Consumer Guide Album

The Butthole Surfers: Butthole Surfers [Alternative Tentacles EP, 1983]
Unlike most horror-show hardcore, their tales from the crypt eschew the reassuring glow of celluloid, yet they don't smudge like pulp, either. For openers a guy comes on and shrieks, "There's a time to fuck and a time to crave/But the shah sleeps in Lee Harvey's grave." Then there's a lot of guitar noise. More axioms: "Jimi Hendrix makes love to Marilyn's remains," "I smoke Elvis Presley's [ed.: not Costello's?] toenails when I want to get high," etc. More guitar noise. As nihilist grossout goes, pretty neat and impossible by definition to sustain. Yet sustain it they do, not because necro-copro is such a powerful idea, but because the guitar noise crests and roils like a river of shit--because, though I hate to put it this way, there are actually songs down there. Rarely has such demented caterwaul reached vinyl in recognizable form. A-