Butthole Surfers
Locust Abortion Technician

THE REVIEW

Daddy, what does regret mean?
Well son, the funny thing about regret is
That it's better to regret something you have done,
Than to regret something you haven't done.
And by the way, if you see your mom this weekend,
Could you be sure and tell her SATAN SATAN SATAN!!!!

Ha ha ha ha, um. To be honest, the Black Sabbath cover isn’t anything shocking but once it’s over, what an amazing mishmash of blasphemies!
Behind a splendid cover image lies a better-produced and at the same time more entertaining and accessible album than the previous ones. A fierce, schizophrenic masterpiece.

Among the eleven tracks, the only one that approaches a normal song is "Human Cannonball", a melodic rock'n'roll with a '70s aftertaste, truly cool. As for the rest, this gang of lunatics throws themselves headlong into the most unrestrained madness. They are killer clowns: funny but deadly, closer to the monster from "It" than to real circus clowns. They ravage music shamelessly and do so with impressive seriousness, delighting in hurling incendiary bombs and shovels of steaming dung at the unsuspecting listener. From start to finish they don't miss a beat, whether they're building walls of unbearable noise or indecently defacing oriental music (see "Kuntz").

In "U. S. S. A. " an insane falsetto voice obsessively repeats the acronym for the entire duration of the track. In "The O-Men" a psychopathic cannibal utters incomprehensible phrases, and in response, the instruments go completely berserk. "Pittsburgh to Lebanon" is an aggressive distorted blues telling a degraded story of sex and blood. "Graveyard" is a sort of voodoo-metal with highly twisted guitars. "22 Going on 23" is the disturbing confession of a raped girl. Among these and other atrocities, Gibby Haynes performs spectacular vocals à la David Thomas and roars worthy of a werewolf.

Drawing inspiration from a wide range of sources (Beefheart, Pere Ubu, Cramps, Flipper, Chrome, Dead Kennedys, and Red Crayola to name a few), Butthole Surfers have coined a new language that will soon become highly imitated, but most importantly, they have performed the noble act of elevating burps and farts to an art form.