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...

By their second album, 1986's Rembrandt Pussyhorse, the Butthole Surfers had for the most part evolved beyond the Dadaist hardcore punk of their earlier records for a kind of creepy, extremely experimental neo-psychedelic noise rock, experimenting at greater length with drum machines, tapes, violins, electronic effects, their bizarre psychpunk soundscapes powered by the tandem pummel of their dual drummer lineup. Beginning with the weird, "Heart Of Gold"-esque mutant folk of "Creep In The Cellar", Rembrandt Pussyhorse kicks in with a more focused production quality, this first short song filled with scrabbly violins, piano and shambling drums, Haynes's creepazoid lyrics howling over the shuffling beat, making for one of the most coherent Sufers songs that we'd heard from them so far. The band's quirky, bizarro songwriting is in full effect here, songs like "Sea Ferring" sounding like some brain-damaged sea shanty, appearing before the band's insane re-imagining of The Guess Who's "American Woman", transform the classic rock nugget into an almost unrecognizable cacophony of booming tribal drums, squalling guitar feedback, bizarre tape fuckery, industrial noise, and those crazed vocals blasting out of a ridiculously distorted bullhorn. Haynes's tremulous singing is as always a focal point of the Surfers sound, and adds to the already overwhelming creep factor on display here: "Waiting For Jimmy To Kick" is one of their more nightmarish tracks, all rolling drumbeats and sinister minor key piano and layered screaming, while "Strangers Die Everyday" brings in some schlocky gothic pipe organs, weird vocal noises and creephouse atmospherics for a short instrumental that sounds like something off of an old European 1970s horror film. More trippy Hammond organs show up on the shambling drugged-out noise rock of "Perry" as well, a mutated blooze-crawl through fields of nonsensical vocals, squiggly acid rock guitar shred, messed-up tape manipulations and various surreal samples. Other highlights include the stoned drone of "Whirling Hall Of Knives" and the pummeling circular groove of "Mark Says Alright" that turns into an almost krautrocky throb of pounding caveman psychedelia.

The CD reissue also features the Cream Corn From The Socket Of Davis, recorded roughly around the same time period; this stuff shares much of the same acid-drenched noise rock vibe and lysergic punk abandon as the Rembrandt album, though these songs are generally a little more aggro, a little more lurching and angular, spiking the strange stop-start arrangements with heavier doses of that fucked-up atonal cowpunk guitar. The song "Comb" is one of the Surfer's heaviest, a stomping, almost industrialized robo-dirge that lurches violently across the juddering drum machine rhythms, almost sounding like one of the more brain-damaged early Melvins songs, followed by the wiry desperation of "To Parter". And closer "Tornadoes" almost resembles the Dead Kennedys, albeit filtered though that bizarro Texan drawl and maniac cowpunk attitude. Killer!