The early-mid ‘80s had their share of insane combos -- The Birthday Party, Black Flag and Minor Threat had the raw power to melt your mind in seconds. SWANS, Einsturzende Neubauten and Big Black created enough overwhelming sonic pressure their sounds might actually flatten you. And Sonic Youth displayed such a dizzyingly unpredictable mix of art, pop culture and violence you’d sometimes leave their shows drooling. The Buttholes shared elements with all of these groups, but added an insane psychedelic edge and a propensity for bizarre spectacle.
40 years later, The Butthole Surfers have announced their first batch of reissues in collaboration with Matador Records certain to raise the roof for a lot of people who thought they had a pretty good handle on the outer realms of the ‘80s indie-rock scene. And while the recordings are not the fully immersive experience of the Buttholes in concert, you may still feel as though you’ve fallen down a rabbit hole the size of Texas itself.
‘PCPPEP’ was the first to feature the power of the band’s classic two drummer line-up (King Coffey and Teresa Taylor). The synchronized percussive brutarianism of this pair (falsely rumored to be siblings) provided the perfect base for the unhinged blurt of the guitars and vocals then being shared by Gibby Haynes and Paul Leary.
By the time they started touring to preview and then support the revamped version of ‘Psychic... Powerless... Another Man’s Sac,’ the Buttholes’ live show was a berserk, evolving extravaganza of strobes, smoke, clothespins, naked dancing, bullhorns, raving lunacy and music that was as madly mind-blowing as that of any band who ever lived. ‘Another Man’s Sac’ was also wildly advanced over the previous records. Parts of the LP swaddled their punk edge inside so much oink and babble you almost couldn’t discern it, with other segments stretching out into a mutant form of garage blues, and others just swirling out of control.
This evolution continued on ‘Rembrandt Pussyhorse,’ which featured a set of tunes for which the Buttholes’ rock-based form destruction was mixed with experimental, tape-mangling passages of many flavors. Haynes was handling all audible vocals by this point, and his mastery of post-tongue dynamism was finally in full flight. Meanwhile, their live shows became legendary examples of excess and derange- ment, and their music just kept getting louder and stranger and more savage. It was the diametric opposite of the hardcore scene from which it had emerged, which was heading in ever more codified and stylistically conservative directions.
