As a child I was fairly mischievous, I used to trespass a lot and nowhere annoyed my family more than when I used to get in my grandad's shed. It was full of the usual, lawnmowers, old guitars, tools, nothing really that would interest a six year old boy. Many numerous lies were fabricated to keep me out of there, ghosts, prisoners, all stuff I clearly had deemed unbelievable. One stuck with me though, and kept me out of the shed for as long as I can remember.
My grandad told me one time there was a huge, insurmountable spider living in there. His circumference was a foot and he had about 300 teeth, and six eyes. My grandad decided to name this fictional spider 'Monty' and as such the name has stuck with me as a fairly ominous and scary one ever since.
Monte Cazazza conjures up similar connotations, a harsh, huge monster, who, if given the chance, will bite your head clean off. His music is harsh, industrial noise, in the purest sense of the word. Opening with Psychiatric Report, an actual real life report of the man Monte himself, the album immediately sets the tone taken up by Throbbing Gristle of; "let's be as offensive and disgusting as we can". Indeed there are a few spoken word tracks on the album, from the eerily sincere To Mom On Mother's Day, in which Monte waxes lyrical about how great his mum is and how perverse he is, Kick that Habit Man - a song about Monte judging someone and forcing them to give up heroin, to Rabid Rats, the completely engrossing tale of how Vietnamese soldiers were inflicted with rabies, and how 'rabies is the worst way for a human to die'.
The album really is a brutal and punishing exercise, not only in Cazazza's ability to make the music, but the listener's ability to take frightening and disgusting body blow after body blow. Tiny Tears especially is a bizarre, creepy and utterly terrifying example of the albums shattering power, a song of lullaby traditions, chanted in Monte's whiny nasal drone over harsh layers of noise.
The great thing about the album though, and in general the first wave of industrial music is, the sense of humour of the musicians is directly in contrast to the horrendous and often disgusting subject matter. Stairway To Hell is a nightmarish parody of the famous classic, Liars (Feed Those Christians to the Lions) is a hilariously controversial track that practically gifted Marylin Manson his career. Cazazza and his contemporaries, Throbbing Gristle are excellent examples of this sense of humour, prevalent in industrial music. They separate their own quirky ideas from their absolute need to shock and appall, and it is this reason why the album becomes less frightening, Monte isn't a perverted freak, he just has a streak in him to create music that projects him as that.
