Radioactive Greatness

by Sheena Jones

Wow wow WOW! It's hard to believe, but the third time's the charm for metalhead psychos Abysmal Crucifix. Their latest album, Backseat Delightlah!, hit shelves in June and it's gone into near-constant rotation in the Jones office here at Rarrrr. Even though it loses some steam in the middle, the entire experience is unforgettable. It's a journey I'll take over and over again until my CD player spits it out and shrieks "No more!" in binary code.

The first half of the album is nothing but balls-to-the-wall rockers. Unlike Two Berries on a Twig and especially Star Sex, these rockers are not "epics" that last 250 years with nothing but wall-to-wall guitar solos and pompously overstated orchestral arrangements. These are three- or four-minute pocket symphonies, with just enough guitar solo to make them badass fucking metal, but the same kind of pop hooks that made Metallica so popular in the early '90s. Of course, each song retains the raunchy lyrics that have made Abysmal an underground sensation.

That is, until the second half of the album. Mirroring the Beach Boys' Today! (Girth McDürchstein has gone on record as saying his biggest influence is former Beach Boy Brian Wilson, whose album Imagination is also reviewed in this issue), from the palate-cleansing "Sax on the Beach" forward we are treated to dark, depressing (but still ocasionally bawdy) ballads. More than ever before, McDürchstein ruminates on death, racism, misogyny, and the perils of enormous manhood. The result is far more endearing and sensitive than one might assume.

Perhaps this will alienate Abysmal Crucifix's hardcore fanbase, but if McDürchstein intends on shifting from "metal god" to "artist," Backseat Delightlah! marks an enormous step in the right direction.

Reprinted from Rarrrr Monthly, July 1998