philip sherburne

I knew I was in trouble when I received a CD from a band named Bad Acid Trip, signed to System of a Down vocalist Serj Tankian's Serjical Strike Records. I can't decide which is worse -- the band name, the album title (Lynch the Weirdo), or the cover art, which features, um, a drawing of a guy in a suit with his face peeling off. And a flower with an eyeball in it. And some water. Water? I think it's water. It might be a sort of low-grade allusion to Van Gogh's Starry Night, but I think it's water.

Then I read the lyrics. The first song, called "Cigarette Pack," is about sex toys, and it reads something like a Good Vibrations jingle as penned by some posi-core kids:

"We are your sex toys
Plastic cunts and rubber dongs
Helping your imagination to grow nice and strong
Give you a ticket to the possibilities
Cuz society would rather
you hide your fantasies"

etc., etc. But it gets better! Just soak up this couplet, which is surely an outtake from the most P.C. espisode of Schoolhouse Rock ever (you know, from that episode where they teach you about dental dams -- long unavailable on network television, you can still download it on the net, I hear):

"We are your sex toys
The keys to your repressive cage
Crossing boundaries of race, gender, class, and age."

If ever there were a lyric less apt to make me less apt to badger the witness, it'd have to be that one. Funny thing is, though, that the band's not half bad. They play spazzy noodlecore that nods, between headbangs, to the likes of Mr. Bungle, RKL, the Accused, Eyehategod, Anthrax, etc. It's no Martha Splatterhead's Maddest Stories Ever Told, but it's hardly the worst example of the morbid goofcore department. In fact, if I had a car, this would probably become pretty standard drive-time listening. Now if only they could do something about that name.