Stigma

The nerdiest guys you'll ever meat beat the shit out of you with walls of sound. And frankly, I think it's time to talk about it.

Big Black was a Chicago noise rock band founded in the early 1980s by Steve Albini, a person who has been hated or respected for most of his career. Originally from Missoula, Montana, Albini moved to Evanston, Illinois for University. As it happened, he eventually became immersed in the Chicago punk scene, populated by bands like Naked Raygun, Rites of the Accused, and The Effigies.

In 1982, Steve put out the first proper Big Black release, the Lungs EP. Recorded entirely by himself in his house, this record is more a prototype for what the band would be about: pressurized bass lines and mechanized beats, for one. But most of all, ground-scraping, cement mixer guitars are firstly of note. Venemous, though diluted testimonials of American despair ("I'm a steel worker, I kill what I eat," "Then comes the crack / And everything falls apart / Then comes the pull / Then she dies") set the tone significantly.

I find Lungs to be one of the most reductionistic forms of college rock out there; I'm a fan of that, actually. However, Bulldozer, on the other hand, very nearly is one of the band's most fully-realized manifestations. Another EP, Naked Raygun vocalist Jeff Pezzati and Santiago Durango, former guitarist for Naked Raygun, are appended as long-term and full-time members, respectively. Roland - the drum machine - stayed on, though Pat Byrne of Urge Overkill was brought in for recording.

So much of the fat has been trimmed for this release. A permanent bassist and a more guitarist-like guitarist play off of Albini's wrath and freestyle rhythmic surgery beautifully. Especially do I find that more guitarist-like guitarist, Santiago Durango, to be so much of why the band could gel. It's like adding a bit of water to a sauce about to burn, the wok smoking like a brick of fireworks on-stage, onions curling at that critical point between "too firm" or "too soft." That must be the value of a real rhythm guitarist: good stir-fry.

Fluidity is a good way to capture this era of the band: still raucous, though with a sense of harmonic interplay (no less a sense of harmony), grinding faster with more intention and will. And then there's the lyrical element, which has received a massive overhaul. A lot of Bulldozer focuses on Albini's adolescence and overall life experience in the sticks. Imagery of redneck teenagers killing slaughter cows out of boredom, Indiana towns that kill birds with poisoned corn, and a dog trained to attack black people are all delivered with a "believe it or not" cadence. Our vocalist not only sounds more confident here, but also found his niche that still not many other bands have done thematically.

Next is the Racer-X EP, named after the character from the Speed Racer cartoon/anime. The character is referenced here to describe a racecar driver addicted to amphetamines, hence "He's just a regular guy / Racer X got a need / Come on Pops / I need a little more speed." More of the same characteristics with the prior release apply here, minus Pat Byrne. Though, the lack of a live drum overlay does not dampen the experience. If anything, the tonal character of the raw band itself may be reinforced. Overall, it's more speed and the kind of noises you'd hear in your dad's garage, not to mention culture rot. It's great, and there's also an awesome James Brown cover to top it all off.

Thus ends the Jeff Pezzati phase of the band, at least. Hereon, Dave Riley was brought in for bass duties. Tonally, I don't know that I could imagine a better fit. Riley added a much more direct funk influence to a band that was already funky. This seems tangentially related to his engineering experience for Parliament/Funkadelic.

The result of this new pairing is Atomizer, a god-honest LP. I said earlier that the previous two EPs were the band at full force, and I still stand by that, insofar that the force is angled a bit differently here. Would it be fair to call this album-oriented rock? That has nothing to do with the tonal character of the music. If anything, this point in their lifespan just clarifies and shows full control of their ability to interweave spastic funk rhythms with the tectonic weight of their instruments. That this is delivered in a full nine-song (minus a live track) record is delicious.

You might've picked up how important middle-American, industrial decay is to this band's overall concept. "Kerosene" declares this idea like a mission statement:

I was born in this town

Live here my whole life

Probably come to die in this town

Live here my whole life

Never anything to do in this town

Live here my whole life

Never anything to do in this town

Live here my whole life

Probably learn to die in this town

Live here my whole life

Nothing to do, sit around at home

Sit around at home, stare at the walls

Stare at each other and wait till we die

Stare at each other and wait till we die

Probably come to die in this town

Live here my whole life

You get the idea, surely. Regardless, I find Atomizer's strength to be a lot of its stylistic expansion. For example, "Jordan, Minnesota" uses the band's known beligerence for off-putting tone poetry about a (debunked) pedophilia ring. Meanwhile, "Bad Houses" reflects latent post-punk tendencies, fuzzily recalling an education in Sisters of Mercy and Wire. And of course, "Kerosene" is a seven-minute-long ballad about being so fucking bored out of your skull that you burn yourself alive. It's not that these tendencies didn't exist previously, but that they seem more obvious and actionable here than previously. This is a noise rock album, for chrissakes.

And then they did it again, for the last time. Songs About Fucking has a couple songs that do in fact mention fucking. If you've witnessed any online presentation of the band, you probably recognize "Bad Penny" as their most famous song, with exception to "Kerosene." This was certainly the track I first heard, its popularity making complete sense. Here is angsty dance-punk with actual fervor and spite, something you can flail to while spiting your parents. "I think I fucked your girlfriend once / Or maybe twice, I don't remember / Then I fucked all your friends' girlfriends / Now they hate you," Albini says.

Where I said Atomizer is more stylistically diverse, Songs About Fucking feelings like a final reassertion of dominance over their best utilites. They rock until the establishment collapses, with "Precious Thing" and "Columbian Necktie" being clear images of the interplay between Albini and Durango at its most sadomasochistically inspiring. And binding the two is Riley, scrawling jagged lines into the center with a soldering iron. Guided by the invaluable Roland - regardless of what drum machine it was - The band approaches as one unwilling to go out without a fight, even if they know time isn't long for them no matter what.

Albini wrote in a column sometime in the mid-'80s: "I want to push myself, the music, the audience and everything involved as close to the precipice as possible. Although I'm kinda worried about what we'll find there. All the coolest pioneers of this noise spirit seem to have made the trip to the extreme, been unable, or unwilling, to push on, and tossed in the towel."

He wrote other shit in that piece which doesn't advertise him very well, but significantly is this the philosophy which I feel guided the band's end - besides important logistical issues. For example, Dave had drinking problems which made him unreliable. Also, all of them had full-time jobs, and Santiago was going to become a lawyer (and he did, for some reason). They put a much dustier, scrappier EP that same year, though all-told, that is the general story of Big Black.

I'd like to underscore at this point that this is a band who had the nerve to say "fuck you" both to society and the standards of their regional punk scenes. Because Big Black was not popular in Chicago and didn't like playing there either, their scorn seems to be indebted to Albini being kind of an asshole, but also very observant of bullshit. I doubt loud-mouthed and minimally self-aware punk guys cared for this. Either way, I think Big Black's biggest backhand was to play music that was simultaneously more danceable and more violent than - in my humble opinion - really anything their peers were doing at the time. At least, this is to the extent that they were on the same level as groups like Scratch Acid and No Trend - with the former from Texas, and the latter, D.C.

I'd recommend you do the same.