Locust Abortion Technician

Butthole Surfers

The Butthole Surfers were never more playful and psychotic than on Locust Abortion Technician, which opens with the tender dialogue between an inquisitive, sweet son asking his father the meaning of regret. The father, it turns out, is Gibby Haynes (uh oh!), who spouts something comfy--"it's better to regret something you have done," he opines, "than to regret something you haven't done"--and then adds, "By the way, if you see your mom this weekend, tell her..." Then the band explodes into a ragged, tweaked metal riff, with Gibby screaming "Satan" in the background. Nothing could touch this in 1987 and nothing since has been as convincingly bent, as close to postpunk music theater gone madly haywire. Haynes growls and warps and pleads and the band drones and thuds and rocks, and the whole mix is so demented that it's almost touching to think that in a farmhouse somewhere in Texas, a bunch of acid-dosed punks were not only making this kind of racket, but also making it in the grand 1980s punk market of endless tours, crappy venues, and, well, more and more and more of the same. Including the acid. --Andrew Bartlett

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