It takes guts to name your band after
Blue Cheer's first album, considered by many to be the first true heavy metal album, and considered by many more to be unlistenable sludge. Sludge is a good word for Rhode Island's
Vincebus Eruptum, even though the band plays with the speedier tempos of the punk-influenced. And honestly, on some level they're clearly kidding: one of the album's best tracks consists of a grinding riff repeated piledriver-style for two and a half minutes while singer Dan St. Jacques, in his most impassioned scream, bellows "Who farted? YOU DID!!" over and over and over. Other songs called "The Shit" and "Drug Orgy" are similarly unpretentious, but if nothing else, the goofball lyrics allow the listener to focus more intently on the group's real draw, the pummeling low-end riffs that power these eight brief songs. Closer to
the Jesus Lizard or even early
Butthole Surfers than
Blue Cheer, the members of
Vincebus Eruptum may not be "sincere" about their metallic frenzy, but they sure do get up to a walloping racket. ~ Stewart Mason