Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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41 of 50 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
You must own. NOW., August 5, 2005
If forced to pick one band that best exemplified the indie-rock aesthetic, one would be hard-pressed to find a better choice than Big Black. Many of the acts typically credited with bringing alternative music to the mainstream have, for better or worse, been little more than angry pop acts (Nirvana and Nine Inch Nails being prominent examples), and even many more underground acts such as Pixies, Sonic Youth, and the Jesus Lizard released some material that was palatable to the mainstream, as their major-label runs attest. Big Black, on the other hand, was the real deal, a band that lived out the indie philosophy in both their music and in their resolutely do-it-yourself business practices, and paid the commercial price for it. Songs About F***ing was the perfect distillation of leader Steve Albini's philosophy: an abrasive, confrontational album that contained no concessions to the mainstream and no pretensions to socially redeeming value. This is music at its most twisted and evil, acknowledging no taboos as it challenged listeners to take or leave its assaultive sound and unpleasant lyrical content.
The key to the lasting appeal of this release lies largely in its simplicity. Like fellow pioneering noise-merchants Godflesh, Big Black distilled rock music to its most basic elements: guitar, bass, and drum machine. In spite of this minimal approach, however, Songs About F***ing is hardly palatable or unchallenging. What emerges from this combination of rock's traditional elements is a barrage of scathing, disembowling noise that pummels eardrums with a mix of astringent guitar squalls and pulsating industrial beasts. And of course, it's all topped off with the demented vocal stylings of Albini himself, making Kurt Cobain sound like Mel Torme as he howled and screamed his tales of depravity.
Mixing metal, punk, and the then-burgeoning genre of industrial with reckless abandon, Songs About F***ing constitutes a musical roller coaster of frightening proportions, and wraps things up in barely half an hour. The basslines and drum programming of Bad Penny and Colombian Necktie are enough to crack skulls, while Albini's vocals legitimately bring to mind a man in the midst of a nervous breakdown. L-Dopa is all punkish speed and aggression but infinitely more frightening, and the proto-industrial rage of Precious Thing and Kasimir N. Pulaski Day would send Trent Reznor up a tree. Even when the band slows down, as on Kitty Empire, the results are clenched, sinister, and intense. Tiny, King of the Jews (love that title) actually manages to be somewhat atmospheric, but it still relies heavily on that mix of disconcerting guitar noise and pulsating beats.
I've listened to pretty much every noted act in the extreme-music world, from Slayer to Godflesh to Meshuggah, and Big Black may have been the scariest of all. And Songs about F***ing in an unqualified triumph, one that oozes menace and integrity at the same time. Own it, or pose.
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14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
sounds like a suicide caught on tape, January 22, 2000
Big Black is one of the key creators of industrial music. over the years, i have read enough stories about them to go out and buy this album (as a import copy) at a record store. when i got home, i found out that it was only 30 minutes long. furious that i spent so much on a imported CD that was barely longer that a sitcom, i went and played it anyway. I WAS FLOORED. this was one of the most darkest, sickest albums i have ever heard. starting off with "The Power Of Independent Trucking", Albini takes off into songs that are truly sick and twisted, with him screaming lyrics over punishing guitar riffs and equaling damaging drum machine loops. and all this with a (as we record engineers call) "incorrect" mix of the songs, sounding like they're coming out of a transistor radio that you would hear over machine gunfire. the whole album sounds like what you would have if you could capture the moment of suicide across the length of a record. i can see where Trent Reznor got his ideals from, but this album makes Nine Inch Nails sound like Disney records. this album is a must-buy, but it is not for the weak. YOU'VE BEEN WARNED.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Gods of Skronk, October 23, 2006
The late 80s/early 90s was a time in music that was at least as fertile as the late 60s/early 70s. Great bands seemed to pop up every other week. Among these was a 3 piece from Chicago with the moniker of Big Black (how perfectly apt). They garnered attention largely due to the first track on the first LP, Atomizer. The song, Jordan Minnesota, was about paedophilia, and how it had spread throughout a sleepy mid-western town until just about everyone in the town was involved in a massive conspiracy to abuse each other's children. The song itself was a huge pounding monstrosity that sounded as if it had been recorded in one of the lesser known basements of hell. The band comprised three skinny geeks in wire-rimmed glasses and a drum machine named Roland. They looked like accountants, but in reality they were hitmen, with guitars instead of sawn-off shotguns, and their intention was to deliver the coup de grace to the dull, overblown, drug-addled corpse of rock and roll. Of all their contemporaries, Big Black were probably closest to Swans in their fascination for the excesses of human behaviour. Sonically, though, they occupied a territory all of their own. With hideous guitar skronk produced by custom-made aluminium guitars, martial beats courtesy of 'Roland' and Albini's muffled lunatic ranting, they crushed all in their path, like blitzkreig circa '39. 'Songs' was arguably their peak. The cover said it all, and the music it contained just went straight for the jugular. Shorter and sharper than Atomizer, it nontheless contained all the key ingredients from that awesome debut. It was a claustrophic nightmare of a record that grabbed you by the nape of the neck and forced you to look at the nasty dead thing under the sink. The crowning glory was Albini's superb liner notes. Coruscating little vignettes that gave some insight into the twisted genius behind it all. I'd read them over and over and laugh like a drain. It was all a sick joke, and if you got it, great. If not, well, there's always MTV... American punk rock would never be this good again.
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