Butt Trumpet

  • Butt Trumpet
  • Primitive Enema (Hell Yeah) 1994  (Chrysalis/EMI) 1994 

The vulgarity goes in before the proud name goes on. The double-bassist Los Angeles quintet (not to be confused with Buttsteak, Blohole or the Ass Ponys) is strictly out to offend on Primitive Enema, wielding a two-pronged fork of blaring punk aggression and tastelessly crude lyrics that make outrageous jokes of the three S’s: scatology, sex and stoopidity. (That this harmless but appalling nonsense wound up being reissued on a titanic record label must have cost someone their key to the executive bidet.) The album is funny in spots: “Shutup” has the rest of the band shouting down frontman Thom Bone’s attempts to sing the thing; “I’m Ugly and I Don’t Know Why,” a vocal cameo by bassist Sharon Needles, makes good sport of school-age cruelty, and “I’ve Been So Mad Lately” consists of little more than bassist Bianca Butthole using her hillbilly-from-hell screech to scream cathartically pure invective. But it’s also cumulatively overpowering in its headache-inducing awfulness. Merry odes to anal sex (an unlisted bonus), defecation (the title track), promiscuity (“Clusterfuck”), yeast infections (“Ten Seconds of Heaven”) and romantic aroma therapy (“Yesterday”) fill the septic tank of Butt Trumpet’s bad-joke novelties to the brim and then some. Yeuch.

[Ira Robbins]