Locust Abortion Technician

During the 1980s the Butthole Surfers represented the further extremes of the Indie Rock underground. Where other bands attempted to finesse their ‘60s influences or subtly spike their punk credentials, the Butthole Surfers looked to obliterate whatever genre they tackled. The Texas combo would take the basic premise of psychedelia and twist it into a true LSD trip, treating sound as something to be put through a funhouse mirror until only the distortions remained. Earlier EPs and albums rooted themselves in punk, rockabilly and other garage rock, but with 1987’s Locust Abortion Technician, the group looked to decimate their own sound until the songs were less songs than audio experiments meant to test the limits of your stereo equipment. “Sweet Loaf” begins as a Black Sabbath parody of their tune “Sweet Leaf” and takes it down from there. “Human Cannonball” is positively perky in comparison, a virtual hit single for the group. But “Graveyard,” “Kuntz,” and the truly disturbed “22 Going On 23” represent the group’s malicious undertow, reveling in audio experiments while the rhythms churn like a stomach digesting a foreign object.