Review Summary: The Band That Wouldn't Die, Part 2: Gonna Have Me Some Fun
I mean… It’s all there in the title, isn’t it? This is not highbrow stuff. On their Sub Pop debut
Blood, Guts, and Pussy, The Dwarves revel in the depths of their own depravity, and don’t even try to offer up justifications for it. These songs suck the sexiness out of sex, the adrenaline rush out of violence, and the intoxication out of drug use. These guys don’t do what they do because it feels good, or even because it’s fun (though they certainly seem to think it does, and is). No, it’s because The Dwarves are all pure, rampaging id, devoid of any rationality or sense of decency. In Blag and co.’s world, anything that can’t be beaten up, smoked, and/or penetrated may as well not exist, because that is all they exist to do. It's hardly a commendable worldview, but man oh man is it a blast hearing it espoused so enthusiastically.
The performances here are just as crazed and primal as the lyrics. Vadge Moore bashes out 4/4 beats as fast as he can, HeWhoCannotBeNamed rotates between two-to-four brutishly strummed power chords, and Salt Peter follows along with the guitar, playing the root notes. All the while, Blag’s vocals teeter on the edge of a tuneless shout, but still just barely manage to hold down the contagiously catchy melodies that tie these songs together. The way he practically retches “I’m just a SLUT!” into the mic on “Skin Poppin’ Slut” and his swaggering growl on “Drug Store” are just two of the many examples across
Blood, Guts, and Pussy of an incredibly potent vocalist coming into his own as a frontman.
To say this album has “lo-fi production” would only lend credence to the idea that there was any production done here at all. Apart from some added buzzing sounds on “Insect Whore”, This could have been recorded on a single microphone in a basement. It’s far from pretty, but the grimy, rough sound only enhances the single-minded ferocity of the music. Sounding like no professional recording studio wanted to touch them with a ten-foot pole only made The Dwarves all the more believable as degenerate scum of the earth (which would prove to be a recurring problem later in their career).
Blood, Guts and Pussy is perhaps to this day The Dwarves’ clearest, purest statement of purpose. Though they were never again quite this unhinged and raw, this album became the blueprint that informed their sound and public personas for the rest of their career, their single guiding light throughout the next 28 years of near-constant reinvention, especially on their next album...
