Big Black: Pigpile

BIG BLACK: PIGPILE (1992)

1) Fists Of Love; 2) L Dopa; 3) Passing Complexion; 4) Dead Billy; 5) Cables; 6) Bad Penny; 7) Pavement Saw; 8) Kerosene; 9) Steelworker; 10) Pigeon Kill; 11) Fish Fry; 12) Jordan, Minnesota.

This is such a quintessential live Big Black recording that it is quite weird how it took them five years to release it — the actual gig was played on July 24, 1987, in London, during the band's farewell tour of Europe, and it was one of those farewell tours where the «farewell mindset» ac­tually adds to the general energy and excitement level rather than takes away from it. In addition to that, the setlist is constructed as a representative retrospective, covering all of Big Black's out­put with the exception of the Racer-X EP, and with the aid of superior sound quality, acts as a terrific and deserving conclusion to the band's career.

You do get the usual bad-taste jokes ("this is a song Jerry Lee Lewis wrote before he killed one of his wives"), and you also get Albini's trademark "one, two, FUCK YOU!" live intros (that were unexpectedly absent on Sound Of Impact), but none of these really matter next to, say, the com­plete recasting of ʽDead Billyʼ from its rather humble beginnings into a veritable wall of melodic white noise, or to ʽFists Of Loveʼ dropping its slightly «Gothic» production in favor of razor-blade sharp guitar playing and simulation of totally maniacal violence. As on Sound Of Impact, these live versions by no means outshine the originals or make them obsolete — they simply blast them away with heavy artillery, for better or worse.

The major kicker is astutely saved for last: a nearly seven-minute version of ʽJordan, Minnesotaʼ in which the unspeakable activities of the protagonists are «simulated» by the guitar in a feedback assault that yields some of the cruelest aural effects I've ever had the mispleasure of hearing. No, fortunately, this is not the audio equivalent of Salò or any such work of vomit-art, but the things Albini is doing on this track, in terms of my general barriers of tolerance, beat just about every­thing, from Throbbing Gristle to Ministry. Play it loud enough in headphones and see how much Real Man you really are — baptised through fire and brimstone rather than holy waters.

It is interesting that, having disbanded Big Black, Albini put the name to rest, even though the «band», from the very start, was his one-man project and he could have easily preserved the mo­niker for his future projects like Rapeman and Shellac. But all of these later incarnations are, in fact, substantially different from the «Big Black sound» that Steve had all but abandoned — the «drum machine vs. clang guitar» thing was buried for good, almost as if the man had realized that he'd taken the formula as far as it could go, and that it was high time for an image change. Much like Nick Cave on the other side of the planet, Albini would «soften» his approach (although he'd never «stoop» to soulfulness and sentimentality), but this was probably inevitable if he wanted to try and progress further — otherwise, subsequent Big Black-style albums would most likely soon degenerate into complete self-parody. As it is, the Pigpile memento provides a perfect final touch, well worth a thumbs up, both to the career of Big Black and the whole «noisy post-punk» thing, soon to be absorbed into the much more commercially successful, but nowhere near as provoca­tive, grunge and alt-rock scene.

Big Black: Sound Of Impact

BIG BLACK: SOUND OF IMPACT (1987)

1) Ready Men; 2) Big Money; 3) Elephant Joke?; 4) Cables; 5) Yanomamo Indians; 6) Pigeon Kill; 7) Passing Complexion; 8) Crack Up; 9) RIP; 10) Jordan, Minnesota; 11) Firecrackers; 12) Cables; 13) Pigeon Kill; 14) Kero­sene; 15) Bad Penny; 16) Deep Six; 17) RIP; 18) Rama Rama.

An «un-unofficial bootleg»: the album was originally released on a UK indie label rather than Big Black's own Homestead Records, and whatever was the reason for that, legal trouble was avoided by leaving not only the band's name off the packaging (which consisted mainly of reprints of black box transcripts, hence the «title»), but even the song titles (currently restored, the 18 tracks were first denoted by completely different monikers, although retaining some con­nection with the originals — for instance, ʽCablesʼ was ʽKill The Cowʼ, and ʽPigeon Killʼ was ʽBird Thangʼ). Since then, however, the record has occasionally been re-released, and generally features as an integral part of Big Black's discography.

And for good reason, too, since Big Black are one of the few artists in the whole punk/post-punk pool that really deserve to be heard live. Pigpile gives a better general impression of a classic Albini show, but Sound Of Impact, recorded in two different locations (which is why some of the tracks double each other), is a bit more of a «glorious mess», a little less loud and a little more prominent on stupid, but memorable Albini jokes. Anyway, even despite the fact that they mostly play the same songs on both albums, owning both is not an exercise in redundancy.

The funny thing is that it takes a good listen to a live Big Black album to properly understand that the band does pay a lot of attention to proper mixing and even melodicity of sound on their studio records — in the live environment, Albini's and Durango's guitars omit or blur some of the subtle twists of the originals (e. g. ʽDeep Sixʼ), greedily going for more noise, power, and energy, just the way it befits a good old-fashioned rock'n'roll performer. But where they lose in complexity and subtlety, they expectedly gain in blowing your brains out. With a little extra distortion on the «clang» tone, the songs are transformed into walls of ferocious white fire — if the bass is at re­gular volume, as on ʽKeroseneʼ or ʽPassing Complexionʼ — or black fire, if the bass is turned all the way up, as on ʽBad Pennyʼ or the second of the two ʽPigeon Killsʼ.

In between the firethrower blasts, Steve entertains the not-too-grateful listeners with «shocking» stories, such as the one about the mouse with the BMW and the elephant with a big dick (ʽEle­phant Joke?ʼ), or one about certain violent and sexist customs of particular Indian tribes (ʽYano­mamo Indiansʼ), or introducing ʽBig Moneyʼ by saying "we stole it from Rush", or finding some other way to come across as a shock-oriented prankster. It does add some personality to the show, but what sort of personality is up to you to decide. I'm still trying to figure out why his unfunny jokes do not annoy me — whether it is a Monty Python sort of way, with absurdism compensa­ting for the occasional unfunniness, or maybe I'm just a covert fan of artistic rudeness.

Of the setlist, the only big surprise is the closing track, a cover of an obscure composition by the short-lived post-punk band Rema-Rema (mostly famous for its guitar player Marco Pirroni, who would later become a close associate of Adam Ant) — nothing special about it, and it was pro­bably played for an encore to confuse the audience even further; then again, like every respec­table indie prophet, Albini did have this hunch for dragging out obscurities (being as he was, to a large extent, an obscurity himself). But this record is not about surprises, it is about putting the «Big» back in «Black», if you get my drift, and it does that fairly well and it gets a thumbs up and you can't get it anywhere legally, not even on iTunes, so Steve Albini welcomes you to break the law in this particular case. 

Big Black: Songs About Fucking

BIG BLACK: SONGS ABOUT FUCKING (1987)

1) The Power Of Independent Trucking; 2) The Model; 3) Bad Penny; 4) L Dopa; 5) Precious Thing; 6) Colombian Necktie; 7) Kitty Empire; 8) Ergot; 9) Kasimir S. Pulaski Day; 10) Fish Fry; 11) Pavement Saw; 12) Tiny, King Of The Jews; 13) Bombastic Intro; 14) He's A Whore.

And by «fucking», Steve Albini, of course, conveys all the possible meanings of the word, literal as well as figurative. The album title may sound a little exploitative these days, but it fits the music, the lyrical subjects, the atmosphere fairly well — at the very least, it's a much more appro­priate title than Songs About Making Love or Songs About Sleeping Together, which wouldn't be a Big Black-ish title at all.

Ideologically, the record never departs far enough from the internal logic of Atomizer, the basic formula remaining the same — jarring, aurally disturbing guitar tones, deranged vocals, and sto­ries of various types of sick fucks (particularly truckers — Albini seems to have a special bone against the honest trucker, as if he'd spent all his childhood being molested on the highway). But since these stories come in all sorts of different varieties, this keeps the moods and melodies fresh and diverse enough to make up for another thirty minutes of stimulating musique-noire entertain­ment. Even though this time around, there is no central masterpiece like ʽKeroseneʼ to act as a reliable anchor, and all the dirty vignettes just roam around in a slightly disconcerting manner.

At least one of the creative decisions is quite bizarre, but fascinating: I have no idea how the band came around to covering Kraftwerk's ʽThe Modelʼ, a song that originally made perfect sense as a part of The Man Machine, with its electronic equation of a glamor model with a human robot — here, electronic futurism is replaced with BDSM guitars, so that the story of the submissive model ends up on the same plane of being as the story of the fornicating tru­cker and the story of the Colombian necktie. Additionally, we get good proof that Albini's «clang guitar» can be used fairly well to play pop-style lead melodies, even if the whole thing is more of an ironic experi­ment than a serious attempt to branch out.

Slightly more serious are some experiments on the second side of the album, which Albini would later describe as relative failures, at least in relation to the more spontaneous, free-flowing, punky songs on the first side. In particular, ʽKitty Empireʼ stomps along like some sort of arrogant «pro­gressive hardcore» epic, taking the life experience of «King Cat» as a likely allegory for some­thing less cuddly and cutesy and pinning it to a slow-moving, grinding industrial nightmare that gradually builds up in intensity, then cuts out abruptly just as you were beginning to hope for an apocalyptic climax. But as «epic» as it tries to be, the song is just too monotonous to overwhelm the senses — and no matter what they say about him, «King Cat» just does not sound like a scary enough personage to perfectly match the brutal repetitive riff pattern of the song. Maybe ʽGoblin Empireʼ might have been a better fit, but that'd be too much fantasy for these guys.

Much more effective, I think, is ʽFish Fryʼ, also on the second side, which contains the album's most daring piece of art news — a story of a murderer hosing his truck after chucking the dead body out in a nearby pond — and sets it to one of the album's most head-wrecking melodies, where Albini's mutilation of his high strings is like a manipulation of sharp psychedelic needles twitching in your brain; even by Big Black's usual standards, the song is an impressive bit of psychological-physiological torture. Lyrically less explicit, but musically even crazier, though, is ʽErgotʼ, where Albini is trying to provide the musical equivalent of a particularly violent on­slaught of St. Anthony's Fire — you'd have to consult an actual sufferer to understand how close he got to achieving the right effect, but if you listen to this stuff loud enough in headphones, twitching and occasional spasms are near-guaranteed.

That said, it is terribly hard to dedicate space, time, and opinions to individual songs on here, even if most of them do have their own individuality — like the seven deadly sins, or the indivi­dual members of the Manson Family. So let me just conclude by saying that, on the whole, the album is a little deeper, a little more ambitious, a little more image-risking than its predecessor, but possibly not quite as directly hard-hitting, either. And that's good — considering that Big Black only managed to release two original studio albums, this gives a good opportunity for the fans to live their lives fighting over which one is closer to «the true Big Black». Personally, I can­not decide, so I just give the whole album another thumbs up, despite the fact that I'd certainly refuse to answer the question «do you really like Songs About Fucking?» in a straightforward manner — it's a trick sort of question.

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Big Black: Atomizer

BIG BLACK: ATOMIZER (1986)

1) Jordan, Minnesota; 2) Passing Complexion; 3) Big Money; 4) Kerosene; 5) Bad Houses; 6) Fists Of Love; 7) Stinking Drunk; 8) Bazooka Joe; 9) Strange Things; 10) Cables (live).

When you follow Bulldozer up with Atomizer, chances are you are not really in the mood for significantly changing your formula. Indeed, the basic ingredients all remain the same: Albini's «clanging» guitar tone as the main attraction, pummeling industrialized beats and tempos as the main framework, and lyrics about perverts and perversions as the main subject of reference. Also, the entire LP runs just over half an hour, which probably is the longest possible time one could listen to this sonic nightmare without getting well-adjusted, numbed down, and bored. In fact, were it up to me, I'd probably cut it down by another five or ten minutes, because the EP format works best with the likes of Big Black.

With the formula set so tightly in place, the overall quality of the album depends on how many different and emotionally evocative riffs / grooves / arrangements the band can offer, and, fortu­nately, Albini's creative juices are peaking — almost every one of these nine songs delivers, one way or another. The central piece, bravely extended to a six-minute running time, is ʽKeroseneʼ; from a classificatory angle, it would probably count as «hardcore industrialized funk», with rela­tively complex (for Big Black) interplay between the bass and guitars and several crescendos that perfectly match the song's lyrical message ("never anything to do in this town... there's kerosene around, something to do... set me on fire, kerosene!"). Few songs have managed to tackle the «violence born out of boredom» topic so efficiently, as Steve's guitar goes from high-pitched, monotonous, whiny funk chords («boredom») to shrill, crackling, ascending lines — musical flames engulfing the listener. Fabulously cool and inventive.

The shorter songs are predictably less ambitious — just state their simple, repetitive points for a brief interval of time to give way to the next sketch in the «Panoramas of Perversion» series. ʽJor­dan, Minnesotaʼ takes on the issue of a 1983 scandal of child abuse in said little town, and I'd bet anything Albini was particularly happy that the little town was named after the holy river, throw­ing the issue of hypocrisy into the mix. The song's main riff has nothing particularly original about it, but sounds double-threatening when played Albini-style, and by the time the song has burst into complete hysteria, with insane screams of «suck daddy, suck daddy, suck daddy!» almost drowning out the guitar background, you may well be itching for a nice hot shower. Ex­ploitative to the core, yes, but effective.

Other, ahem, «highlights» for me would have to be ʽFists Of Loveʼ — the subject matter is easy enough to guess, and all the melodic lines have been specially selected and received the Steve Albini Stamp of Approval for Matching Physical Pain; and ʽBazooka Joeʼ, which is about as complex as your average Ramones song, but still generates a certain trance-inducing effect — Steve's «pleading-aggressive» repetitive mantra of "you don't have to be alone Joe... hang with me Joe...", recited over the song's dark rhythm pattern, may act funny on the brain.

The rest of the songs are difficult to describe in any other terms than the ones already used, but what really saves Atomizer from becoming «filler city», even with this short overall length, is that each song works as its own separate anecdote — you are walking here through a picture ex­hibition, glaring at child molesters, bored kids in provincial shitholes, sexual deviants, whore­house clients, corrupt policemen, alcoholics, and racial issues. It doesn't always sound different from each other, but it's one hell of a panorama, and I'd say it elevates the level of social con­sciousness far more efficiently than, say, any given sermon-riddled LP by Bad Religion. Defini­tely not just «gross for grossness' sake», Atomizer never really overcooks its slum-taste pasta, so here is another thumbs up in return.

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Big Black: The Hammer Party

BIG BLACK: THE HAMMER PARTY (1982-1984/1986)

1) Steelworker; 2) Live In A Hole; 3) Dead Billy; 4) I Can Be Killed; 5) The Crack; 6) Rip; 7) Cables; 8) Pigeon Kill; 9) I'm A Mess; 10) Texas; 11) Seth; 12) Jump The Climb; 13) Racer-X; 14) Shotgun; 15) The Ugly American; 16) Deep Six; 17) Sleep!; 18) Big Payback.

No question about it, Steve Albini is one sick puppy. As far as I can tell, there are no credible re­cords of his going through any serious childhood traumas — unless, of course, the move from Pasadena, California to Missoula, Montana at the tender age of 12 counts as one, which may be possible — so blame it on a rogue gene or something. Of course, it is a natural thing for artists of all types to focus on the underbelly of society, but some go farther, stay longer, and breathe louder than others, and Albini is most definitely on the short list here.  

I have to confess that, as a rule, I do not experience any pleasure at getting my face stuffed in a toilet bowl, metaphorically speaking — not to mention that it happens all too often in real life (metaphorically speaking again!) for me to want to come home and get even more of that out of my stereo system. I do believe in freedom of expression, and think that the presence of people like G. G. Allin is a sign of healthy society / art scene, rather than the opposite (well, at least as long as the guy does not take his laxative on my front porch, that is) — but that does not mean I would ever want to waste time listening to a G. G. Allin record, God rest his soul; the guy is just an extreme example of a social activist, and has about as much to do with «music» or «art» in ge­neral as «Pussy Riot», or Abbie Hoffman, or the Holy Roman Emperor.

Steve Albini, on the other hand, is definitely an artist, and the «Big Black» project was founded by him in 1981 with a definite aim of producing art — socially relevant art, that is, rather than artistically irrelevant social activity. By his own account, he enjoyed the brutality and viscerality of both heavy metal and hardcore punk, but ultimately found both genres laughable, a feeling that many of us could probably empathize with: in my own case, I have to always remember to put myself in a particular frame of mind when listening either to Iron Maiden or the Dead Kennedys, otherwise it all ends in a facepalm barrage.

Thus, the idea behind Big Black was to make music that sounded equally loud, furious, and vis­ceral, but at the same time could really kick the shit out of the listener. Something that would be very painful, from a musical angle, but would also look real, would make sure that you are suf­fering from an actual cause, something that could turn your insides out and bulldoze them on the spot, and make you feel enlightened and grateful rather than simply offended for the sake of be­ing offended. In other words, the kind of stuff that the Nick Cave-led Birthday Party were doing at the same time — except that the Birthday Party had freakier, more abstract lyrics, and depen­ded all too much on the «musical epilepsy» of their frontman, whereas Albini placed his bet on far more straightforward, accessible lyrical imagery and a clearer, sterner head.

The Hammer Party, released in 1986, was not a proper album, but a compilation of Big Black's first two EPs: Lungs (1982) and Bulldozer (1983) — subsequent CD re-releases would also in­clude a third EP, Racer-X from 1984. All three, however, are essential building blocks of the Big Black legend, and nothing could be more natural than starting the story right from where it be­gins. In 1982, «Big Black» was really a one-man project, with Albini recording all the guitar, bass, and vocal parts himself, entrusting the percussion duties to a drum machine (credited as a full-time band member by the name of «Roland»!), and only occasionally letting his college friend John Bohnen help him out with saxophone parts (or, rather, «bleats»). A year later, on Bulldozer, Big Black was already a band, with Jeff Pezzati on bass and Santiago Durango on second guitar — and this was also the breaking point where Albini arrived at his trademark guitar sound, «inven­ting industrial music in the process», as some say, although, of course, a more correct answer would have been «merging industrial music with hardcore punk» (Einstürzende Neubauten had their first «industrial» album out in 1980, and the roots of the genre go way back). Thus, any nar­rative on Big Black that kicks off with Atomizer would be somewhat... headless.

Already on Lungs, Albini shows himself to be a master of tone, above everything else. He him­self was modest enough to all but disown the songs, either because he found the lyrics too crude or the «search process for best tone ever» far from complete, but most of the songs sound fairly great to my ears, at least. ʽSteelworkerʼ opens with a guitar part that I could only describe as «syphilitic funk» — a melody that would rather be expected on a heavy metal album, but pitched all the way to high heaven, shrill, trebly, pulling the nerves right out of your teeth, as Albini cheerfully informs us that "the only good policeman is a dead one / the only good laws aren't en­forced" and then goes on examining his deepest murder instincts. It's not exactly scary, but the experience is more disturbing, indeed, than any random heavy metal tune of the year, or decade.

Subsequent topics do not stray far away from the commonly unfathomable — exploring the lower depths on ʽLive In A Holeʼ, dabbling in Vietnam zombie trash on ʽDead Billyʼ, inviting suicide on ʽI Can Be Killedʼ, and so on. Melodically, the songs all follow the New Wave aesthetics, but seem more influenced by acts like Pere Ubu, Wire, Joy Division, etc., rather than Albini's punk scene competitors — which is already enough to make whatever the guy is doing more interesting for the modern listener, and that is not yet mentioning all the different guitar tones (where the «white lightning» of songs like ʽSteelworkerʼ and ʽI Can Be Killedʼ is opposed quite radically to the «black terror» of bass-heavy songs like ʽRipʼ and ʽLive In A Holeʼ).

The «textbook» Albini, however, only arrives on Bulldozer — for ʽCablesʼ, he invents his «clan­ky» sound by sticking sheet metal clips in his guitar picks, so that every note now sounds like the clang of a weapon against a metal shield. ʽCablesʼ still remains one of the best exponents of that sound, with a brief «teaser» introduction as a lesson on how it works (of sorts), and the cruel lyrics (inspired by personal experience with a Montana abattoir) perfectly matching the cruelty of the new sound. Not that the other lyrics lag anywhere behind — the entire EP is taken over by such delicious subjects as poisoning pigeons and buying knives, and populated by colorful cha­racters with hick, racist, and bigoted backgrounds. Just the kind of thing, in other words, that de­serves a special manner of guitar playing invented in special honor of it.

ʽCablesʼ has the meanest and ugliest sound, but Albini can also throw «hilarious» in the can, too, as is the case with ʽTexasʼ, which is sort of an «avant-hardcore» freakout, a series of speedy buildups and comedowns serving as a freaky background for one of the most laconic and the most vicious putdowns of the Lone Star in history — the only reason why Dallas never made a persona non grata out of Albini in return is that nobody in Dallas probably heard the record in the first place, except those few like-minded fellows who hate their own state anyway. ʽSethʼ is much darker in tone, beginning with a taped phone hotline chock-full of eloquent racial slurs bordering on the absurdist (where else will you hear Martin Luther King called a "doubly-dege­nerate, Jew-led, Red jungle bunny"? Priceless!) and building its protest rage from there. But musically, my favourite tune is ʽI'm A Messʼ, if only for the utterly terrific bass-guitar duo that unintentionally ends up sounding like a hardcore take on ʽThe Hut Of Baba Yagaʼ — in addition to everything else, let us not forget that Big Black actually cared about their melodies, rarely letting themselves get too carried away with just the rage, just the lyrics, or even just the guitar tone. There is all that, yes, but there are also interesting and serious musical ideas scattered all over the place, although they only become noticeable once the overall impression stops clouding the brain and it becomes interested in the compositional process as well.

Racer-X, in comparison, is not that much of a big leap forward, since the basic formula has been established on Bulldozer and the band members remain the same. Nevertheless, the title track, ʽThe Ugly Americanʼ (with John Bohnen returning on «sax bleats» to make it all sound like an early precursor to John Zorn's Bad City), and ʽSleep!ʼ are all treasurable highlights, particularly ʽRacer-Xʼ with its alternating soundscapes of grim lonesome drum machine and all-out guitar nightmare — most of the other songs have their moments, too, even if, on the whole, this third EP seems to be more of a «breather» in between Bulldozer as the moment of Big Black's true arrival and Atomizer as its first full-scale LP-length statement. But who cares about particularities? The whole package, taken together, deserves its certified thumbs up, and, to this day, remains one of the strongest musical indictments of retrograde darkness ever recorded. Yeah, yeah, I know, in reality Albini is merely exorcising his own personal demons, but there's no harm in driving them through certain areas of the American landscape along the way.

Check "The Hammer Party" (CD) on Amazon