Radioactive still today as the surviving prong off Austin post-punk’s hall of fame pitchfork alongside Scratch Acid and Butthole Surfers, Cherubs finally scrub up their sonically sordid past. Birthed through fever, quenched by a snowstorm, and now re-pressed via a trio of reissues from Philly indie outlet Brutal Panda, 1992 debut Icing gains the most. Re-arted and remixed – re-crisped – the trio’s three-day document from Smart Studios in Madison, Wisconsin, famed for its role in the Nirvana saga and recognized by Surfers drummer-cum-label-boss King Coffey, who signed Cherubs to his Trance Syndicate label and dispatched them there, Icing is reborn. Squalling (“Sugary”), distressed (“Ginger Upper”), woozy (“Fed”), phosphorous (“Half a Rat”), tribal (“Pink Party Dessert”), alt-commercial (“Shoofly”), battering (“Vicki’s Retreat”), even In Utero (“Come”), platter one bristles and bangs bright and boisterous.
Follow-up band breaker Heroin Man in ’94 then redlines to oblivion. Noise not as a genre, but as a strategy – don’t refine, don’t polish; let the raw edges not only stand, but define (slash, cut, serrate) – manhole cover No. 2 destroys. Cooked up in a week at fledgling recorders Sweatbox Studio at Fifth and San Jacinto, Heroin Man tweaks, tortures, and terrifies atop digital distortion. Ecstatic noise seizures reign. Raging (“Stag Party”), balling (“Venus Flytrap”), bludgeoning (“Blackhouse”), hiccuping (“Baby Huey”), quaking (“Cockpit – Kiss the Shine”), subhuman (“Animator”), subwoofer (“Dave of the Moon”), coonass (“Coonass”): Heroin Man. Uncanny 2015 comeback 2 YNFYNYTY also receives re-press, lithe and melodious yet equally knockout, but its long-out-of-print predecessors take the cake. Cherubs, taste the pain.
Cherubs
Icing, Heroin Man, & 2 YNFYNYTY Reissues (Brutal Panda)
This article appears in August 18 • 2023.
