BUTTHOLE SURFERS unearth “Live at the Leather Fly”… Live album out 5/9

But they never lost sight of what made them notorious. UK’s The Guardian described their live shows as “Nudity, raging fires, belching smoke, blinding strobes, nightmare-inducing surgical videos, fights and firearms: these are some of the things you may have encountered at a Butthole Surfers show while being pummeled by a squealing cacophony of acid-fried psychedelic noise-rock, as a man tripping wildly in his underpants screams at you through a megaphone.”

Live At The Leather Fly captures that grittiness, which The San Antonio Current likens to a “potent fusion of post-punk, performance art, Texas psych and theater of the absurd, cementing it as one of the era’s most enigmatic and compelling musical ensembles” and Rolling Stone hails as “the American underground’s most notorious live act, a nomadic carnival of terror.”

Kicking off with “Graveyard” (from 1987’s Locust Abortion Technician) and its spooky guitar effects that launches into a sludgefest with Paul’s piercing guitars, slicing holes through the song’s heavy corduroy textures, Live At The Leather Fly never lets up. From the Texas-punk stylings of “Gary Floyd” (taken from 1984’s Psychic… Powerless… Another Man’s Sac and written for the lead singer of The Dicks) to the discordant cacophony of “Bong Song” (from 1989’s Widowmaker EP), to the fan favorite “P.S.Y.” (from 1991’s piouhgd), the 21 tracks of Live At The Leather Fly is a perfect encapsulation of what made Butthole Surfers important in the first place: Grade A Texas-Sourced punk.