Big Black “Songs About F–king”

sfilzen — Mon, 11 Sep 2017 16:39:22 +0000

Big Black “Songs About F–king” Touch and Go Records. Yesterday, September 10th, marked the 30th anniversary of Big Black’s final LP release in 1987. Steve Albini began Big Black in ‘81 as a one-man sound machine and was soon joined by members of Naked Raygun, releasing several EP’s and singles and one other LP (Atomizer). Big Black knew Songs would be their last recording and intended it to be – as the title more than subtly implies – a big middle finger to everyone and everything, the songs all teeth-rattling industrial noise rock filled with lyrics about the monstrous tendencies of the human condition. The title was also a direct response to the censorship impulse of the 80′s; Ablini stated in a recent Rolling Stone interview “the Parents’ Music Resource Center was trying to rein in the subject matter of popular music and art at the time. We wanted to explicitly decline to participate in that reining in. We wanted to make filthy music. We wanted to make our records. We wanted to be explicit about our willingness to offend people.“

Songs is not an easy record to listen to – it’s rage on vinyl, darker than midnight, violent and anxiety-producing (my heart rate has noticeably increased just listening to it). “Fish Fry,” seems innocuous enough at the start, the title Midwest-adorable, the beat a bit bouncy, but then atonal guitar dissonance screams through with a tale about a murder after a fish fry. Another song, “Columbian Necktie,” details a particularly brutal form of killing and “Kasimir S. Pulaski Day” a mobster shooting. “Bad Penny” is about the scenester asshole that sleeps with all the girlfriends. Conclusion: people suck. Thank goodness for the cover of Kraftwerk’s “The Model” which provides some lyrical relief – just a model, being beautiful, drinking champagne, no blood or violence.

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Lard “The Last Temptation of Reid”

sfilzen — Tue, 29 Nov 2016 20:48:27 +0000

Lard “The Last Temptation of Reid” 1990. Alternative Tentacles. For whatever reason, Lard came up in conversation over the weekend and I realized I had never really listened to this punk-industrial supergroup (made up Jello Biafra from Dead Kennedys, Al Jourgensen, Paul Barker and Jeff Ward from Ministry) in any serious way so here is their first full length LP, The Last Temptation of Reid. As anticipated, it is loud, fast, angry, political and sonically edging on the high end of industrial metal.

The album’s lead track, “Forkboy” was, fittingly, included on the Natural Born Killers soundtrack. “Pineapple Face” refers to Nicaraguan dictator Manuel Noriega who just prior to this record’s recording had been ousted during the US invasion of Panama in 1989 and was subsequently tried and sentenced in the US for drug trafficking and money laundering. Keeping a nice consistent evil-doer thread, the song “Sylvestre Matuschka” is about a Hungarian mass murderer from the 1930′s. “Can God Fill Teeth?” pokes at conspiracy theorists and feels even more poignant in 2016 (“Didn’t I just read/About how the cops are getting parents/To plant bugging devices/In their kids teeth/So if they disappear they can track ‘em/Before they wind up on the backs of milk cartons/And all that/ And didn’t I read/That these devices can go two-way/And everything that I do or say/Is all goin’ on tape somewhere right now”). The record concludes with an industrial-sized meat grinding cover of the manically creepy song “They’re Coming to Take Me Away,” originally performed by one-hit wonder Napoleon XIV (Jerry Samuels) in 1966. Samuels achieved the high-pitched insane vocals by using a VFO. Jello, of course, just sang it as Jello.

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Big Black “Songs About F–king”

Lard “The Last Temptation of Reid”