This CD collection of the earliest Butthole Surfers jams is finally available again (and in stock here at C-Blast for the first time ever), a full length digipack disc that contains the band's classic self-titled (or Brown Reason To Live as it's known by some) 12" EP and their Live PCPEP 12", both of which were released on vinyl by Alternative Tentacles. As a bonus, the disc also contains four demo and live tracks at the end that don't appear anywhere else, making this pretty crucial for fans of the Surfers' early psychedelic hardcore sound.
Heres our original review for the EP: I haven't followed much of what the Butthole Surfers have done over the past two decades; wasn't into the goofy alt-rock direction that the band went in after moving to the majors in the early 90's, and their acrimonious, high-profile split with Touch And Go was one of the uglier moments in indie rock's recent history. Their early records are pretty crucial, though, and still hold up as some of the most zonked hardcore punk to ever come out of the American underground. Their debut EP has been out of print on vinyl for some time, and (surprisingly) has just been repressed by Alternative Tentacles - for fans of early hardcore, this is a crucial piece of U.S. HC history, but this 1983 slab from the Butthole Surfers should be heard by anyone into seriously freaked-out heavy underground rock. The music on this 12" is, for the most part, much more hallucinatory than the Surfers you've seen on MTV videos, seven songs of crazed, LSD-snarfing punk like the opening track "The Shah Sleeps In Lee Harvey's Grave", mashing caustic, hyperfast hardcore thrash with bizarre lyrical rantings, histrionic vocals, blasting drums...the stoned psychedelic trudge of "The Revenge Of Anus Presley" through wrecked acid-guitar, weird sound effects and simplistic pounding dirge..."Bar-B-Q Pope"'s squawking, twangy punk...it's a whacked out mashup of early hardcore, psychedelic rock and experimental music that was incomparable to anything else happening in the American underground at that time, and this EP still blazes with it's unpredictable music, ferocious energy and lunatic visions. Highly recommended, especially for you folks into the weirder side of hardcore punk - few HC bands have ever matched the weirdness of the early Butthole Surfers records.
And heres our review for the Live PCPEP 12": Second in the Buttholes vinyl reissue campaign that Alternative Tentacles has been on this year, which started with the self-titled 12" and has come round to their blistering live 12" from 1984, Live PCPPEP. We're talking golden era Surfers here, folks, when the band was the weirdest, most freaked out and fucking genius hardcore punk band in the US. Recorded live in March of 1984 at The Meridian in San Antonio, Texas, this record captures seven songs, most of which had appeared a year before on the band's self-titled EP aside from "Cowboy Bob" which would later appear on Psychic... Powerless... Another Man's Sac, but one of these songs ("Dance Of The Cobras") has never appeared on any other release, to the best of my knowledge. This shit still destroys. It's the first recording of the double-drummer lineup when Teresa Nervosa began sharing drum duties with King Coffey, and the band rages through these songs, playing them loose and fast, except for "Bar-B-Q Pope", whose sludgy horn-blasted Stooges crawl hints at the sound that the Brainbombs would drag into the sewer a few years later. Conversely, "The Shah Sleeps In Lee Harvey's Grave" is served up in feirce blasts of feedback-soaked thrash with Gibby Haynes's hallucinatory lyrics turning this into one of hardcore's greatest (and most insane) jams. Essential.