The name, unspeakable, the music, hardcore
Arguably the most infamously named band in the annals of popular music —
for years, radio found their moniker unspeakable, and the press deemed it
unprintable — the Butthole Surfers long reigned among the most twisted
and depraved acts ever to bubble up from the American underground. Masters
of calculated outrage, the group fused the sicko antics of shock-rock with
a distinct and chaotic mishmash of avant-garde, hardcore and Texas psychedelia;
sleazy, confrontational and spiteful, songs like "The Revenge of Anus
Presley," "Bar-B-Q Pope" and "The Shah Sleeps in Lee
Harvey Oswald's Grave" seemed destined to guarantee the Buttholes little
more than a lifetime of cultdom. Yet, by the mid-1990s, they were left-field
Top 40 hitmakers, success perhaps their ultimate subversion of mainstream
ideals. |
