This ain't no heartfelt shit: 25 AmRep gems
Halo Of Flies
Amphetamine Reptile Records started out like so many labels—as an outlet for its owner’s band. Tom Hazelmyer founded AmRep to release Halo Of Flies singles, but more than two decades later, the Minneapolis label is best known for putting out some of the grungiest, noisiest records of the grungy, noisy ’90s. While the label has embraced genres from metal to pop-punk to drone rock, it mainly trucks in a raw, abrasive aesthetic charmingly known as “pigfuck.” This weekend’s three-day celebration of the label’s 25th anniversary includes a set by Unsane tonight, a showcase headlined by Melvins on Saturday, and local lineup on Sunday featuring Janitor Joe and Calvin Krime. In preparation for the party, The A.V. Club compiled a list of 25 standout (read: nasty and ear-punishing) AmRep albums.
Various Artists, The Dope, Guns ’N’ Fucking In The Streets Compilations (1986-1997)
Although Amphetamine Reptile managed to sign some of the best noise bands of a generation, perhaps the best way to get a sense of what the label is really all about is to get hold of one of its notorious Dope, Guns ’N’ Fucking In The Streets compilations. Released on a year for 11 years, the comps were what made AmRep famous, showcasing the best in the brutal, squalid, glorious noise that was its signature. Meant as both a showcase for the label's own bands and a sneak peek at some favorites who were never officially signed, the series, now collected on three CDs available from the label, is an essential guide to what AmRep Industries was all about.
Lubricated Goat, Psychedelicatessen (1990)
1990 was an incredible year for the label; it seems like every album it put out that year was a classic. The second album from Lubricated Goat, another near-legendary Australian band that found its way to AmRep, is no exception. A bit more eclectic than many other bands on the roster, Lubricated Goat nonetheless fit right in with its cascades of guitar noise, eardrum-smashing rhythm section, and insane lyrics courtesy of Stu Spasm. “Give Chance A Piece” is one of the nastiest songs in its repertoire, and a perfect encapsulation of the band—and the label.
God Bullies, Dog Show (1990)
In many ways, Kalamazoo, Michigan’s God Bullies were the ultimate Amphetamine Reptile band: noisy, aggressive, nasty, and prone to public nudity, torching Bibles, and other questionable displays of stagecraft. Dog Show is the band's finest hour; it begins with “Let's Go To Hell,” featuring Mike Hard's sneering vocals over a guitar-drum combo that recalls the proto-industrial punk of Chrome, and builds from there, through the swirling psychedelic noise of “Buddha” to the queasy psycho-country closer “Abigail.” It’s unadulterated, the bathtub crank of ’90s noise-punk, and thus fits the label’s aesthetic to a T.
Helios Creed, Boxing The Clown (1990)
Among Helios Creed’s sonic characteristics are dense thatches of static that make it hard to tell where the industrial noises and synths end and where the skronked-to-hell guitar work begins, and vocals that suggest he is screaming through a mouthful of cyborg calamari. Accordingly, each of his AmRep releases plays like some variation of a cheesy sci-fi debacle recorded from TV on decaying VHS tape. While Creed's backing-band membership was in constant rotation, Scratch Acid's Rey Washam drums on Boxing The Clown. His solid, happily chattering beats give the disoriented first-timer something to grab in case of emergencies, but also accentuate just how weird it is that Creed can shape his socket-fucking madness into actual rockers like "Master Blaster" and "Hyperventilation."
Surgery, Nationwide (1990)
Surgery's debut LP, Nationwide, was the group's only AmRep full-length before being drafted by the majors for 1994's Shimmer, a stab at the big time that was just way too weird for Middle America—even one addled by Nirvana. Of the two discs, Nationwide is far superior: A testosterone-puking splatter of aggro-rock that draws equally from Rollins Band and The Jesus Lizard, it nonetheless tips its hat to the ladies with the tribute song "L7," aimed at the infamous all-female grunge band. Sadly, the band went nowhere from here: After Shimmer flopped, Surgery frontman Sean McDonnell became AmRep's second rock 'n' roll casualty (after Janitor Joe's Kristen Pfaff) when he died of asthma-related complications—allegedly exacerbated by a robust rock lifestyle—in 1995.
Boss Hog, Cold Hands (1990)
In between his time with Pussy Galore and the Blues Explosion, Jon Spencer recorded a handful of records with Boss Hog, a band featuring his wife, Cristina Martinez, on vocals. Martinez's penchant for performing in the nude, along with the band's' generally abrasive, fuzzed-out blues-rock sound, made it a natural for AmRep, and her tendency to pose in the altogether for album covers made her the heartthrob of choice for '90s noise-punks. But there's more to Boss Hog than proof that Jon Spencer is a very lucky man: It was a top-shelf band, much tighter than might be expected for the often-loose house sound, and Steve Albini turned in a razor-sharp production job on this, its debut.
Helmet, Strap It On (1990)
Jazz-educated guitarist Page Hamilton was already in his 30s when Strap It On, Helmet’s debut full-length, came out. It not only changed AmRep, it changed rock: Echoes of Helmet's choppy, chiseled, clean-cut, coldly analytical rage still ring, and when Helmet signed to Interscope and became a respected cornerstone of heavy music throughout the ’90s, Strap It On turned into one of AmRep's calling cards. Granted, the rest of the label’s catalog is far too ragged and idiosyncratic too appeal to your average headbanger, but Hamilton straddles that line perfectly here; in many ways, Strap It On remains the prime example of what happens when heavy metal and mathleticism collide.
Halo Of Flies, Music For Insect Minds (1991)
Tom Hazelmyer had to suspend his own band, Halo Of Flies, in 1991 after AmRep started taking off in the wake of Helmet's success. But he collected all of the band's output in Music For Insect Minds, a chunk of raw, bludgeoning rock that combined everything from proto-punk to post-punk to garage-rock to psychedelia—and even a cover of The Creation's "How Does It Feel To Feel?" a decade before Rushmore made the cult '60s band cool again. Hazelmyer released recordings by his other projects—Gear Jammer, Pogo The Clown, and even a resurrected Halo Of Flies (under the name H*O*F)—but none of them touch Halo in its greasy, grimy prime. In particular, the opening to one of Insect Mind’s most blistering tracks, "No Time," perfectly sums up Hazelmyer’s—and AmRep’s—whole philosophy: "This ain't no heartfelt shit! This is Halo Of Flies!"
Cosmic Psychos, Blokes You Can Trust (1991)
Cosmic Psychos were well established in their native Australia before AmRep issued Blokes You Can Trust. But the band's diplomatic status didn't mean it fit in any less with the label's roster; Australia, after all, had been obsessed with Motor City proto-punk like The Stooges and The MC5 as far back as the '70s, when Aussie punk bands like The Saints and Radio Birdman crawled forth. The Psychos carried on that proud tradition. Only they mixed it with some old-fashioned, AC/DC-style nastiness, best represented on Blokes by the staggeringly horny, gloriously boneheaded "Hooray Fuck"—a song that makes The Stooges sound like Shostakovich.
Tar, Jackson (1991)
Another AmRep offering much improved by the application of the Steve Albini recording imprint, Tar's Jackson was the first, if not the last, great album by the underappreciated Chicago band. Trading up its original sludgy punk sound for a searing, angular guitar noise that recalled Big Black and The Jesus Lizard, the album also featured much-improved songwriting and vocals from John Mohr that anticipated the post-hardcore, math-rock direction the band would take later. Jackson is a fantastic album highly recommended to anyone with a taste for the industrial punk sound of early-'90s Chicago.
Cows, Cunning Stunts (1992)
Of all the bands AmRep supplied patronage to throughout the '90s, Cows were the most innovative, the least understood, and the hands-down best. Toting a complexity and surrealist spirit on par with Captain Beefheart and Butthole Surfers, the band issued four full-lengths of gnarled blues-punk before cranking out its masterpiece, Cunning Stunts. Behind the telling cover art—a parody of Reid Miles' iconic work for the jazz giant Blue Note in the '60s—lurks a scalp-shearing blast of corkscrew blues, grotesquely squealed imagery, and the deranged, strangled bugle-work of frontman Shannon Selberg. After a few additional years of solid Cows albums, Selberg formed the straightforward Heroine Sheiks, and bassist Kevin Rutmanis went on to join Melvins and Mike Patton's Tomahawk. Today, Cunning Stunts is out-of-print and ridiculously absent from most "best albums of the '90s" lists.
Vertigo, Nail Hole (1993)
During its existence, Vertigo recorded covers of both Hüsker Dü and the Australian swamp-garage gods The Scientists. Accordingly, Vertigo's music fit somewhere between the two—which is actually a pretty weird sonic garden to cultivate. The bassless trio never got as many props as the tougher, weirder, more extreme bands on AmRep, and the listless, pseudo-alternative rock of Vertigo's 1992 album Ventriloquist sounded like a last, sad gasp. But the group came roaring back with its swan song, Nail Hole, a lean specimen of jittery, shouty, ever-so-slightly arty garage rock that presaged Hot Snakes by a decade.
Janitor Joe, Big Metal Birds (1993)
Named after a primitive computer game in the early '80s, Minneapolis' Janitor Joe was later famous for featuring Kristen Pfaff, who went on to play with Hole before suffering a fatal heroin overdose. But JJ was gutsier and more entertaining than Courtney Love's project ever dared, with sharp, riff-heavy guitars and whirling stage performances that blended grunge, noise, and clever post-punk. Big Metal Birds was the band's final record before Pfaff decamped for Hole, and she played a big part in its greatness, having co-written standout tracks like the snotty “Boys In Blue” and the powerful “Steel Plate.”
S.W.A.T., Deep Inside A Cop's Mind (1994)
One of the weirdest things ever released by any label, let alone by one famous for releasing weird shit, Deep Inside A Cop's Mind (which is in a three-way tie for best AmRep album title ever, alongside Love 666's Please Kill Yourself So I Can Rock and the Clusterfuck '94 comp) is an album of surprisingly well-executed cover songs done in a more or less straightforward country style that attempt to illustrated the sickness and depravity of a typical police mindset. This all happens under the command of notorious writer/zinester Jim Goad, and is ably, if bafflingly, assisted by various acquaintances, including avant-garde composer/crypto-fascist Boyd Rice and Anton LaVey, founder of the Church of Satan. Unforgettable.
Gaunt, Yeah, Me Too (1995)
Gaunt is another band that got drafted by the majors—but before that, it released a lone album, Yeah, Me Too, on AmRep amid a three-album run on Chicago's Thrill Jockey. Being a pop-punk band, Gaunt never really fit on the Twin Cities label; in fact, many AmRep fans bemoaned the signing of catchier outfits like Gaunt (and Servotron and Supernova) despite the lo-fi rawness and unvarnished rock attitude of Yeah, Me Too. Like early Superchunk mixed with fellow Columbus punkers (and sharer of bandmembers) New Bomb Turks, Gaunt infused the album with scrappy anthems and a Replacements-esque messiness that ran counter to much of the '90s punk boom. Frontman Jerry Wick was hit by a car and killed in 2001, but the band's gritty yet soaring pop-punk nuggets live on.
Lollipop, Dog Piss On Dog (1996)
Garage rock has had many peaks and valleys since the '60s, but the late '90s was one of its lowest points ever. Into that void stepped Lollipop, a snarling, long-haired, Iggy-esque bunch of hellions packing switchblade riffs and snarls of desperate derangement. Sharp-angled and tightly wound, the band's debut, Dog Piss On Dog, is one not only a hidden gem of the AmRep catalogue, it's a great, lost garage-rock classic: a tribute to every high-strung fuckup who ever picked up a guitar and decided to inflict the adrenaline-addled contents of his fevered brain on the world.
Today Is The Day, Today Is The Day (1996)
Before moving on to the greener pastures—and, one might say, the more receptive audience—of Relapse Records, experimental metal band Today Is The Day released its self-titled third and final AmRep album. As trailblazing and ass-kicking as its two predecessors were, Today Is The Day shows leader Steve Austin's shift toward keyboards and odd incisions of melody, elements that stretched his grinding, brutalized template into totally new dimensions of pants-shitting hugeness. That dabbling in textures, electronics, and dynamics makes Today Is The Day one of the most vital and influential American metal albums (not made by Neurosis) of the '90s (that is, until Austin released its Relapse debut, Temple Of The Morning Star, a year later—but that's a different story).
Servotron, No Room For Humans (1996)
Best described as an all-android Man Or Astro-Man?, or Devo if its primary concern was the evolution of machines and not of man, Servotron consisted of a handful of proficient, well-concealed humans passing themselves off as the musical vanguard of the robot revolution. Its music transcended the elaborate conceptual joke, though, delivering clanking, cacophonous songs that were equal parts electronic noise and lockstep mechanical punk. Borrowing a tendency to deliver catchy pro-robot slogans in chanted form and layering them over a twisted, dance-friendly guitar noise, No Room For Humans sounds like what Bender from Futurama would listen to while contemplating the destruction of all mankind.
Feedtime, Billy (1996)
By the time it got around to recording Billy, Australia’s Feedtime was already legendary at home. In fact, it was a reunion album, its first since breaking up after putting out a number of critically acclaimed records in the '80s. But Billy proved Feedtime had lost none of its chops: Despite the presence of a new drummer, it still maintained a precise, mechanical rhythm section à la Wire married to an unstoppable, punishing, swampy guitar drone that combined the relentless power of Flipper with the moody feel of Dirty Three.
Chokebore, A Taste For Bitters (1996)
Chokebore, from L.A. by way of Hawaii, had to go all the way to France to complete its greatest record. A Taste For Bitters, equal parts Jesus And Mary Chain and Unwound, is a blackly emotional, searingly powerful record, embodied in the staggering title track and the howling “Narrow.” Christian Omar Madrigal Izzo's drumming is spectacular, and Troy Von Balthazar's voice is melancholy but never self-pitying. After moving to a different label, the band lost all of its edge and most of its appeal, but A Taste For Bitters proved that AmRep could occasionally step outside its comfort zone with good results.
Melvins, Honky (1997)
Melvins have been around long enough that they play a big part in the biography of quite a few labels, but Honky is the high point of their AmRep tenure. After getting fired from its major-label gig at Atlantic, the band decided to indulge its experimental side with some electronic sound experiments and accordant trickery (including an unending silence on “In The Freaktose The Bugs Are Dying”), but it didn't forget to dance with the one what brung 'em, delivering some excellent droning noise along the way. Highlights include the crushing opener “They All Must Be Slaughtered” and the memorable “Lovely Butterfly.”
Calvin Krime, You're Feeling So Attractive (1998)
Hardcore and noise-rock are often characterized by crude, volatile qualities that cut both ways: They make it possible for anyone to get involved, but they also provide an open-ended foundation for creative variations. Minneapolis' Calvin Krime might push for sonic individuality as much as Minutemen, but You're Feeling So Attractive proves that a simple starting point can provide a ton of room for eccentricity. (Crude plus eccentric also fits the bill for member Sean Tillmann's current project, the sweaty, half-naked travesty Har Mar Superstar). While the band manages to flail a bit of catchiness into bass-cranking freakouts like "Fantabuloso," it slows down enough to pour melancholy synth melodies into "Sea Lions Trained To Hug" and finds earnest emotional bearings on "411 N. 6th St." Even if the silly chants of "Oh My Goth!" and "Strictly Business" feel incomplete, they add to the feeling that Calvin Krime saw its chosen genre for its possibilities, not just its easy points of entry.
Lowercase, Kill The Lights (1997)
Imaad Wasif is better known today for his solo recordings, a stint in Folk Implosion, and being an auxiliary guitarist for Yeah Yeah Yeahs. But in the mid-'90s he fronted a band whose loping, moody, meandering noise fell somewhere between post-rock progenitors Slint and post-hardcore legends Unwound. A dark, thudding, and almost nihilistic grind propels Lowercase's sophomore album, Kill The Lights, a disc that makes few concessions to levity or even listenability. That said, it's Wasif's prickly yet lyrical guitarwork that makes Kill The Lights a perversely entrancing masterpiece of doom and gloom. Lord knows, it ain't the pop hooks.
Nashville Pussy, Let Them Eat Pussy (1998)
Formed from the remnants of the sludgy hillbilly combo Nine Pound Hammer, Nashville Pussy took classic hard rock, gave it a Southern drawl and a squirt of kerosene, and sent it out into the world with its ass on fire. And it worked: Since unleashing its debut, Let Them Eat Pussy, the co-ed combo has continued making noise, slinging slop, and nauseating nice people the world over. Incredibly, the band snagged a Grammy nomination for Best Metal Performance for Pussy's "Fried Chicken And Coffee." AmRep was winding down as an active label by '98, but seeing as how Helmet's "In The Meantime" (originally released as an AmRep 7-inch) was nominated in the same category in '93, Nashville Pussy's Grammy nod was a strange way to bracket the rise and fall of one of the underground's heaviest, craziest, least compromising labels.
