The fact that three of the early Boredoms albums came out on Warner/Reprise in the 90's is still one of the oddest moves in major label history. How anything this crazy and weird and far-out got that kind of mainstream exposure is still pretty unbelievable, even by today's standards, the music of the Boredoms is anything but accessible. Early on, the band was influenced heavily by the wacko acid-punk of the Butthole Surfers, but they took it into far more extreme and cacophonous directions; any one of their songs could smash together random noises, raging hardcore punk, super noisy guitars, weird studio effects, crazy cartoon voices and random babbling, whipped into a frenzy of jarring, totally unpredictable arrangements. All three (Onanie Bomb Meets The Sex Pistols, Pop Tari, and Chocolate Synthesizer) eventually went out of print, but were later reissued on Very Friendly and are finally in stock here at C-Blast - the early, hardcore-laced Boredoms albums are my favorite releases in their canon (along with the classic Soul Discharge), and are prime for discovery for anyone new to their insane, psychedelic, speed-charged Bore-mania...one listen to any of these albums, and you'll hear where an entire generation of noisecore/noise rockers got their inspiration from...

On 1994's Chocolate Synthesizer, the band began to stretch out from the schizophrenic noisecore/studio experiments of their previos albums, while still maintaining that frenzied, goofy, seemingly improvised energy that had become their trademark. The album is as unpredictable and spastic as anything that came before, with plenty of Bore-chaos flying out of the speakers: lots of Eye Yamataka's grunting and shrieking a-cappella weirdness, pummeling tribal hardcore anthems, electronic synth noise, druggy psychedelic tribal hand drum jams, backwards orchestral tape sounds, trumpets, blasts of absurdist noisecore, freeform indie guitar strum, epic noise rock, speed metal shred, mutant dub, and cartoon soundtrack sounds with mewling chipmunk vocals, all mashed together into a confusing and chaotic blur of sound and energy. But we also hear a heavy percussive element here that hints at the more krautrock inspired direction that the Boredoms would take later in the decade, with lots of dense drumming and multiple percussionists going off, with elements of free jazz and early krautrock a la Amon Duul peeking through the crazy quilt of surrealist noisepunk mayhem. There's less of the Mr Bungle style craziness, it's more psychedelic and trippy, but still completely Bore-mental.