Pure Chewing Satisfaction

Lard's Pure Chewing Satisfaction is a dark, frightening look at everything wrong with America. The lyrics are pessimistic and apocalyptic in the extreme. Jello Biafra, who teams up with the dudes from Ministry to create Lard, is an artist who often prefers to make his point through unusual songs in which he cuts up and mixes phrases and decides what the song is about later, as he does here on the eerie "Moths." "Kneel... Al Jolson-style/Please, please, can I get a raise/Crawl, crawl through the steaming jungle/Please, please more purple Kool-Aid/Tabloid beauty corpses point the way," he sings on "Moths." Biafra says the song is about applying for a job. "Faith, Hope and Treachery" details the legacy of the Me Generation and their failure at their personal relationships, while "Sidewinder" takes place after an environmental disaster and is told from a snake's perspective. Soundwise, Lard is pure Ministry, an avalanche of both real and electronic drums, menacing effects galore, and copious layers of machine gun guitars. A little more experimental than their other records, Pure Chewing Satisfaction came and went and didn't have the impact of Lard's earlier releases, though fans of Biafra's work will definitely want it in their collections. Also, not to be missed is Pure Chewing Satisfaction's booklet, which is filled with newspaper clippings that Biafra collects and which shed light on some of his more abstract lyrics. ~ Adam Bregman