Ducks Battle Satan

I first started getting interested in alternative music in the mid-1980’s. My over-arching memory of that time were the glowing reviews that three particular US  hardcore bands received in the  sadly defunct RAM weekly music rag. RAM was Australia’s version of NME but with better writing and less of a bandwagon jumping  habit which pre-internets was the only reasonable way of getting info on the current state of play in the US and UK. I still have RAM’s  reviews in a scrap book of the w first three hardcore albums I bought, Sonic Youth’s Daydream Nation, Killdozer’s 12 Point Buck and Butthole Surfers Hairway to Steven. Since those formative years I’ve managed to get hold of the entirety of the Sonic Youth and Killdozer back catalogue but for some reason only treated myself to my second Butthole Surfers record (namely this one) recently.  I have no idea why it took me so long (19 years for fucks sake) between geting my first and second Butthole Surfers record. Perhaps I found Hairway To Steven  too “out there” and was strangely intimatidated in some way. Perhaps it was the fact that every shitty record they released in the 1990’s that I’d heard made me hate them more and more. 

For whatever reason I had for steering clear of Butthole Surfers for all those years  I’m glad that I dabbled again. Locust Abortion Technician is I think  a better album than Hairway to Steven. On Locust Abortion Technician the band manage to plunder the fertile grounds of psychedelic rock, US Hardcore, Punk, Folk, Indian Bollywood, tape effects, alt-rock and Black Sabbath to create an ACID drenched freakfest of juvenile toilet  humour crushed together with the harrowing nightmares of a very, very bad acid trip. In fact considering the amount of drugs these guys consumed, it’s a wonder they ever made it into the studio. In fact given the  fact that they lived in Texas for the majority of their career how they didn’t end up in jail is also a mystery.

If you’re new to Butthole Surfers then this is a pretty good pace to start.  Steer clear of everything they did after 1988 except for the  Widowermaker EP which is actually very, very good. 

This entry was posted on August 23, 2008 at 8:33 am and is filed under Butthole Surfers, Music with tags Butthole Surfers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.