Nothing smells so arrogant as a rock opera. Back in the day, only the biggest, most self-absorbed arena rockers could turn their meandering, ridiculous "deaf/dumb/blind pinball star" concepts into hit albums. The punk revolution tried but failed to wipe these dinosaurs from history, so it's a gutsy move that a hardcore act-- even one as twisted and avant-literate as Racebannon-- would follow in the footsteps of The Who and Pink Floyd, without even smirking about it.
Satan's Kickin' Yr Dick In is indeed a rock opera, yet there isn't one note of empty bombast: loud, vicious, and vulgar, it's their tightest, most ambitious record yet. Admittedly a little closer to Zappa's Joe's Garage than Tommy, it's the story of Rodney, a musician whose material is piss-poor and can't draw a crowd. In desperation, he makes a deal with Satan, who turns him into a gorgeous chanteuse named Rhonda Delight, as whom he wins fame, riches, and decadence-- everything his heart desires-- until his inevitable fall, when celebrity takes its toll, and Satan returns to drag him to hell.
The joke is, you can't make out this story without the liner notes, because Michael Anderson's vocals are completely indecipherable, thanks to his giddy delivery and the record's liberal use of noise. A few signifiers of the high life ("it's so glorious...", "heroin is so lower-class...", "John F. Kennedy, Jr.") make it through, but deciphering the rest is like watching an Italian opera: you have to infer the drama from how much and how loudly they shriek.
Anderson, who wrote this libretto, revitalizes the hoary, clichéd story by elaborating with gawking, carnal imagery, from Rodney's graphic violation by Satan to the celebrated Rhonda's vivid, naked beauty. And nobody could express our hero's inner state like Anderson, whose excited gibbering sounds like a cartoon character with its head spinning around. The album title is a good indicator of his diction and tasteful vulgarity, as is the way he scrunches certain words (like "yr") before they leave his mouth.
Racebannon embeds the vocals in dense, grinding sheets of cacophony. Monstrous drums and guitar stomp through the songs, from chords like waves smashing beach houses to the whip-like tune of "Part IV", bouncing like some demon is grabbing at its kneecaps, before wrenching into Rhonda's decline. The core music is surrounded by a nightmarish din, with multi-tracked vocals, and a little of what a preacher might call the "steel wheels of Lucifer": records played either backwards or slowed to a warped pitch like the voice of the dark master.
The band has released the five parts in installments, with "IV" and "V" just out on a split album with Songs of Zarathustra, but this is the epic's first full release, and it features a new, more polished recording. It's easily their best album, as much as I liked last year's In the Grips of the Light: the band sounds better on a shorter record with no breaks between tracks, and the non-stop throttling is actually more listenable. The sterling production makes it less raw, but much stronger: Racebannon sticks your head right into the noise, just as their words pull you through the bowels of fame, lust and desire.
