*I started this weekly review last year — this is one of my favorite punk rock records by the band Blaster the Rocket Man — and circling back now to finish the review for the latter half of the album.*
Today’s installment is over Tracks 10, 11, and 12 of Blaster the Rocket Man’s 1999 release, The Monster Who Ate Jesus.
Go here for initial comments on album and the linear notes.
Go here for comments on Tracks 1, 2, and 3.
Go here for comments on Tracks 4, 5, and 6.
Go here for comments on Tracks 7, 8, and 9.
Track 10 – Lovebot’s Revenge
I don’t know if jungle-polka-punk-rock is an established music genre . . . However, if it is, this would be the poster-child song. The song opens with jungle-sounding drumming, then the songs kicks through a verse with guitar phrasing that accentuates the jungle-sounding drumming. And with the chorus the polka-ish rhythm begins. And throughout the song reverberated and layered vocals peppered with labial stops. Most excellent.
“homicide, lust hard by hate”
– Milton, “Paradise Lost”
I’m a bogie in the heart of the jungle
In a hidden lab under the vines of the tangle
I’ve got my sights on the lights of the city
I want a chemical reaction to something pretty
I’m programmed to fall for ya’, pretty baby
You’re programmed to fall for me, pretty baby
Aww…fall into my arms!
Harmful heat in my hugs hide
My lips are laced with cyanide
Never mind my medicine breath
Come hither for a kiss of Death, now
Hold me, hold me, hold me
Huggin’ and a lovin’
Who put the…in the…
Who was that man?
I’d like to
cut his hands off!
Meanwhile, I’m in the jungle she calls a heart
Boilin’ and a burnin’ in a cauldron
Mauled by the tiger who eats my flesh
Then the monkeys swing down and devour the rest
Couldn’t he tell it was a bad relationship?
Didn’t he know we couldn’t get a grip
on each other or anything other than ourselves
which we lost in the process as well
I’m programmed to fall for ya’, pretty baby
You’re programmed to fall fro me, little honey
And great was our Fall, pretty baby
We all have fallen short of the glory of God!
Oh, I’m a romantic thriller
A real lady killer!
Where there once were feely fingers
No protrude poisonous stingers
Feel I’m left with no recourse
But to kill her with no remorse, now
Hold me…huggin’ and a kissin’
Who put the…in the…
Who was that man?
I’d like to cut his hands off!
(‘Cause he made my baby fall in love with me!)
Aw, have mercy
Somebody kill me!
Note: Let no one suppose for one moment that
Blaster promotes violence or murder in this physical,
temporal realm. This song is a satirical
thriller about the very real consequences to par-
taking in what this world celebrates as “love.”
So how do we recognize true love in a world
full of destructive counterfeits? “This is how we
know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down His life
for us.” (1 John 3:16)
The violence and mortification that Blaster
does promote, in other songs on this album, is
spiritual and part of a very real war that is, at
this moment, being waged. “Beloved, I beg you, as
aliens and strangers in this world, to abstain
from fleshly lusts, which war against your soul.”
(1 Peter 2:11)
Track 11 – Disasteroid
Punk rock. Tremolo picking and vocal growls accentuate this Apocalyptic-minded song. The earth is a “Disasteroid” that will burn up and be transformed into a New Heaven and New Earth.
Disasteroid!
(It’s winding down! It’s winding down!
It’s winding down!)
Your “mechanism” can’t organize life at the start
And the universe is ripping apart!
Disateroid!
(It’s winding down! It’s winding down!
It’s winding down!)
Completely catastrophic
Entirely entropic
Nothing or none can stop it!
This world -womb will give birth
to a New Heaven and New Earth
Disasteroid!
(It’s burning down! It’s burning down!
It’s burning down!)
Open system or closed system
Either way you’ve missed Him who created you
Disasteroid!
(It’s burning up! It’s burning up! It’s burning up!)
In Christ all things consist
By His light you exist another day
You can’t change the course of the curse
The transformation will occur
World !
Womb!
In the twinkling of an eye
Mortality will be swallowed up by Life
when the Earth is destroyed!
Track 12 – [Untitled]
This track is a spoken word intro to the following track, “Frankenstein’s Monster Wants a Wife.”
Frankenstein, Frankenstein,
Where, where have you been?
In your laboratory
making something ghastly, gory
In the church yard
digging hard
midst the tombstones
alone with bones
Did you steal the cadaver?
That your son may have her
And thus the monster
will curse his father
Frankenstein, Frankenstein
What have you seen?