GUTS OF A VIRGIN

PAINKILLER was one of the many projects of the prolific avant-garde jazz performer John Zorn and perhaps one of his most metal adventures. This band was quite unique at the time and took the listener where no one wanted to go which would be by mixing the unlikely disparate musical forces of avant-garde jazz with grindcore metal. GUTS OF A VIRGIN was the first of three studio albums but four live albums would also be released. The band consisted of John Zorn on sax, Bill Laswell (countless acts including Praxis, The Golden Palominos, Massacre, Buckethead, Iggy Pop, Herbie Hancock, Public Image Ltd etc) on bass and Mick Harris on drums who was most notably in Napalm Death. Although this is considered just as metal as jazz, there is no guitar to be heard.

GUTS OF A VIRGIN is extreme music to the max. This is guaranteed to alienate most jazz lovers for being too extreme metal and vice versa too jazzy for most metalheads. What we basically get on this cacophonous raucous is a highly distorted bass and drum attack accompanied by Zorn's alto sax assault that really, i swear sounds like a tortured pig most of the time! It squeals like it's being slaughtered live and the driving high pitched notes sound like a knife is being driven deep into its heart and twisted while pliers are ripping its snout from the skull. It's truly tortuous stuff with dark resonating bass lines, pummeling drum abuse and saxophone nightmares. A soundtrack for horror films to be assured.

This is the same type of sax sound that appears on the first Mr Bungle album that was released the same year. It's no wonder Mike Patton was so enthralled with his playing because Zorn delivers the most metal sound of any sax player i've ever heard. GUTS OF A VIRGIN is as filthy and dirty as the title implies. The muddy bass mixed with pig squeal sax create a free jazz / metal cacophony that also shows a bit of humor with song titles such as "Purgatory Of Fiery Vulvas." The tracks are generally mid-tempo with some flair ups that add some intensity for contrast's sake. While most tracks are instrumental, a few have some grindcore type of vocals screamed by Mick Harris. While the music is described as free jazz, it generally is so in the frenetic saxophone solos while the bass and drums have a recognizable groove firmly planted in the metal universe. This is a true assault to the senses! The compositions aren't brilliant but it's not bad for such an experimental album. Obviously only one for the hardcores!

3.5 rounded down

Absolutely Brutal.

Super interesting viewing this band in the scope of RIO/Avant-Prog. I would simply refer to it as "[Horny] Avant-Grindcore" [lol]. To the former designation, I don't want to see it any other way now.

John Zorn and Bill Laswell--two of the earliest evil scientists devoted to the task of mixing numerous disparate genres and styles (most significantly of the metal persuasion), and creating an impressive and very influential monster--are here. Here with their debut for the Painkiller project (with Mick Harris on drums), a 12-song mini-LP of cacophony and chaos and brutality. This same year, Zorn was responsible for producing an album of similar heaviness, oddity and girth: Mr. Bungle, the timely debut of the madmen of the band of the same name (and that would be Mr. Bungle, for the record), released in August 1991. [To me, a band of even greater weight and, perhaps, talent of this same legacy that Zorn and, I believe, Laswell laid out in the '80s and '90s is Estradasphere. This is, to me, Required Listening.]

Many of these tracks are just vignettes ("Deadly Obstacle Collage" at 18 seconds long, "HanDJob" at 10), and seldom longer than 3 or 4 minutes. It is in these barely longer tracks where, I feel for the most part, the band really shines. More room to breathe, to feel out the nuances of specific compositions. See "Portent", for instance.

Some of this is incredibly noisy, with the shrill bleating of Zorn's sax, and the bombastic drumming from Harris. I would say the strongest material, which to my ears feels more substantial (and actualized), is at the front-end of the album. It's funny just how much of the same language I (inadvertantly) used alongside fellow reviewer siLLy puPPy [Been a longtime 'viewer' haha; Hello, if by some chance you see this].

Personal Tracks of Note: T1, T6, and, especially, T7