Album Review: Butthole Surfers - 'After The Astronaut'

As I write this, two real patriots have climbed the Empire State Building with a peace banner and then made out. One could say they want a love revolution. We certainly need one, and today we are also talking about the "weird" revolution alternative was supposed to usher in.

Noisy brain peelers The Butthole Surfers explored many moons during their heyday, and after two and a half decades or so their "new" album After The Astronaut is a fitting long missing gem that encapsulates most facets of their journey. It is also a sort of capstone for the alternative boom in general, the band pulling out a lot of tricks up their sleeves but the label seemingly not believing in them. Add After The Astronaut (for they never peaked as close to the Sun as "Pepper" again) to the list of weird comedown records in rock, albeit perhaps inadvertently. But that was never the point with these guys. 

This record was basically recut with half different songs and released as Weird Revolution on another label. Both feature a "Weird Revolution" themed song that features iconic frontman Gibby Haynes barking out variations of an impassioned opening rant about how the weird revolution needs to happen and doesn't need to bother placating the normies, who are creepier and weirder. It has a charming earnestness that might seem unhinged to some, but has a certain 90s meets 60s sincerity to it. Think of it as Kurt Cobain's "...knows not what it means" line meets Timothy Leary inspired hollering to break on through to the other side, etc.

It isn't a metal album, but I can't stop thinking about it and digesting things about it's different facets (including an AI enhanced video the likes of which I wish legacy bands like Jesus Lizard, Guns N Roses and the Buttholes would just stay away from). Buttholes listeners fall into a few camps. You have your purist Tough and Go days or anarchist "I saw them in Texas with the Big Boys on LSD at Club Foot" types, you got your "Pepper" types (I will always remember being an intern at WDST Radio Woodstock as a teen and being stoked whenever it played...a real band!) and then you have people like me who found Gibby through Ministry and then latched on to the middle albums. I was def a Worm Saloon kid but then really, really got into Pioughd. I had it on a tape that I played constantly while tripping balls. Don't even ask me how many times I have heard versions of "Lonesome Bulldog." My brain thinks the Butthole's "Hurdy Gurdy Man" is the ORIGINAL, haha. Great version, fyi. "Blindman" is also the most Helter Skelter-y song this side of "Helter Skelter".

All of this is to say that the Butthole Surfers, for all their moments of glory and unlikely commercial appeal here and there, were never going to lose their freak flag flying side completely. The irony is the single Capitol was looking for was probably the very straight forward poppy song "Dracula From Houston" that the Buttholes served up on Weird Revolution, which is frighteningly almost like the band sounding like Train or the Barenaked Ladies pastiched to "Pepper" chant verses. It's not bad, but not great, lol. Well, it's not terrible but it is far from their craziest moment. 

But back to After The Astronaut. There is a great montage in The Bear S4 Ep 8 about the difficulty of following your passion as "I've got you babe" plays over restaraunt bills stacking up. "They say our love won't pay the rent ...etc." I can see why the label maybe got cold feet with "I Don't Have A Problem", which seems to be about voyeurism surrounding lesbian knife play consent or something? WTF lol.

Every record is a snapshot of the talents of the collective members vs. a place within a wider sociology. You'll get something like the killer drums on the Jerry Garcia Band's "After Midnight" Live Kean College rendition that only exists in that time and space. Likewise, you don't often get people in one room like the collective shared powers of the Buttholes, people capable of tapping into social issues, satire, industrial, trip hop, punk and acid resistance in equal measure. They were pioneers on the front lines of alternative for many years. The suits look dumb for not going to bat for the boys harder now that we can finally hear After The Astronaut. It is fittingly their ninth album, as it is kind of a Revolution #9 type album. Very trippy. There's something for a fan of every era of the band. Especially now that some of the once dated trip hop beats are kind of making a comeback. 

While some material like the rather cringey "Junkie Jenny In Gaytown" is borderline problematic or lacks energy and is sort of just there and sounds pretty like filler track "Yentel"  or a song like "Turkey And Dressing" makes me wonder what is in the water right now that has two very psychedelic oriented bands like the Buttholes and Black Bananas both dropping songs about Turkey related food this year, the album mostly slaps. "Turkey And Dressing" also ends the album well with the theme of implied normalcy that is actually false ritual, tying it nicely back to the opening monologue.

Gibby, Paul and King really cook on "Imbuya", which has almost 90s jungle beats merged with very Ministry Psalm style big and dangerous sounding chord structures. "Jet Fighter" has a powerful anti-war message and keeps climbing to admirable heights. "They Came In" has a killer snare sound over epileptic blips and innovative slinky energy that sounds like Tricky recorded Girls Against Boys until Gibby's very recognizable voice holds court with a slippery and melodic ringmaster appeal.

The album might not be as insane as other big label unlikely albums from the similar era like the Melvins' unfuckable-with unlikely trilogy of Atlantic masterpieces Houdini, Stoner Witch and Stag but there is plenty of wild forays into semi-mystical chanting and whip-its adjacent sounding musings on God getting Gibby a red caboose on "Mexico" or Bob Dylan on a motor scooter. Images flow freely from pastiched zeitgeists. Weirdos with loyalty with enjoy the long strange trip and younger fans might find them anew, much like how Gibby is teaching Rock Academy classes here and there these days (something he probably would have been arrested for attempting in the shotgun toting days). 

So much has changed in the years since then with the music industry, but so much has also stayed the same. We need DIY but we also need chaos agents who are still willing to work their way into the machine and force it to be weirder, even if it is a tug of war with integrity and commodification under capitalism. At times wrestling with our own sanity as we perhaps hope in vain/vein to move the dial for society's third eye. And even when we'd rather just split off and start a freak commune somewhere away from the people who drank a much less interesting (non-electric) Kool-Aid. Just as big companies need to take a risk on adventurous art with deeper meanings, lest we miss out as a society on something like, say, the stunning Black Mirror episode "Hotel Reverie".

All in all, this is a record that was embracing the past and future all at once, so it is interesting how it now straddles both with long, bowed legs.