The prime movers of Texan post-hardcore weirdness, the Butthole Surfers produced some of the most demented outsider punk to ever lurch out of the American underground during the 1980s. The band mashed together whacked-out live antics and notorious drug-fueled carnival-like performances with their lysergic stew of drug-addled noise rock, fucked-up psychedelic punk, pummeling aggression and bizarro songwriting; indeed, there was nothing like the Surfers back when these guys were destroying stages in the 80s. The first four full-length albums from the Butthole Surfers documented this insanity in full, and every one of 'em is recommended - nay, required - listening for fans of mutant punk; most bands are totally diminished by their fourth album, but not the Surfers; by the end of the decade, the band was producing their heaviest and most sinister stuff yet. From their earliest churnings as a wild, LSD-fueled hardcore punk outfit, their album's just kept getting more twisted and more experimental as the decade progressed, from the bizarre avant-punk of 1984's Psychic... Powerless... Another Man's Sac through the tape-collage heavy experiments of 1986's Rembrandt Pussyhorse, from the crushing sludge-drenched heaviness of 1987's Locust Abortion Technician to the scatological psychedelia of 1988's Hairway to Steven. Sure, their subsequent albums would become increasingly of less interest as time went on (their 1991 album Piouhgd is the last Surfers record that I give a damn about), but man, those first four albums make up some of the craziest drug-punk that ever clambered out of the American post-hardcore underground. We now have all of them back in print on vinyl for the first time in over a decade, newly re-mastered and packaged with digital downloads of the album; granted, the reissues are pretty barebones, basically just replicating the original packaging for the original releases, but it's still good to have these classic slabs of bizarro hardcore punk and psychedelic noise rock on vinyl again. We also have all of these crucial albums back in stock on CD as well...

Even on the fourth album from the Butthole Surfers, Hairway To Steven, you could still hear some lingering traces of their hardcore punk roots, even as the band was slipping further down their grimy rabbit hole of brain-damaged surrealistic sludge, acid-burnt psychedelic cowpunk, and bizarro tape/noise experiments. This 1988 album would be their last for Touch And Go, and petty much marked the transition from the band's more experimental, abstract material into the slightly more accessible, song-based stuff that they would start to focus on in the 1990s. Hairway opens in grand Butthole form, with the pounding Hendrix-homage sludgefeast "Jimi", one of their all time classic songs; for more than twelve minutes, Haynes growls and snarls and squeals through an array of fucked-up pitchshifter effects, while the band slogs through a heavy, lurching psychpunk pummel, guitars spewing twisted wah-pedal meltdowns and lysergic blues shred, the lumbering, halting rhythm about as heavy as anything that the guys in the Melvins were doing around the same time. That is, at least up till the last few minutes, where the band suddenly shifts into bizarre jangly psychedelia surrounded by birdsong, creepy cartoon voices, and muffled singing. The songs "John E. Smoke" and "Ricky" are more of their twangy cowpunk raveups, while the Surfers deliver an almost Husker Du-esque pop song with "I Saw An X-Ray Of A Girl Passing Gas", one of the album's most accessible tracks with it's searing fuzz guitar, haunting vocals and backing acoustic guitars. Other cuts include the mutant rockabilly of "Julio Iglesias" and the killer dark psych of "Rocky", and the sinister stoned drone of "Backass", itself another one of my favorite Surfers jams, an effects-smeared, gothic-tinged tribal punk creepout.