Jesus Lizard - The hammering rhetoric of abomination

Jesus Lizard (Chicago, 1987-1999) were, alongside Fugazi (of which they represent the heavier side), among the fundamental post-hardcore bands of the '80s and among the founders of the heavy-underground sound of the '90s (the one that would reach the charts with Rage Against The Machine, Marilyn Manson, Korn, Deftones etc.). The sound of Jesus Lizard starts from the industrial route to post-hardcore taken by Big Black, landing (and here's the kinship with Fugazi) in the era of second-wave post-hardcore (that of the second half of the '80s, which answers the hardcore of DRI and Bad Brains; the first post-hardcore is that of Fear and Minutemen in response to the first hardcore of Germs), all the way to the post-rock of Slint. The content of that sound (the lyrics), however, is anomalous both for the post-hardcore scene and for the post-rock one (whose lyrics are mostly introverted and inoffensive), programmatically and gratuitously dealing with the most repugnant, shocking and suffocating atrocities. They are the echo of Jesus Lizard's voice: that of a wild, untamed animal which, with no technique whatsoever, rightfully claims the status of artist for the effect - now trashy, now ancestral, always devastating and unintelligible - that it manages to instill. Rage Against The Machine, Marilyn Manson, Korn, Deftones, nu-metal and so on would be impossible without Jesus Lizard, who are of course better (practically, from another planet) than all of them put together.

Between 1988 and 1990, caught in the pincer between the minimalism of Slint, Fugazi and Jesus Lizard on one side and the hyper-trash of Royal Trux on the other, the noise classicism of Sonic Youth began to crumble. Jesus Lizard are among the few classic acts to take the place of - after having denied it - the classicism that had reigned over underground music for half a decade (1982-1988): that of Sonic Youth. Jesus Lizard thus forge a new sound (and a new classicism) that draws, besides from Albini and the Minutemen, also from the revolutionary stoner-metal of the Melvins and the garage-core of fellow Chicagoans Naked Raygun (as well as from the slo-core of Rites Of Spring), arriving at a serious formalism, almost like classical music, which nonetheless sets itself apart from the kindred work of Slint and Fugazi through a programmatic negativism and a tone somewhere between senile and gruesome, closer to the nauseating edge of Marilyn Manson than to post-indie daydreaming.

The classicism of Jesus Lizard is nonetheless tragic (torn between opposites), not because it results from the formula "violence in the music plus violence in the lyrics and vocals" (Marilyn Manson), but because it results from music that is essentially jazz-core, containing or accompanied by piercing, blasphemous screams: it is the tragedy of culture-versus-animality, generating a primitivist scenario far more tragically speculative than the now-tired refrains of violence, violence and more violence (or, on the Sonic Youth front, of squiggle, squiggle, squiggle). With an extremely sophisticated simplicity, Jesus Lizard explained (in an indistinct howl) the origin and the end of human nature.

Jesus Lizard formed when the formidable rhythm section of drummer Rey Washam and bassist David Wm. Sims left Scratch Acid (Austin, TX, 1982-1987) to move to Chicago and join Albini's court (Rapeman, 1988-1990). David Yow (the voice of Scratch Acid) followed them to Chicago, and together with the loyal Sims he put together Jesus Lizard between '87 and '88: on guitar they had Duane Denison (formerly of Cargo-Cult, later in Sally Timms and now in Tomahawk). The ensemble immediately stood out for the technique, style and class of Sims and Denison, musicians as great as they were far removed from conceiving greatness in non-artistic terms (that is, through tedious riffs or sheer technicality). Furthermore, the lack of a drummer and the use of a drum machine made Jesus Lizard stand out at the very moment when their source of inspiration (Albini) had disbanded Big Black (who used a drum machine) to form Rapeman, a band with an actual drummer, taken, ironically, from Jesus Lizard's own ancestors, Scratch Acid.

From 1990 on, Jesus Lizard had a remarkable and composed drummer, Mac McNeilly (formerly of Phantom 309): a drummer was exactly what was needed to steer Jesus Lizard away from the risk of becoming mere Big Black epigones; it's no coincidence that a drummer was also what it took for Albini to move on from Big Black to Rapeman, so as not to fossilize into himself.

All of Jesus Lizard's work from 1989 to 1994 was produced by Steve Albini for Chicago's most important independent label, Touch & Go (founded in 1981, home to Killdozer, Didjits, Butthole Surfers, Die Kreuzen, Big Black, Laughing Hyenas, Slint): and it should be remembered that being on an independent label means being linked, to some degree, with all the other artists that label has chosen (and chosen them for that very reason). For their last two albums (1996-1998), Jesus Lizard moved to major label Capitol (founded in Hollywood in 1942, home to the Beatles and Frank Sinatra: since 1998, along with Virgin and Chrysalis, it has been part of the British giant EMI, which had taken it over in 1954), and an infuriated Albini left them.

Jesus Lizard, like Fugazi, and like all of post-hardcore (and ultimately like hardcore itself, which is how it distinguishes itself from punk), start from the given fact of nihilism as the only truth, and build on that an art that is neither protest nor vindication, but pure description. The difference is that while Fugazi and most second-generation post-hardcore bands aim to lyricize and humanize that description, Jesus Lizard aim to make it monstrous, inhuman and horrifying. This is above all the doing of Yow, who, in an instrumental context that is at times chamber-jazz in nature, carries on his bestial rites of self-flagellation, vomiting, grunting and spewing foul words, indifferent to what surrounds him and to communicating anything relevant or varied (since, as in death metal or grindcore, he belches out something monotone and flat at every turn, so that after too many shocks he can no longer shock). In this, Yow owes a debt to John Brannon of Laughing Hyenas who, technically very gifted (arguably the first "death" vocalist), held the same kind of relationship with his own blues/post-hardcore band.

It's pointless to speak of better or worse in the face of an art that lies in the annihilation of all aesthetic, moral and evaluative categories; an art that is, in this sense, ruthlessly (because solely) descriptive. One has to see of what: rhetorically, we could say of everything, which is nothing. Not only that: for what it is, even if it is nothing, it is nothing painfully so - a pain so immense, a blanket so thick, that one could speculate endlessly upon it. So it must be said from the outset that, for bands like Jesus Lizard (but also for Albini or Fugazi), there are no better songs and worse songs; their art exists to tell you: is this song bad (or monotonous, or out of tune, or disjointed, or devoid of ideas and intent)? Good, that's exactly what I wanted, it's perfect. Jesus Lizard are always right because they never want to be.

Jesus Lizard sound like a Fugazi that never listened to Slint. They could therefore have been better (and carried even more originality), but they listened to too much Albini. Pere Ubu, on the other hand, are the most classic and prestigious point of reference for both Fugazi and Jesus Lizard, who set out from them and, passing through the likes of Albini and Minutemen, arrive back at them (Pere Ubu having invented post-rock a decade earlier with their post-garage sound) - the Sonic Youth contribution, by contrast, is proportionally slight, despite that band's omnipresence in that era, as in the current one.

Like Fugazi, after 1991 Jesus Lizard (caught between the death of rock and third-album syndrome) had nothing new left to say, continuing to hammer, however perfectly and elegantly, on the same note.

Fugazi and Jesus Lizard are also united by the same cross to bear: that of having institutionalized a new musical language, yet having failed, nonetheless, to compose with that language a single work capable of entering rock's most exclusive pantheon. In short, bands of decisive historical importance, great musicians, yet incapable of producing an album that belongs among the all-time top 10. This isn't meant as a reproach (after all, the 10 that can afford a place in such a ranking are the exception, not the rule); if anything, it's a regret. In fact, that top 10 ought to include none other than epigones of Fugazi and Jesus Lizard - epigones who, using the very same tools, were nevertheless able, as it happens in 1991, to raise up a definitive masterpiece that takes its name from themselves: "Drive Like Jehu" (a work on a par, in quality, with "Songs of Leonard Cohen" or "In The Court Of The Crimson King").

With over 10 years together and 8 releases, Jesus Lizard must be considered among the longest-lived bands in rock history (which alone says a lot about how unstable rock bands tend to be, and how many line-up changes and realignments they typically go through).

Pure (EP), 1989, 5 tracks, 14:18.

The masterpiece is "Bloody Mary" (2:00), a kind of post-Nirvana statement (the vocals sound like the most hysterical Cobain) filtered through Albini's refined, robotic rationality.

The other tracks are "Blockbuster" (3:31), which paves the way for the lo-fi metal of Type O Negative; "Rabid Pigs" (2:09), an update of Big Black (though more for the drum machine's driving rhythm than for anything else, i.e. for what is built on top of it); "Starlet" (2:43), dominated by a classically-tinged guitar over an electrolytic pulse; and "Happy Bunny Goes Fluff Fluff Along" (3:55), an instrumental more bleakly pitch-black than Suicide.

Head (LP), 1990, 10 tracks, 27:21. On drums, Mac McNeilly (formerly of Phantom 309).

There are four masterpieces here: "One Evening" (3:02), a fetishistic nursery rhyme sublimated into an extremely elegant guitar riff; "S.D.B.J." (2:28), the quintessence of the constipated slowness of the Jesus Lizard sound and of Yow's calibrated masochism; "If You Had Lips" (3:35), the most extreme and cancerous track on the record; and "Good Thing" (1:45), a strutting, cadenced number whose tone approaches the cursed narcissism of the Rolling Stones of "Between The Buttons".

The other tracks are: "My Own Urine" (3:09), caught between metal breakdowns and Laughing Hyenas psalms; "7 Vs. 8" (3:14), another waltz spun between Yow's ranting and the hieratic stiffness of the instrumentation; "Pastoral" (3:30), an exquisite little scene of grim tenderness somewhere between Slint and Birthday Party; "Waxeater" (2:09), a perversion that finds redemption only in the thoroughly existential tightrope-walking of the instrumentation; "Tight N Shiny" (2:12), a wild, rollicking instrumental where Denison's raw, leaden naivety on guitar (among the most remarkable in rock, straight out of the Squirrel Bait school) reaches its purest form; "Killer McHann" (2:17), a masterclass in the rhythm section's hiccupping dissonance and the detonation of guitar and voice.

An obscene cataract that keeps talking about vulgarity without (thanks to its artistry) ever actually being vulgar.

Goat (LP), 1991, 9 tracks, 30:28.

There are four masterpieces here: "Then Comes Dudley" (4:23), which elevates Albini's blueprint with an instrumental section that has no rivals (the guitar alternately slaps Albini, Sonic Youth, and crude hard-rock riffs, while the drums redraw the coordinates of half a century of rock: and then people dare to talk about Korn...); "Mouth Breather" (2:17), a great pulsing guitar (revisiting rock 'n' roll: another lesson from Albini), Yow's wails, and a rhythm section building cathedrals in the desert (in '91 another rock landmark was doing similar things: Pegboy's "Strong Reaction"); "Monkey Trick" (4:19), a galactic, futuristic, supremely elegant blues of dissonance (see the Southern roots of Jesus Lizard) with epic riffs and a flogging rhythm section; "Karpis" (3:10) where the four prove they've finally broken free of Albini's shadow on his own turf (here a gangster-movie atmosphere, tempered now by deranged guitar, now by a devastating rhythm section: Birthday Party multiplied by four). When Faith No More try something similar later on, they'll be hailed as geniuses.

The other tracks are: "Numb" (2:30) with tornado-like guitar distortion (actually slide guitar that today even brings Ben Harper to mind), a gutting rhythm section and Yow pulling faces (all set to a vaguely new wave tone); "Seasick" (3:11) where Yow tries (a constant on this album, alongside the band's break from Albini and its growing debt to Slint) to channel, in his own brutal way, David Thomas, while the rest of the group spends its time whipping him; "South Mouth" (3:03): Black Flag staging Butthole Surfers' funeral with Slint-style chords: Jesus Lizard are more themselves than ever, but now their expressive and performative power is at its peak; "Lady Shoes" (2:42) where the Jesus Lizard's defining trait shows most clearly, something exceedingly rare in rock: music that goes its own way independent of the voice, classical-sounding music paired with a bestial voice, a mix of perfection and chronic deficiency, an elephant in a china shop; "Rodeo in Joliet" (4:49), a dark, slow, suffocating Te Deum in the style of Laughing Hyenas (or Lou Reed? Or Tom Waits?: these days, poor things, Muse have tried something similar...), enriched by superb technique and inventiveness (Yow even rises into a mournful melody).

An album that's fresher, more varied and even better played than its predecessor, but less essential and less deadly.

After 1991, Jesus Lizard, like good twins and inevitably so, followed the same fate as Fugazi: their records were always among the best albums of the year, but fatally (whether due to the end of rock, or their fixation on the same formula; after all, when you change formula you might as well change the band's name too) always irrelevant (but what, after '91, is relevant in popular music, if not electronic music? ...and there are still people buying "rock" albums in 2004!).

Liar (1992), Down (1994), Shot (1996), Blue (1998), four granite statues standing in the wind of the void. The years 1992, 1994, 1996 and 1998 saw no rock albums better than those of Jesus Lizard (because they are, alongside Slint and Fugazi, among the very last to make genuine rock music, even if it gets called post-rock). But the years 1992, 1994, 1996 and 1998 shouldn't have seen rock albums at all.

Like all of the Texan outfit's most glorious records, Rack (2024), their seventh studio album, is a fire. One that broke out all of a sudden too, after a 26-year recording hiatus – their penultimate album, Blue, dates back to 1998.

Over the past decade, despite playing live from time to time with a ferocity that shows no sign of mellowing with age, Jesus Lizard didn't seem interested in hunting down new material. And yet here we are, once again with our eardrums shattered.

As these big lizards have accustomed us to expect, Rack isn't an album that lives off individual moments; on the contrary, it's a violent smash, the kind that shatters a windshield, from start to finish. Sure, each track has its own character and traits, but they all land the blow just as you'd expect.

There's "Hide & Seek," a punk anthem perhaps arriving a bit late in the day, but one that rages just as it should. Then there's "Dunning Kruger," with guitars sounding the charge. The band's noise-rock takes on expressionist overtones, meanwhile, in "Armistice Day" and in the extraordinary "Alexis Feel Sick": in the former, Duane Denison's guitar winds along mournfully; in the latter, it mimics a sick man crawling toward his deceptive cure.

Amid the usual, beloved racket, around Yow's trademark grunts, it's impossible not to notice breathtaking textures and remarkable technical feats. The jagged, glacial rock formations sketched out by the Denison/Sims outfit in "What If?" and the treacherous, shifting scales of harmonics on the closing "Swan The Dog," to name just a couple.

As familiar as it is compelling, Rack isn't a record made to surprise. It's very much a return, wearing the same guise in which they left us. A reminder, if one were needed, of why Jesus Lizard remain the first band you should mention when talking about noise-rock.

Contributions by Michele Corrado ("Rack")

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