American grindcore band Anal Cunt made a tenuous living in the 90s and 00s with gobsmackingly offensive songs such as Women: Nature’s Punching Bag, I Snuck A Retard Into A Sperm Bank and I Sent Concentration Camp Footage To America’s Funniest Home Videos. While this approach made the group anathema to anyone without a certain sense of humour – and the band name didn’t help either – some think that the sick wit wasn’t meant seriously. We’ll never know, though, as Anal Cunt were effectively the permanently annoyed and/or drugged-up frontman Seth Putnam, who died earlier this year.
This collection of songs came before all the establishment-baiting stuff and covers 1988 to ’91, when AC spent their time recording unlistenable demos of blastbeats and screams. Collectors love these early vinyl releases, especially the legendary split single with Meat Shits, though don’t expect any form of listening pleasure, as the music is basically distilled hatred. The 88 Song EP and 5,634 Song EP are here (all of them), as is a bunch of live material and demos, with the only real hint of the misanthropy to come being a song called Boy George. It’s terrible, ear-bleeding, somehow grimly fascinating music… for a few minutes at least.
