Review Summary: The average length of sexual congress is between three and fifteen minutes. How much longer than that do you want to listen to songs about it?
Though I’ve never really thought about it, I suppose there is a small subset of people out there who find the Bloodhound Gang a little clean for their tastes. Hell, if Jimmy Pop couldn’t come up with enough synonyms for ‘vagina’ in “
Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo”, who could? Enter Blownload, whose sloppy second album
Blumpkins Of Mass Destruction fills the niche of people who wish the Bloodhound Gang were smuttier, Mindless Self Indulgence was more metal, and Marilyn Manson was less abstract. If their name or album title didn’t tip you off, this CD is going to blast you in the face with over-the-top single entendres pretty much nonstop. These guys are about as subtle as a sledgehammer made out of dildos and breast implants.
From the get-go, one issue is going to be very apparent in two different ways: Variety, in this case the utter lack of it. Each song begins to sound the same, relying on fairly metal-by-numbers instrumentals with a taste of industrial keyboard flourishes. Perhaps this wouldn’t be such a problem if each and every song weren’t so brazenly about sex. I love songs about depraved sex acts as much as the next pasty metalhead, but I have a limit, and that limit falls well short of
Blumpkins Of Mass Destruction’s 70 minute runtime. And trust me, sex is all you’re getting from that track list. Frontman Erie Loch probably sums the band up best in the chorus to “
Vagenius”: “One track mind, no f-cking sh-t/Keep the drinks, keep the drugs, just give me that cl-t.” The question is, can you take 21 tracks solely about doing it?
I certainly don’t mean to insinuate that there aren’t some good tracks on this disc. “
Rubber”, the band’s ode to safe (If not entirely sober) sex, is an early attention grabber. Transitioning from a vaudeville-esque piano to a fairly punishing nu-metal chorus at the drop of a hat, it’s actually a pretty good primer for the band as a whole. If you can swallow the serviceable industrial-tinged rock and stomach the vulgar lyrics, then you’ve pretty much got the thrust of this album. Other money tracks on this album? “
Keep Sex Evil” is a great rocker which helps regain the listener’s attention going into the second half of the disc. “
Holy Sh-t” is probably the most straightforward industrial track on here and a refreshing ode to less carnal vices. Late in the album, the seven-minute heavyweight “
Six Pound Flaps” comes through as a frantic monster that, surprisingly, doesn’t get boring.
On the other end of the spectrum, there are a fair few tracks that don’t work to varying degrees. Tracks like “
Finger Sniffer” or “
Happy Valentine’s Day” are merely there, but it’s certainly better than the mess that is album’s climax, “
B-tch Be Growing T-ts On Her Back”. “
F-ck Off And Die” suffers from a bad case of misplacement, as it would have made a decent opener, but by the time it comes around (Just a hair past the first third of this album) you’re so dulled to the prior barrage of F-bombs that you’d sell your soul for a simple ‘screw’.
And there’s the single biggest problem with
Blumpkins of Mass Destruction (Other than the ridiculous title, of course). With almost no variety to this album, you’ve got to put in more effort than it’s really worth to find the memorable tracks. The killer songs are few and far between, and you must wade through a lot of inept foreplay to get to them. If you watch 70 minutes of hardcore pornography, there are at least different girls to keep things fresh. Listening to Blownload is like watching the same girl do everything short of “2 Girls 1 Cup”; it’s a little pitiable and exhausting for all parties. In the end, you’re left pining for the relative demureness of the Bloodhound Gang’s “
Screwing You on the Beach at Night”.
Recommended tracks
Rubber
Vagenius
Keep Sex Evil
Holy Sh-t
Six Pound Flaps
