Butthole Surfers

Humpty Dumpty LSD

BY Roman SokalPublished Sep 1, 2002

The thing about the legendarily notorious Texas group known as the Butthole Surfers is that they are not trying to be different. Scarily, they are very normal; it is the listener who is different. These guys are fugitives from the law of averages - one cannot make up the kind of music they construct; it is very real. Humpty Dumpty LSD, a collection of previously unreleased material stemming from 1982 to 1992, is a testament to their freak-flag glory, where too much acid (every kind of acid, from battery to hallucinogenic) meets instruments. These tracks (reminiscent in spirit to their Locust Abortion Technician and Hairway To Steven albums) see them trying their hands at soundtrack music, toilet punk, "brown" sugary pop and surgical noise. The results never fall short of being an aural snapshot of what it is like to have a brain aneurysm during a paranoid freak-out. It could be an elephant dying to the sounds of a child playing a piano, or it could be the most beautiful thing since Bette Midler's "The Rose." The Butthole Surfers are pure art. I mean, could and would they be allowed to be anything else in a civil society?
(Revolver)

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