Review Summary: Some nice and zany b-sides abound on this semi-live/unreleased material compilation, and the joke tracks are quite funny, but it's not an essential buy for non-hardcore fans. Stick with the older material if you're new.
Dog Fashion Disco – Beating a Dead Horse To Death… Again
Some bands, it feels like they’ve been around forever, but only when they’re gone, you start to actually sit up and take notice. I can imagine with the demise of Pantera, we know how much that band was really missed in retrospect. Now, Dog Fashion Disco didn’t break up because of the untimely death of a member, but they have decided to call it quits in 2007. To commemorate the end of the Dog Fashion Disco period, the band has released a sort of compilations, B-sides, and random demo tracks CD, along with a DVD chronicling their last gig and a documentary on the band.
The material on the actual CD that I am reviewing here is taken from various locations that have been put together to chronicle an overall feel of their sound. There is an unreleased EP called Day of the Dead, which features songs in typical DFD style; there’s the zany, all over the place music, the hardcore-vocals combined with more melodic singing, the completely humorous lyrics and song titles that display a complete inability to take anything, not even themselves, seriously. Other material they have is culled from live gigs and demos, and display the conventional DFD songwriting; they are either alternate versions of songs a fan has already heard or just completely new, so it’s a good collector’s item for fans of the band. There’s even a track from a score and a Melvins cover, for anyone who is really, really interested in that stuff.
As for everyone else, there’s not much here you should get if you are very interested in the band. The package is more worth getting for the actual DVD that is there and gives an overview of the band, more than the semi-interesting material that doesn’t live up to the band’s standards anyways. The real hilarious clincher, even for non-fans, however, comes in the joke demo tracks at the end, where two band members have composed semi-country songs with titles such as Turning Gay and Hank Steel The Real Queer Cowboy to piss off the record labels. Mature this is not, but it shows a definite tongue in cheek attitude, and the hilarious verse of “I’ll grab your buttcheeks and pull out my willie / stir your asshole like a hot bowl of chilli” is bound to give fans of the band a smile on their face.
The question remains whether this was actually a very necessary release, considering Dog Fashion Disco isn’t the ***ing Ramones or Led Zeppelin popularity-wise. Fans should enjoy this release as a send-off from a now defunct band (of which three members have formed Polkadot Cadaver), but it’s not really bound to sell, so the question can be raised why the record label actually decided to put this out. However, if you’re really into it, it’s not a bad purchase; and if you haven’t heard the insane prechorus of Baby Satan yet, you should, because the completely wacko lyrics of “baby satan is a little brat / a vile being in his habitat / he was born with horns and a crooked spine / to plague the sacred and divine” are almost too comical to pass up. But it’s not an essential compilation, and newbies are advised to skip over this and to proceed to one of their earlier full-lengths instead.
