Big Black

It's like watching an optical illusion in which white dots on a black background switch places across the page. In the wildly influential Big Black, punk polymath and indie philosopher-king Steve Albini's flesh-shredding riffs and freight-train drum machine sought to destroy everything in his band's path with disciplined, scabrous noise and caustic yellow journalism.

Big Black's debut EP, Lungs, is a mere skeleton of future triumphs: thin, angular guitars, a relentless drum machine named Roland, humorless screeds. The followup EP, Bulldozer, the first with brilliant guitarist Santiago Durango, is thicker and more fully realized ("Cables," about the slaughterhouse as theme park, became a fan fave). The Racer X EP is the first fully conscious Big Black record, with the band's savage aesthetic in its final form: British postpunk set alight by American hostility. (All three EPs benefit from their compilation on The Hammer Party.)

Atomizer is a full-bore revelation, a key document of 1980s underground culture and one of the most influential albums of the age. Durango and bassist Dave Riley aid Albini in setting these odes to tabloid America on "liquify"; guitars have simply never sounded so annihilating. Topics include child abuse, racial self-loathing, sex-plus-arson (the catchy, haunting "Kerosene"), and a live reprise of "Cables." And contrary to popular belief, there's a (misinterpretable) half-assed morality at play; Big Black doesn't make the horror, it just reports it, soaked in wit and loathing. You get it? Fine. You don't? Fuck you. (The Rich Man's Eight Track Tape combines Atomizer -- minus the useless near-instrumental "Strange Things" -- a single covering Wire's "Heartbeat," and the inferior-by-comparison followup EP Headache.)

The smart bombs on Songs About Fucking feel still more focused but less inspired, the songwriting less diverse. Their lyrical focus hasn't budged, and the sound is starting to calcify into shtick. Big Black still stuns, but it no longer surprises, and it's no wonder Durango split for law school and the band called it quits -- at the height of its indie fame -- on the eve of Fucking's release. (The Fucking CD appends one single.) A fun-but-not-revelatory live album and video appeared in 1993.

Albini soon formed Rapeman with bassist David Wm. Sims and human drummer Ray Washam, both late of Texas noise maniacs Scratch Acid. They didn't last very long, hampered by a protest-worthy name, but Two Nuns and a Pack Mule is a scorcher, an underrated slice of funny, brutal skreepunk that slams vegetarians, covers ZZ Top, and shouts out Sonic Youth. (The Nuns CD is appended with the band's fetal debut EP Budd, notable only for the brilliant title track.) (JOE GROSS)

From 2004's The New Rolling Stone Album Guide