Review Summary: The Band That Wouldn't Die, Part 8: Masturbating Themselves
You know, I think I’ve finally figured out why
The Dwarves are Born Again bothers me so much: The Dwarves were seemingly so proud of the legacy they’d built that they just decided to plagiarize themselves for over 30 tedious, uninspired minutes (their longest album to date, I might add). Far too much of this album consists of retreads. “You’ll Never Take Us Alive” is just “Dominator” with different lyrics and twice the runtime, “F*ck U ‘Till You Die” reuses the exact same chorus melody of “Throw That World Away”, and “Candy Now” is a slightly punched-up version of “Like You Want”.
Even when they aren’t cannibalizing their back catalogue, you can bet The Dwarves are preening like they’re God’s gift to music. Opener “The Dwarves Are Still The Best Band Ever” (yes, it’s actually called that) offers little beyond a lazy summation of the same themes every single track on Blood, Guts and Pussy got across more effectively- we’re all just wild animals deep down, let’s do drugs and have sex- but with the added acknowledgement that they could be helping people or making the world a better place instead, which turns the whole thing from “unrestrained celebration of our carnal human instincts” to “screw you all, I’d rather get loaded and laid”. “Do the HeWhoCannotBeNamed” takes the idea of “Hey, what if there was a dance named after our guitarist?” and... that’s all, no further thought needed. Worst of all, closer “The Band That Wouldn’t Die” contains the singularly terrible lyric “We’re so hardcore, you f*cking whore!”, sung like a petulant child throwing a tantrum. Because as we all know, the best way to show how hardcore you are is to just say it, out loud, with words. My God.
Throughout
Born Again, The Dwarves are all too eager to remind you of how they’re Legendary Badasses Who Love Sex, Drugs And Rock N Roll And Don’t Care About Anything Else, a lyrical avenue that seldom leads to anything remotely interesting and certainly doesn’t here. The best cuts are the ones that forsake that approach entirely- “Happy Birthday Suicide” features some really fun guitar work and effectively written lyrics about attempting suicide after some sort of breakup, and “Fake ID” is a skeezy, Mötley Crüe-flavored banger about (what else?) lust for underage women. And these two actually worthwhile tracks are placed conveniently one right after the other in the track listing for maximum skipping efficiency, almost like Blag knew that no sane human being would want to listen to “I Masturbate Me” more than one time.
Born Again is the sort of album I get angrier and angrier about the longer I think about it. It’s so undeservedly impressed by itself, simply for being what it is- a Dwarves album. None of the songs are exciting or memorable except for “Happy Birthday Suicide”, none of the lyrics are clever or interesting, and the production is slick, sterile, and lifeless. It merely gestures towards the idea of “Dwarvsiness”, constantly referencing a glorious past it in no way lives up to. For all the lyrics about sluts and taking pills and masturbation and how Blag f*cked your mom, the only people
Born Again is likely to offend are people who remember when these guys sounded like they actually cared.
