This song delayed the release of this album by a year due to its sampling of Michael Kamen’s soundtrack to the film Brazil and the lengthy clearance process that followed. Effective use of echo and delay around a pretty Coyne-led acoustic guitar and piano ballad; the orchestral score seems to be there just for weirdness’ sake.

9. Frogs
A less gimmicky, infinitely more effective squall-rocker than “Everyone Wants To Live Forever” to these ears. The Youtube video definitely indicates this was the major single from the record and it’s a quality video for its time despite frequent close-ups of Coyne’s dental caps and bridgework.

10. Hold Your Head
Deftly psychedelic; expertly produced. Superb use of church organ to lift this one into the stratosphere.

11. Noise Loop
What the tin says: 29 minutes of static and other noises constantly shifting between stereo channels.


Final Thoughts: Despite the sense of, like in every Lips record I’ve heard, there not being much going on beneath the surface of the songs, I admired this record. Relative to much of the band’s output, Coyne has restraint in his vocals here and the funny noise samples are generally employed in service of the songs, both of which helped my enjoyment immensely. It’s the first time I’ve agreed with the highest critical compliment I’ve read for these guys: that, even without the studio accouterments, the songs would usually sound good played on just a guitar.

So, How “Weird” Is It?: While the squealing guitars likely kept away fairweather alt-rock fans, this one had enough to offer to the early-‘90s neo-psychedelic movement to become the commercial breakthrough that the band would find on its next release, Transmissions from the Satellite Heart. A cover featuring a toilet coupled with an explicit lyrics tag likely didn’t help the album’s market potential.

Best Track: “Frogs”
Worst Track: “The Magician & The Headache”

What Was Next For This Band: Drummer Nathan Roberts left the band shortly after the recording of Hit To Death and was replaced with still-current Lips drummer Steven Drozd. Warner Brothers stuck with the band, releasing their albums to this day. The contract would include wildly divergent Lips releases including the audio experiment Zaireeka (four CDs designed to be played simultaneously), the critical darling The Soft Bulletin, and the band’s biggest commercial hit Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, all produced by Dave Fridmann. In 2008, the group released a science fiction film, Christmas on Mars, written and directed by Coyne.

Up Next: Swedish death-metallers Entombed with Wolverine Blues

I remember the shit that got piled on Entombed for this album, and coupled with a waning interest in death metal after the genre reached its peak with Effigy of the Forgotten, I gave it a miss.  Listening to it now, I kinda wish I hadn't.  It would be interesting to return to an album I almost certainly would have hated after all the intervening shifts in the landscape of various metal genres.  In 2018, this sounds like a harder-edged proto-Kyuss, and it's actually pretty good (though I still gotta say I like the death metal bits the best).

Gallon Drunk - From the Heart of Town (1993, Sire)



Full album

Who They Were: A quartet formed in London in 1988 with their own label (Massive), through which they began cutting and distributing singles. The songs and later their 1992 debut You, The Night…& The Music rode a wave of hype from U.K. music magazines NME and Melody Maker all the way to signing with Sire Records, a subsidiary of Warner Brothers.

How They Got on a Major Label: See above.


1. Jake on the Make
Starts off with a repeating tapped snare that makes it sound like the CD is skipping, then on to a bizarre pileup of sounds (spaghetti Western guitar, piercing organ, banjo, god knows what else) playing what resembles a funhouse-mirror version of the blues. An odd lead-off to say the least. The lyrics are apparently about a notorious London scenester named Jake Elvis.

2. Arlington Road
Loamy, bass-heavy blues (with maracas; they apparently had a full-time player of the instrument). The super-saturated production adds a lot of menace to the proceedings. The frequent Nick Cave/Birthday Party comparisons this band receives are deserved, as singer James Johnston (who would go on to play in The Bad Seeds) works in Cave’s register to the point of being his clone, especially on this track.

3. Not Before Time
Hand-clapped gospel-blues rave-up. Melody is not this band’s strong suit—atmosphere’s their thing. Of the comparisons to be made, there’s also more than a little Tom Waits in his clattery, Swordfishtrombones mode here.

4. Keep Moving On
A relative bit of much-needed lightness in this Latin-tinged number, as the maximalist production of previous tracks was getting suffocating. Features more Johnston speak-singing over barroom piano and a gospel organ.

5. Bedlam
Fuzzy blues-punk track that brings to mind To Bring You My Love-era PJ Harvey (with whom the band would later tour), though it's instrumentally frenetic where Polly Jean employs precision. The closest thing to a rocker on this album in that the song only sort of recalls the act of drunkenly staggering around. Yet it closes with an horn-squalling freakout, torpedoing whatever commercial chances the track ever had.

6. You Should Be Ashamed
Another bass-oriented grinder, with vibrato guitar, Wurlitzer organ, and saxophone adding color. The lyrics on the album haven’t impressed much so far beyond as decadent come-ons, but this one is a credible feminist lament. Features Laetitia Sadier of Stereolab on backup vocals, presumably due to a connection through album producer Phil Wright, who also produced most of Stereolab’s records.

7. End of the Line
More low-end workouts, this one propelled by a repeating figure of left-hand piano notes and syncopated drumming that anchor a seemingly endless rotation of guitar tremolo, distortion, and other effects.

8. Loving Alone
The band finally fully gives in to the spaghetti Western styles lurking in the previous tracks. If this music ever had a shot commercially, it would’ve been this song as a soundtrack selection for a ‘90s Tarantino-knockoff crime caper.

9. Push the Boat Out
A bossa nova beat livens up what is otherwise firmly in the band’s wheelhouse: a dismantled, almost motorik-like take on the blues, lushly produced with a dog’s breakfast worth of details in the margins.

10. Paying for Pleasure
More abstract blues, with atonal guitar, a harmonica very high in the mix, and abrasive organ, all played over a loud, low mechanical humming. A very strange track.


Final Thoughts: Idiosyncratic to a fault, this is an intense, exhausting album but is also strangely admirable in its refusal to stay put musically or take an obvious sonic path. It’s clear to see why the band was a critical darling in its early days. The band may have had the misfortune of coming a few years before groups that, beginning in the mid-90s, explored deconstructed blues (PJ Harvey, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, The White Stripes), though those bands employed a much more straightforward take on the sound.

So, How “Weird” Is It?: There was little commercial reference for material like this—the closest being the cult popularity of Tom Waits’ late-‘80s output—and the disjointed, bass-heavy lurch of the music compared with straightforward grunge and jangle-rock of the time must’ve sounded completely alien.

Best Track: “You Should Be Ashamed”
Worst Track: “Push the Boat Out”

What Was Next For This Band: Morrissey, a fan, enlisted the group to open for him on his 1993 tour, taking them to Madison Square Garden and the Hollywood Bowl. From the Heart of Town was later nominated for a Mercury Prize. Though the band would not record for Sire again, a later album, In The Long Still Night, received distribution through EMI. Founding member Nick Coombe died in 2015 but the band continues to perform and record. In addition to being part of Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds, frontman James Johnston also served as a member of Faust for a time and, with keyboardist Terry Edwards, contributed to PJ Harvey’s 2016 album The Hope Six Demolition Project.

Up Next: Bakamono brings the noise with Cry of the Turkish Fig Peddler

Bakamono – The Cry of the Turkish Fig Peddler (1995, Priority Records)



No full album streaming online – songs linked where available. 

Who They Were: A Japanese term meaning “foolish people,” Bakamono was formed in 1991 in Santa Cruz, CA. Led by vocalist/guitarist Eiso Kawamoto Jr., the group had just one release, a split 7” with fellow noise-rock outfit Oiler, before inking a contract with Priority Records, which had a distribution deal with EMI in the ‘90s.

How They Got on a Major Label: No idea (see below).


Perhaps the most inexplicable contract on this list: Priority Records was an overwhelmingly hip-hop oriented label (N.W.A., Ice Cube, Snoop Dogg, Mos Def, Geto Boys) with just a handful of rock artists on its roster (Carole King and GWAR actually shared a label in the ‘90s). An annoyingly written ‘zine bio compares this band to listmates Boredoms, Jesus Lizard, and Steel Pole Bathtub. Let’s find out what was so seductive about Bakamono that Priority had to have them.


1. This Is an Unreinforced Masonry Building
Some George Clinton-esque squeaky vocal silliness starts off a noisy, albeit curiously sleepy-sounding, kickoff track. At times highly reminiscent of Sonic Youth and, yes, Steel Pole Bathtub, though the vocals might as well be recorded with a dictaphone. The 11-minute length of this album’s lead song conclusively demonstrates this band wasn’t in it to sell millions of records.

2. Manteca
For a noise rock outfit, this group has a surprisingly tight rhythm section. Despite more apathetically recorded vocals, the singer shows much more range on this one, going from a credible lilt to full-on screams.

3. Optimator
The thought of EMI executives listening to this ADD-addled screwiness and pondering a way to sell it…well, I’ll save that for the post-listen comments.

4. Dope Is The Thing with Feathers
The best weed-punning, Emily Dickinson-referencing noise rock song you’ll ever hear. Features schizoid musical turns on some of the most thoroughly uncommercial music covered yet on this feature. It is admittedly cool when they crank up the guitar distortion far enough to sound like a jet engine.

5. LTR
Unpleasant memories of Drive Like Jehu in this one, though these guys seem to play with much more humor and a self-effacing quality. It’s literally gotten to the point of this analysis that I can’t do much more than point out that the guitars sound like one thing or another.

6. Dead Zoo
It’s a rousing, take-no-prisoners rocker for the first half, then a lengthy interlude of echo-effected guitar bending, and then finishing with a drum crescendo-assisted plethora of effects.

7. Bakaunkomankoshiiko Tare
Psychotically ill-tuned guitars on this song, yet it’s somehow the most unpretentiously direct rager of the bunch.

8. Frenching with Aliens
If any song had the slightest chance of breaking through commercially on any level, it’s this relatively riff-based screamo track that (partially due to its title) might’ve ended up on some compilation of ‘90s post-hardcore, though in an inopportune slot toward the end of the comp CD because of the shrill guitars in the song’s center section.

9. Donny Brooke
As much as this band (vocally) shrieks and sneers on the second half of this album, there’s never a sense that they’re angry at something specific. It feels more like they scream because it’s what the music demands. And what is there to be that angry at in Santa Cruz, anyway?

10. Crime
Credit is due to the bassist for holding these song contraptions together. On this, as with many tracks, he seems to be playing multiple strings simultaneously and harmoniously.


Final Thoughts: One of those odd anomalies of rock history, in which this band was shown the spotlight of a major label on their first time out of the gate and they responded by putting out a release that’s as offputtingly irritating as their id could create. Though I didn’t particularly enjoy the two listens I gave to this record, I’d be interested in they did with their second and final full-length (see “What Was Next”) though it seems like it requires a significant effort to even find a copy of that one.

So, How “Weird” Is It?: I’ve finally reached what I thought would be a frequent entry in this feature: a 100% unmarketable record. More so than any other album so far on this list, I can only laugh cruelly at the thought of EMI executives faced with selling this molten, spasmodic slice of jolly cacophony.

Best Track: “Manteca”
Worst Track: “LTR”

What Was Next For This Band: Online information about Bakamono is spotty at best (the Spin feature from which this list derives refers to the album as Cry of the Turkish Pig Fiddler). According to Discogs, Bakamono had one more album, 1997’s Long Time Cain, for tiny indie Super 8 Records before calling it a day.

Up Next: Described to the news as “audio porn” by an irate mother, it’s Primitive Enema by Butt Trumpet

Thanks. I don't know what happened with those links but they should be fixed now. 

Butt Trumpet – Primitive Enema (1994, Chrysalis)



Songs linked where available

Who They Were: Punk five-piece founded in L.A. in the early ‘90s by vocalist Thom Bone and featuring a lineup containing two co-vocalists and bassists, Bianca Butthole and Sharon Needles. In 1992, the band released a self-titled debut EP and then recorded their debut full-length, Primitive Enema, for indie Pollyanna. Later, Chrysalis Records, a subgroup of EMI, bought the rights to and remastered the debut album.

How They Got on a Major Label: According to a 2000 interview with Needles, an A&R guy at EMI named Duff thought the record was hilarious and that people needed to hear it. 1994, folks.


Primitive Enema made national headlines when a Massachusetts town considered banning the album (or outright banned it—online accounts differ) after a mother complained from catching her 12-year-old daughter listening to the record. The mother, in complaining to the press, described the music as “audio porn,” the notoriety of which no doubt delighted the band and EMI.

Butt Trumpet had a high-profile champion in album producer Geza X, a fixture of the West Coast punk scene who also produced for Dead Kennedys (“Holiday in Cambodia” and Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death), Germs (Lexicon Devil), Black Flag (Six Pack EP), and later scored a huge mainstream hit with Meredith Brooks’ “Bitch”. Shall we find out if Butt Trumpet’s deliberate crudeness hides some clever musical tricks?

(Note: I ultimately decided not to review these tracks individually for reasons outlined below.)
1. Clusterfuck
2. Funeral Crashing Tonight
3. I’ve Been So Mad
4. Dicktatorship
5. Classic Asshole
6. Decapitated
7. Dead Dogs
8. I Left My Flannel in Seattle
9. I’m Ugly and I Don’t Know Why
10. The Grindcore Song
11. Primitive Enema
12. I Left My Gun in San Francisco
13. Shut Up
14. Ten Seconds of Heaven
15. Yesterday
16. Ode to Dickhead
17. Pink Gun
18. Blind


Final Thoughts: Pretty much what you guessed it is: relentlessly juvenile Cramps worship. Almost all the songs are the same, with Thom Bone playing ringleader via his chanted vocals to three-chord hardcore and Needles and Butthole going Greek (chorus) on their backup vocals (that’s how you do a sophisticated anal joke, Butt Trumpet). Exceptions: the band attempting an alt-rock anthem with “I’m Ugly and I Don’t Know Why” and a failed-cunnilingus ballad on “Yesterday” [note: several of the Youtube postings for the songs were unavailable in my country and I’m not going to break a sweat tracking them down elsewhere]. The production is surprisingly sharp though, but as Stephen Thomas Erlewine puts it in his Allmusic review, it paradoxically strips this crass music of its immediacy and potency.

I find myself sympathizing a bit with the Massachusetts mother because she wanted this out of her daughter’s Discman (not because she pushed for it to be banned locally; no government should do that, of course). Really, even 12 is too old to find humor in this junk—12-year-olds should ideally be getting into Weird Al and Monty Python.

So, How “Weird” Is It?: Anything this proudly puerile can’t help but attract some attention, which is likely what EMI was betting on. I’d be interested to see an analysis of what this cost to produce versus the numbers it sold; I’d lay money on it making a tidy profit for the label.

Best Track: “Funeral Crashing Tonight”
Worst Track: “I Left My Gun in San Francisco”

What Was Next For This Band: Butt Trumpet, which Wikipedia describes as having a “deliberately unstable band lineup,” would release only one other full-length (1996’s Board Stiff) but has several split EPs. In the late ‘90s, three members would break off to form the band Betty Blowtorch. In 2001, Bianca Butthole died in a car accident after accepting a ride with a drunk driver (Ed- don’t do that).

Up Next: Hopefully some butt stuff of a higher caliber with Fudge Tunnel’s Creep Diets

I'm changing my name to Bianca Butthole

The only one of these songs I've ever heard before is "I'm Ugly and I Don't Know Why" (which somehow got played late at night on the local modern rock station from time to time), so I was under the impression that this was a female-fronted alt-rock band and not some kind of sub-Meatmen trash like most of these tracks (at least the ones I listened to before getting bored).

I still kind of like "I'm Ugly" though. It's dumb as shit, but the pumpkin seed story made me chuckle

Fudge Tunnel - Creep Diets (1993, Columbia)



Full album

Who They Were: A trio formed in 1989 in Nottingham, U.K: Alex Newport (vocals/guitar), Dave Riley (bass), and Adrian Parkin (drums). The band’s very first release, a self-titled track, was declared the best single of 1990 by NME. After a couple of EPs, the band landed a tour slot supporting metal group Godflesh and, shortly thereafter, Fudge Tunnel signed with indie label Earache Records. The group had early notoriety when Nottingham authorities confiscated the artwork for their debut album Hate Songs in E Minor, which showed a decapitated body.

How They Got on a Major Label: As with Cancer, Napalm Death, and Entombed, part of Earache’s ‘90s distribution deal with Columbia.


“Noise” is the common word of all online depictions of this band. Are they a Bakamono-level constant freak-out or do they just employ a bunch of de rigueur guitar fuzz?


1. Gray
Absolutely dripping with the indie Seattle sound that exploded a couple years prior, but with the guitars pushed into even nastier fuzzed-out tones. The vocals are buried in the mix, which was typical of the day but also an interesting choice as vocalist/guitarist Alex Newport is the producer on this record.

2. Tipper Gore
The bass is barely audible and is playing root notes—it could be a guitar-drums duo. As for the guitar, a credible enough solo on the breakdown but, as with much of the song, nothing earth-shattering. Chorus: “Do what I say, not what I do” – what a scathing indictment of Tipper. Also, the PMRC hearings were seven years prior, guys. Let it go.

3. Ten Percent
The bass is back and the rhythm section is much appreciated on this stop-start number. Flat-footed and fairly rote songwriting but not without its scrappy early ‘90s charm.

4. Face Down
Metal recorded as indie rock, but it lacks the dynamics and quirks of something like, say, Discharge. Newport has serious producer bona fides these days (more on that later) but I can’t say I get what he was striving for in this era.

5. Grit
Very much recollects Bleach-era Nirvana except devoid of Cobain’s bluesy idiosyncrasies and the swing that the rhythm section possessed.

6. Don’t Have Time for You
“I don’t want to hear what you have to say; probably heard it anyway.” Indeed. At least this one switches up the music a bit in adding a bit of sparkle to the constant guitar distortion and a loping beat.

7. Good Kicking
As with most of these tracks, it’s an inoffensive but personality-free amalgam of Mudhoney-esque grunge and under-produced metal riffing. Not bad, just lacking a reason to exist even in 1993.

8. Hot Salad
A welcome switch into quasi-post punk atmospherics on this brief instrumental.

9. Creep Diets
Just when I was getting ready to write this song off as a rehash of “Ten Percent,” the instrumental breakdown mercifully shows some interesting dynamics, with well-deployed feedback over some uncharacteristically passionate playing by the bassist and drummer. The production provides real menace that’s sadly lacking in most of the album runtime.

10. Stuck
Unremarkable mosh-pit rager. Redeemed a bit by more processed-guitar trickery.

11. Always
Subterranean-sounding production and industrial-level shrieks add some ear-catching texture to an otherwise boilerplate ultimate track.


Final Thoughts: If you asked me to pinpoint the exact median (in terms of quality) of grunge-era hard rock, I’d have a hard time not pointing to this record. The whole thing is played competently, has fashionable bile behind the lyrics, and—for a trio—the group cranks up the guitar noise on overdrive to rival anything else coming out of alternative nation at the time. But nothing about the songwriting or humor sticks out in the memory—the songs just aren’t there.

So, How “Weird” Is It?: Save for possibility of “Don’t Have Time for You,” nothing even remotely approaches a radio hit on this one, and even that track challenges the listeners with typical muffled vocals and jet-engine distortion on the outro.

Best Track: “Creep Diets”
Worst Track: “Grit”

What Was Next For This Band: Frontman Alex Newport lost interest in the band, telling earpollution.com with admirable self-awareness in 1999 that “With Fudge Tunnel, we decided from a very early point that we should split up as soon as we got to the stage where we were repeating ourselves or wearing out the joke, so to speak. Originally, we had intended to do one LP only…Eventually the point came where we couldn't justify any new material using the same sound. I think we pretty much exhausted the one riff we had.” The mediocre reviews for Creep Diets as compared with the band’s debut indicate that critics at the time felt much the same way.

The band’s only subsequent release was a b-sides collection and Fudge Tunnel was dropped by Columbia shortly thereafter. Newport redirected his attention to side project Nailbomb, which featured Sepultura singer Max Calavera. Newport is now a noted producer with credits on albums by At The Drive-In, The Mars Volta, Death Cab for Cutie, and Bloc Party.

Up Next: Elektra attempts to market the abrasive industrial/noise-rock group Ethyl Meatplow with Happy Days, Sweetheart

Ethyl Meatplow - Happy Days, Sweetheart (1993, Elektra)



Full album

Who They Were: An industrial rock & dance trio formed in L.A. in 1990: Carla Bozulich (vocals), Harold Sanders III (vocals/guitar), and John Napier (drums). The band quickly gained notoriety for its sexually explicit shows featuring nude dancers and burlesque elements. The group would provide tour support to industrial acts Nitzer Ebb, Front 242, and My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult, plus listmates Steel Pole Bathtub.

How They Got on a Major Label: Increasing hype for the band’s live sets including touring with Lollapalooza 1993.


That album cover must have confounded more than a few CD shoppers expecting a Soul Asylum-style, childhood innocence-fetishizing alt-rock effort and then getting a group that toured with a who’s-who’s of EBM/industrial bands.

After several guitar-soaked records for this feature, I’m excited to listen to what a reportedly uncompromising industrial act was up to in the year before The Downward Spiral commercially legitimized the form.


1. Opening Precautionary Instructions
Absurd pregnancy disclaimer over an almost rustic take on ambient industrial noise, including a wood saw grinding, marching band whistles, and random shrieking.

2. Suck
Quality, Skinny Puppy-esque production with alternating shouted vocals from Sanders and Bozulich and saxophone. The mixture of live percussion and clattering electro beats is interesting, providing swing to otherwise mechanical music. Dripping with sensuality that’s miles away from the wizened, ghoulish nature of most industrial.

3. Devil’s Johnson
Oh so early ‘90s, Love and Rockets-ish industrial-rock with cartoonish attempts to be transgressive. Still, quite impressively produced. The organ is an unexpected but welcome touch.

4. Car
Fairly simplistic raver with a trap kit workout, but it maintains interest due to its refusal to leave sonic details on the cutting room floor. This is what I imagine high-school industrial goths would play when drinking beer in the woods with their rock ‘n’ roller peers.

5. Queenie
Odd, queasy atmosphere but that doesn’t matter because it’s the first lead vocal of Carla Bozulich bringing her sultry vocals on this filthy track. I’m amazed that this record didn’t get an explicit lyrics sticker.

6. Close to You
Yes, a cover of the Carpenters hit composed by Burt Bacharach and Hal David. Perverse, but not in the way you’re expecting: the playing and vocals are clearly recorded (i.e. not a Revolting Cocks piss-take) and the string section in the last third actually credibly works for the track.

7. Tommy
One of the savviest moves the band made in recording this album was enlisting Barry Adamson as co-producer. Adamson is a producer and arranger with a credits list a mile long. There’s no doubt it’s him providing the arrangements on instruments like saxophone, trumpet, organ, and strings deployed around this record, but also recording them in outré ways and providing a carnival-esque atmosphere to the proceedings.

8. Mustard Requiem
Short instrumental that’s highly reminiscent of Nurse with Wound.

9. Abazab
The cognitive dissonance of Bozulich’s soul vocals over twitchy industrial workouts is palpable. Even more remarkable, the band deploys her formidable voice sparingly (though of course that could’ve been band dynamics at play). As before, the track is well-played and produced, with interesting instrumental choices.

10. Ripened Peach
This one had potential for some sort of commercial success, a song that landed on a movie soundtrack and slowly creeped up the radio charts.

11. Feed
Pretty basic songwriting, but a decent swamp-rocker.

12. Rise
We’ve settled into rocker mode in the last half, I see. Not necessarily bad, but I miss the frenetic production throughout the initial section instead of a decent post-punk band with interesting stylistic choices around the margins.

13. For My Sleepy Lover
“Nothing has ever filled me; and nothing has ever satiated me.” Grinding sex song that’s got some cool atmosphere. Ends stupidly with the guys singing, though.

14. Sad Bear
Power noise, with Sanders keening and chanting over it.

15. [untitled]
More power noise.


Final Thoughts: A truly wild ride of an album. The first half is industrial music whose dripping makeup more resembles “clown” than “goth,” part of the second half is their rock tracks (some memorable, some not), and then an antagonistic last third or so of noise to show their indie bona fides.

More than any other album on this list so far, I could envision a nouveau path forward from the first half of this album, with Bozulich’s soul vocals and Sanders’ sneers playing out over some hefty industrial music. It seems, though, that the band couldn’t even find a common ground on the same album, much less spearhead a movement.

So, How “Weird” Is It?: As noted above, the commercial success of The Downward Spiral pretty much solidified the victory of the goth-y elements of industrial over this sort of loony, carnival-esque version, and the other styles that the band employed (angry rock, power electronics) were either overplayed or never going to find commercial purchase anyway.

Best Track: “Ripened Peach”
Worst Track: One of the noise tracks

What Was Next For This Band: Happy Days, Sweetheart was be the band’s lone release. After Ethyl Meatplow’s breakup, Carla Bozulich would go on to  form country-rock outfit The Geraldine Fibbers and experimental project Evangelista. Meanwhile, John Napier would join one-time EM tour-mates Nitzer Ebb. Most perplexingly, Harold Sanders would go on to become a noted producer of music for American reality shows including Project Runway, Top Chef, and the Real Housewives series’. In 2012, Napier sadly died under mysterious circumstances.

Up Next: Claw Hammer with Thank the Holder Uppers

Old guy rambling....I never saw Foetus, but I had two or three of the releases preceding this one on cassette and CD. I did see Lydia Lunch perform in the early 90s. Why mention Lydia? Because she's the No-Wave New York that this album reflects. I say this record synthesizes the not-so-underground artistic sentiment of mid-90s NY. Giuliani's cleaning things up and inviting in the tourists en masse. I've been watching a lot of Fran Lebowitz interviews on YouTube, so I correlate her observation of NYC changing to a theme park with the contents of this album. Cover's pretty tight as a rah-rah American/Russian collaboration. The gritty and the shitty all munged together in an advertisement inviting the viewer to consume whatever's on offer. Nice review.

But, but. No, this album is a spoilsport that freed Royal Trux from their Virgin contract after signing for $1 million. I reckon Jennifer Herrema's mostly admired in the alt-rock world primarily for "sticking to her guns" and getting hers for both herself and Neil, and maybe some of the band. It's hard to get to The Kills or Sleigh Bells without this band. Heck, I even hear some MGMT in the opener that sounds like a "prog" song when prog music was definitely "not cool". Speaking of "cool" and its mercurial arbitration, Herrema is a high priestess of cool (ca. late 90s to early aughts, when recycling Diesel and Guess campaigns were the dominant aesthetic to pervert and worship, simultaneously). She's occasionally sought as an oracle of past-present at Vice magazine. Hagerty's guitar work can be quite engaging, though not on this record. I have Twin Infinitives, which could probably sit highest on the altar of "albums made by and for junk", wherein junk is heroin. Their later work considers literal junk as a dualism, wherein junk can be vilified (e.g. "stupid hair metal sounding like a bad Stones song") and deified (e.g. "Ah, L.A. Guns isn't that bad; there's a few tight licks on their first album. I totally love that guitar sound on 'Electric Gypsy', but, heh, 'Sex Action'.").

Unsane - Total Destruction (1993, Atlantic)



Full album playlist

Who They Were: A trio who met while attending Sarah Lawrence College in Yonkers, NY in the late ‘80s, including Chris Spencer (vocals/guitar) and Peter Shore (bass). The band released its self-titled debut full-length in 1991 on Matador and then toured with previous entry Entombed. In 1992, original drummer Charlie Ondras died of a drug overdose and was replaced by Vinnie Signorelli, formerly of Swans and, later, fellow listee Foetus.

How They Got on a Major Label: In 1993, Atlantic acquired a 50% share in Matador Records, which included a deal for the major label to annually distribute at least a half-dozen of the indie label’s signees.


1. Body Bomb
Amelodic, Melvins-meets-Flipper noise-rock. Unpromisingly logy for a kickoff track, though partly redeemed by the distorted fierceness of the vocals. The band had a working relationship with underground moviemaker Richard Kern (Spencer and Shore had created special effects for his films) and he returned the favor by directing the official video for this song.

2. Straight
About as no-frills as detuned sludge has ever been served, but smartly played and recorded. Martin Bisi has a co-producer credit on this album; he’s an associate of Brian Eno and Bill Laswell who started NYC’s B.C. Studios in 1979 and was a key figure in the movements of avant-garde, no-wave, and early hip-hop, producing a who’s-who of musicians in those scenes.

3. Black Book
Lively rhythms here, as opposed to the relentless head-crushing plod found elsewhere on the record. The post-hardcore blare doesn’t disappoint as well. The vocals, meanwhile, are recorded with an expert balance of grit and clarity.

4. Trench
Though “Body Bomb” was the single, I’m thinking this one with its uncompromising caveman riff and barked vocals would appeal more so to the 1993 kids exploring the metallic end of grunge.

5. Dispatched
Some bass theatrics here. We’re already nearly half way through this album and the vocals haven’t deviated at all from the compressed shouts.

6. Throw It Away
It makes sense that a singer-guitarist obsessed with gore would frequently beat a riff to death. This is a group that values formula to a fault but, within their small wheelhouse, they solidly, spiritedly play and it’s hard to dock them for it.

7. Broke
A bit on the boilerplate side but nonetheless a welcome detour into blues-punk songcraft.

8. Road Trip
The musical hesitancy that this band sometimes displays, particularly on this track, gives the impression of a trio with a new drummer that hasn’t quite achieved confidence in anything but a moderate tempo. Another plodder and I really wish the band had stretched more on this tracklist.

9. Wayne
Industrial noise, a preponderance of guitar bending, and multi-tracked vocals add some much needed personality to the playing at this point in the record.

10. Get Away
Higher velocity to the playing on this raver, with some lively guitar soloing and atypical desperation behind the singing for once, despite the vocalist sneering “…and I’ll fuck you in a new way.”

11. S.O.S.
The only instance of backup vocals, providing welcome texture to the distorted proceedings. The instrumentation is indistinguishable from anywhere else on the record but nonetheless precise in its attack.

12. 455
Another unexpected instance of sampled noise on this instrumental, a rumbling probably not unlike the engine of the Chevy Caprice Classic on the cover plus stentorian, though unintelligible, speech from a male voice. A smartly brief slice of sludge menace to finish off the record.


Final Thoughts: It’s played and sung with enough verve and the production impressively fleshes out the trio’s sound, but there’s nothing earth-shattering here even for 1993 and the consistent mid-tempo tracks over 37 minutes are a bit of a bore. Still, I can recommend this for sludge die-hards who prefer a meat-and-potatoes take on the sound.

So, How “Weird” Is It?: “Body Bomb” was a strange choice for a single, what with songs such as “Black Book,” “Trench,” and “Throw It Away” being much more commercial sounding. It would have been hard enough to sell this relentless guitar attack and scuffed-up vocals even with a relatively catchy single.   

However, it’s interesting to ponder what were the six albums of Matador’s that Atlantic was forced to market as part of the contract with the indie label. Other notable Matador releases from 1993 don’t suggest high commercial potential (Liz Phair’s Exile in Guyville, Yo La Tengo’s Painful, The Fall’s The Infotainment Scan), so maybe this slab of lushly-recorded indie metal was a wise choice by the label in the heyday of the Seattle sound.

Best Track: “Black Book”
Worst Track: “Road Trip”

What Was Next For This Band: Peter Shore departed the group in the year following Total Destruction’s release—Dave Curran replaced him on bass. This album would prove to be the band’s lone effort for a major label, as they were dropped from Atlantic’s roster in 1994. The following year’s album Scattered, Smothered & Covered landed them a lucrative tour slot opening for Slayer. In 1998, while on a press tour in Europe, Chris Spencer was the victim of a bizarre, unsolved attack by thugs in Vienna in which he was left for dead and only lived due to emergency surgery. Unsane has remained active performers and recording artists outside of a three-year hiatus beginning in 2000; their most recent album, 2017’s Sterilize, was recorded for notable metal imprint Southern Lord.

Up Next: Avant-garde troupe Cop Shoot Cop with Ask Questions Later

Mr. Bungle - Disco Volante (1995, Warner Brothers)



Full album

Who They Were: A high school six-piece band formed in 1985 in Eureka, CA, taking their name from a character in the ‘60s educational short Lunchroom Manners. Originally playing a cocktail of metal and hardcore punk, the band (which included Mike Patton, also of Faith No More) would increasingly incorporate diverse styles across the course of four demo tapes in the late ‘80s. In 1990, the group moved to San Francisco and that year signed a multi-record contract with Warner Brothers. Their self-titled debut full-length came the following year and sold well despite the video for the lead single “Quote Unquote” being banned from MTV due to depictions of bodily violence. Due to band member side projects, it would take four years for Mr. Bungle to deliver a follow-up.

How They Got on a Major Label: Warner Brothers was determined to stay in the Mike Patton business after the commercial success of Faith No More’s The Real Thing.


The only Bungle record I’ve heard, probably due to my appreciation of Patton’s later projects Fantomas and his Ipecac music label. Of it, I can solely recall hearing “Desert Search for the Techno Allah”—the rest is of a schizophrenic blur.

Trivia: the album title, meaning “flying saucer” in Italian, is a reference to the name of the villain’s yacht in the James Bond film Thunderball.


1. Everyone I Went to High School With Is Dead
Pounding fuzz bass and “Oi!” style chants. Possibly a cheeky misdirect to fool the Faith No More-loving alt-metallers following Patton to this band, but those impressions would quickly be dashed by the descent into instrumental cacophony.

2. Chemical Marriage
Fun, Tin Pan Alley screwiness with nonsense lyrics that’s saturated with an old-timey surrealism as evinced by the Man Ray-style photograph on the cover (fun fact: the album sleeve was designed by Gregg Turkington, best known for his standup anti-comedy act Neil Hamburger).

3. Carry Stress in the Jaw/The Secret Song
Opens with a noise suite that I’m guessing sent most of the curious scrambling for their CD player’s stop button. Then on to a confounding pileup of metal guitar, freeform sax squall, and torch singing, the combination of which resembles a less self-important version of John Zorn’s jazz-metal efforts. The “Secret Song” section flirts with cutesiness in Patton’s old man voice but the half-speed surf rock is played capably enough to be engaging.

4. Desert Search for the Techno Allah
An Indian/Middle Eastern electronic workout that, paradoxically, is the most accessible track on the album with its relatively linear groove and effective vocal hook. It’s pointless to criticize the clumsy cultural appropriation at play here (despite some unexpected instruments including kanjira and sistrums) when the music is this unapologetically junk-y.

5. Violenza Domestica
An accordion-heavy tango ballad that achieves a curious combination of patient and ADD-adled. The first comprehensive lyrics on the record (though in Español).

6. After School Special
The singing takes center stage for the first time on a subverted children’s ditty that’s too on-the-nose in its farcicalness.

7. Phlegmatics
Another Zappa-esque heavy jazz-rock effort, though the band surprisingly allows for low-key instrumental stretches, permitting the composition to breathe. As with many tracks, Trey Spruance’s organ parts are this band’s secret weapon, lending a consistent textural canvass on which the rest of the players can color.

8. Ma Meeshka Mow Skwoz
The group returns to frenetic mode on a cartoon-world track that heavily recalls Danny Elfman’s soundtrack work. I imagine the juvenile, clipped scatting would drive many over the edge if they’d even made it this far, and then the band does an antagonistic fade-out and explosive return.

9. The Bends
Ten-minute musique concrete experiment in ten distinctly named parts.

10. Backstrokin’
Martin Denny-in-Hell exotica on a track that wisely doesn’t overstay its welcome after the previous endurance test.

11. Platypus
Particularly ramshackle jazz-cum-noise even for this album, which makes it quite perplexing that this song was released as the single. Was the label desperate for something recognizable, in this case a brief instrumental quotation of “Chopsticks,” in the hopes of shaking loose a few coins from college radio listeners?

12. Merry Go Bye Bye
New-wave singalong that, after two minutes, pivots into alternating death metal and “fuck it all” noise. Patton stretches himself the most on this ultimate track, adopting at least four different personas in his vocals across the intermittently effective but somewhat underwhelming cut-and-paste job that closes out this album.


Final Thoughts: Though it’s definitely poly-stylistic for its own sake (adjust your tolerance accordingly), the playing here is not solely the screwball cacophony I remembered it as being. The band occasionally makes interesting use of space and tension in the arrangements, particularly in the album’s middle section. Though I could do without the cloying lapses into silly voices (and this coming from a Ween fan) and facile cartoonishness, the record—particularly the keyboards, woodwinds, and percussion—strikes enough of a balance between experimentation and playfulness to remain fairly engaging throughout.

So, How “Weird” Is It?: Defiantly uncommercial and lacking even Patton’s trademark sneer at the time to appease his faithful, this album could be considered a landmark example of a band taking advantage of a major-label contract and following their muse to extreme ends. “Desert Search…” might have turned a few heads among ‘90s techno and worldbeat fans, but nothing else on this record approaches accessible.

Best Track: “Violenza Domestica”
Worst Track: “Merry Go Bye Bye”

What Was Next For This Band: After a two-year break, the band would reconvene for its final album, the more accessible California. In the late ‘90s, an ongoing feud between Mike Patton and Anthony Kiedis of Red Hot Chili Peppers saw Kiedis using his clout to get Mr. Bungle kicked off many festival shows where the band was promoting the record. This conflict and the ensuing tour difficulties put a strain on the band from which it wouldn’t recover, breaking up at the turn of the century. Mike Patton has stayed busy with his many projects including Tomahawk (featuring Bungle bassist Trevor Dunn), Lovage (with Dan Nakamura), contributing vocals to Bjork’s Medulla album, and forming the experimental music label Ipecac.

Up Next: Longtime surf-rock revivalists Pell Mell with Interstate