Starting off with the most massive metal/arena rock-level stomp the band had yet recorded -- Butch Vig helping out again, making the trio sound like they were crushing skulls with every beat -- "Cotton Bolls" demonstrated that Killdozer kept things going loud and great on Little Baby Buntin'. Lines like "When I was a lad I polished my wood" and talking about shooting his dad in the gut after the latter was run over by a train showed that Gerald hardly needed to improve on his rasped, roaring vision of a screwy America. Musically, it even sounds like there's a bit of jangling guitar here and there; even, on "Hi There!," some acoustic guitar and string synths. However, Killdozer isn't exactly on the verge of suddenly turning into Depeche Mode or anything (the fact that the song is about a guy asking after his friend and getting kneed in the groin for his pains shows that much). There's more hip-swinging, high-volume strutting and bizarro rural-blues-gone-electric soloing from Bill Hobson and even a guest appearance from Englebert Humperdinck at the end of "3/4" Drill Bit." At a few points Gerald is just crude as opposed to wittily so, but even so, castrating the guy who insulted one's wife, as on "The Puppy," as sickeningly hilarious as it is, deserves some sort of credit. Then there's "The Rub," which somehow manages to quote a bit of Shakespeare toward the end of a semi-snuff tale before shifting into a celebration of coffee. The cover song torn to shreds this time? Neil Diamond's astounding '70s epic of nothing, "I Am, I Said," kept to the same pace but with a sweeping, loud majesty not even Mr. Hair himself could touch in his original. ~ Ned Raggett