Heavy Metal Dementia

by Trevor Whiffenstone

I described Abysmal Crucifix's debut, Star Sex, as "tasteless, yet pointless." Less than four months later, they're back with a follow-up. Granted, they haven't had much time to mature, but this new album, Two Berries on a Twig, is even worse.

To back up slightly, there is one good song on this ablum. "Thunderbird," as suspiciously sensitive (as in: I think "songwriter" Girth McDürchstein plagiarized it) depiction of drunken mayhem and its consequences. Low points are everywhere: the misguided immigration song "Paz, Hombre" (sung entirely in Spanish with a borderline offensive Latin hip-hop backbeat), the dance experiment "2 Kewl 4 Ur Pecker" (produced and sung by Crucifix cohort D.J. Koko). For some reason, there's even a funk song and an odd fusion of '70s folk-rock and samba. Attention, Girth McDürchstein: you can barely play heavy metal. Please stop trying to branch out.

I'm not sure what's going on lyrically. The whole album is so schizophrenic, I can hardly tell whether this album is supposed to be straightfaced or an absurd string of satirical songs drenched in irony. But what's funny about a grown man literally howling during the chorus of "Howling on a Friday Night"? Does anyone laugh at the oddness of the Crying Game-like scenario described on "Transexual Relationship Highway"?

If Star Sex revolted me, Two Berries... merely puzzled me. I only understand one thing about it: I never want to listen to it again.

Reprinted from Heatherborough Dispatch, April 2, 1996