The
Real 100 Greatest Rock Albums of All
Time, No. 19:
Chemlab - Burnout at the Hydrogen Bar (Metal
Blade, 1993)
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“I
can do raw, raging, rock-and-roll-machine, 21st-century-jetboy-destruction
all night long.” So said glamdustrial superpower Chemlab’s head
honcho Jared Louche in the press release for his 1999 post-Lab
covers album, “Jared Louche and the Aliens: Covergirl”. And
brothers and sisters, was it ever true. Jared and his partner in
grime, Dylan Thomas More, found a wormhole outta the insular
industrial-goth-whatwave scene in the 1990 by suturing sleazy rock guitars
onto berserk metal-rape-machine drum beats, tossing the whole volatile mix
into a digital blender, growling out future-shock cyborg-beat poet lyrics
over the top, and wrapping the whole spiky package in leather, latex, and
shiny chrome. The timing couldn’t have been any more right- nuclear fear
was quickly being replaced with technological fear (which still beats
terrorist fear anyday), and if there was any future to rock n’ roll-
besides the obvious- it laid deep within the hard drives of the
fully-loaded PC’s of the industrial nation. And believe me, if you knew
how to operate those fuckin’ things 14 years ago, you were so far ahead of
the game, you were practically a superhero. Or a supervillain. Hence the
Fear, dig? In the wake of Ministry’s jarring descent from proto-techno new-wave duo to multi-tentacled industrial metal rage-mongers on 1988’s seminal “Land of Rape and Honey” (Warner Brothers), lotsa industrial bands in the late 80’s- Skrew, Klute, Leather Strip, X Marks the Pedwalk, Martyr Colony- started welding chunks of metal guitar loops to the homicidal thump and sexed-up throb of Skinny Puppy’s pioneering death disco to create a fierce new strain of machine rock. However, most of these nu-bad asses were so concerned with being HARD that the results were largely two-dimensional spurts of post-adolescent testosterone flailing (with a beat you can dance to!) that, while sounding as bitchin’ as bitchin’ can be, hardly registered with rock fans outside of their various clustered Metropolis cyber-circles, because, well, the songs usually didn’t GO ANYWHERE. It was a weird time in rock n’ roll – glam metal was dying fast, noise rock was all the rage, grunge was a burgeoning new force, and anything could happen. If “Synthcore” could’ve broken through it’s stutter-thrash limitations, who’s to say it wouldn’t have been the NEW SOUND? Problem was that tone, flash, technology, and attitude are all great components, but the first rule in the “How to Make a Monster” handbook is that the beast has gotta have a heart. Even if it’s a black one.
Enter
Chemlab, two cats from DC with a rack of killer android-rock gear
AND two beating black hearts. Jared had bounced around in
the DC punk scene for as long as there WAS a punk scene. He met up
with More, who was fitfully composing a new breed of electronic
music. The both dug the destructo-dustrial of Throbbing Gristle and
performance-art-as-worlds-falling-apart of Einstuerzende Neubauten.
Shazam. They wrote the songs that would end up on their debut EP, “Ten
Ton Pressure” (Fifth Column, 1990) in More’s living
room, on new-fangled sequencers. Although the EP’s release was apparently
sabotaged by bad distribution, it was readily available here in Boston,
and I dunno how I even ended up buying it- I mean, I was a rocker, ya
know- but I did, and it slammed into my skull like a barbed-wire fist. The
tracks were separated by bursts of fuzzy noise called “Sutures”,
and the songs themselves straddled the line between death-dance and some
kinda crazy new cyber-rock. It was like nothing I’d ever heard before – it
was glamorous and dangerous, and perhaps most importantly, whip-smart.
Partly because it took a fair amount of proficiency and skill to even
write and record on sequencers a dozen years ago, but mostly ‘cuz Jared’s
lyrics were a devastating display of apocalyptic images and clever
world-play. AND they were bad-ass. I mean, he may just have been
tossing words together like a particularly poetic schizophrenic, but to
me, lines like “Let's go current jumping/ Decode the matrix/ Keys plug in
a virus/ Spreading out in the system/ There's a hole in the network/
There's a blackout on the wire” (from “Black Radio in the Neon Blur”)
sounded like sinister codes that needed cracking, ya know? And the fucker
had a million brilliant lines and turns-of-phrase and killer song titles,
a few of which I still use today- I got my oft-used term “ugly joyride”
from this EP, matter of fact: “Tear him up/ Amped up for a nasty joy ride/
Spinning out of control/ Going on an ugly joy ride/ Spinning wheels,
clenched teeth, split lip, bad trip…” ("Blunt Force Trauma"). So,
you know, it was a major influence on the just-outta-teenage-Sleaze.
Along with Fizz and Flipside magazines and whatever else, I
started reading Mondo 2000 and boing boing and all those
cutting-edge cyber mags, started wearing black and chrome, and waited for
the goddamn future to hurry up and get here. I was so ready for it,
man. If we were all gonna start welding fiber-optic wires into our arms, I
was in. If the government was already secretly developing Virtual Reality
rehabilitation centers for people too zonked on digital drugs to return
back to analog reality, I wanted to be the first casualty to check in. 
But,
you know, the future never showed up, really. We are quite used to camera
phones and streetlights that talk now. We did not, as a society, freak out
when technology invaded our lives. Instead, we rolled with it. And when
you strip Chemlab of their William Gibson-esque paranoid
cyperpunk fantasies, what’s left? Drug addiction, mental instability, and
guitars. Just like every other rock n’ band, really. But I’m getting ahead
of myself. Despite Ten Ton Pressure’s lack of availability, much action was occurring on the Chemlab front in the year following it’s release. They moved to NYC and made all kindsa heavy friends, including Trent Reznor, who got ‘em on the opening slot for the ’91 Nine Inch Nails tour. Another ally, Ogre from Skinny Puppy, started wearing one of Jared’s “Fuck Art Let’s Kill” shirts on Ministry’s monstrous “Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste” tour, which raised enuff interest in Chemlab to secure them a deal with Metal Blade records. And so, in ’93, they released “Burnout at the Hydrogen Bar”, produced at the infamous “Chicago Trax” studios, home to Ministry and everybody Ministry knew.
“Burnout”
took the blueprint of beats and head-slamming guitars and arrogance and
decadence established on their EP and amped it all up to monstrous
proportions. Every track dripped with digital venom and fully wired
malice, a powerful rallying cry of the new electronic age that was so
fuckin’ far ahead of it’s time, that it STILL sounds about 5 years
ahead of anything else. Jared once joked that they almost called
the album “Fuck Teenage America”, and when you compare it to the
second-wave grunge and alt-rock nation born-again hippydom that prevailed
in ’93, you can certainly see why. Every time I hear this record, I am
stunned that EVERYTHING didn’t sound like it immediately after. After the obligatory “Suture”, the opening track, “Codeine, Glue and You” slithers in on a dance-y synth-wave, as Jared, in seductive, virgin killing mode, whispers out the opening verse like a snake; “My fire's burning low, as my song grinds out on the radio/ I just want to move you slow and low and shoot my eight ball in your corner pocket hole…” And then the grinding metal guitars kick in, and the anti-party gets started. The highlight of this ‘un is Jared’s repeating of a constantly evolving line, over a circular synth-riff: “don’t listen” turns into “don’t hate sex”, which turns into “the devil hates sex”, which turns into “The devil is six” which turns into “the devil is sex” which turns into…well, I might’ve just been hypnotized at that point, but it’s a remarkable fuckin’ trick, at any rate. “Codeine, Glue and You” was the album’s sole single, and it had an accompanying cyber-Satanic video. I used to play it on my old TV show, “Welcome to Weird City”, all the time. It was, of course, banned from MTV rather quickly.
“CG&Y” was Chemlab’s only real stab at commercial viability on "Burnout". As the album winds on, the song structures become more fractured, the mixes more layered, and the aggression cranks up with every track. “Suicide Jag” starts out with manipulated warning sirens and a thunderous, Ministry-like drumbeat. The body of the song, however, is pure cock rock. Sure, all the instruments are different – this album was created with racks of samplers and high-tech keyboards and wires attached to boxes that nobody really knows how to operate- but it’s all swagger and heat, nonetheless. There-in lies the brilliance of Chemlab- they were the world’s first, and only, sleaze rock industrial band. They were, in fact, GLAMDUSTRIAL. And any confusion over what that means is easily explained halfway through “Suicide Jag”, when a synthesized cowbell bangs away, a stuttering rock riff gnaws through the mix, and a sinister sounding Jared utters the line, “You can fuck me and I’ll hate you/ You can hate me and I’ll fuck you/ Isn't that what this is all about?” Which, of course, neatly sums up the previous ten years’ worth of sleaze metal bravado in one neat line.
“Chemical Halo”, one of BATHB’s more dancefloor-friendly tracks, mixes Front 242 style Euro-dustrial rhythms with pounding, flash metal drumbeats and what sounds like an old Tank riff slowed down to half-speed and warped as though melted in the sun. Like many of the songs on the record, Jared’s lyrics are dead-on descriptions of a life unhinged by drugs and madness and whirring noises and poisoned flesh. “Here comes another bad trip/ Another life of no sleep/ Another storm in the dark/ With the sky pouring down, every creature will drown/ This time there will be no Noah's Ark”. Intense. “Chemical Halo” also contains the immortal line, “I’m gonna tear myself apart if I can’t get myself together”, which is exactly what I told the nurse at the admissions desk when admitting myself to my 7th rehab in 1996.
“Neurozone”
is a 6 minute creepy crawl through neon alleys and rain-soaked
futurescapes fulla samples and distorted vox. As you would expect from a
Burroughs-influenced song, it’s dense, cryptic and druggy. While
the main-thrust of the song seems to be paranoid futurism (“I can hear
voices talking in the grid/ but I can’t tell what they mean”) and bloody
revolution (“Wear your anger proud and loud and deep/That way I know what
I can trust”), the most telling lyric is Jared’s panicky admission
at song’s end, “I gotta wire in the back of my head, a wire in the back of
my head!” We all got a wire in the back of our head’s, man. What’s
yours tell ya to do? “Elephant Man” has one of the greatest opening riffs in all of rock n’ roll, which is no surprise, really, since it’s half of Zodiac Mindwarp’s “Prime Mover” filthed-up. “EM” is the most purely rock song on the record, driven by spluttering metal drums that sound like something offa “Nail” era Foetus and a rhythm-loop that appears to be a buncha people screaming. Oh, it’s heavy, Jack, and so’s the message. “The meek will never inherit the earth/ They'll be beaten and bandaged and drugged and fucked up and cursed” Jared screams, either horrified or enraged. “Help me, I’m the elephant man!” He pleads, as the roar of the crowd engulfs him. But, you know, nobody does.
“Rivet Head”, as the name would imply, is fueled by a metal riff. A metal riff and military drum beats (you can hear a sample of “Left! Right”! in the background) and an outrageously snarly vocal performance from Jared, who spends most of the song screaming “Going out of my head!” This song brilliantly, uh, sutures the complex flash-edits of Jim Thirwell with the full throttle shock n’ roll of Ministry, and more than any of the other songs, would shape the sound of future tracks by Chemlab, among other people. It is most certainly where a whole buncha Rob Zombie-like sci-fi/horror movie soundtrack type outfits lifted their ideas from. Not that any of ‘em will tell ya that, but it is.
“Derailer” is a similar scream-metal scorcher, and it’s such a radical departure from the danceability of the album’s opening tracks that it’s like watching Jeckyll turn into Hyde, in real time. It’s a roar of digital distortion, leaking power and out-right panic from every channel. “Feed me now because I'm hungry and lazy” Jared warns, animalistic and fully enraged. “You better lock me up before I hurt you/ 'cuz I feel a little crazy”. Suddenly, the threat industrial music always posed as a never ending source of new intensities becomes fully realized. “Derailer” is a rock n’ roll song- all of ‘em are – but it’s been reconstructed with wires and metal, and now YOU CAN’T KILL IT. And wasn’t that really the point of rock n’ roll? Isn’t that what the cocky kid on the newscast outside a Big Bopper concert in 1958 was trying to tell you – “Rock n’ roll is where it’s at, man, rock n’ roll will never die”? Yep. Chemlab, in their mad-scientist experimentation, made rock n roll bulletproof.
Maybe
they didn’t even mean to, cuz in Burnout’s outrageous closer “Summer
of Hate”, they sound like they’re desperately trying to kill their
creation. “SOH” is their “LA Blues”, a last-gasp burst of
noise and anger that pushes the listener as hard as it does the band, a
maelstrom of feedback and razorsaw guitars and drums flying backwards and
side-ways, Charlie Manson’s vision of Helter Skelter melting down
the dancefloor. “Something bitter this way comes”, Jared warns in
the opening line. “The knifeblade thinks it’s time you learned how to
bleed”. And as the devastating wall of berserk noise descends on the song
like cyborg locusts, Jared cautions the parents of Teenage America:
“Watch your children/ Watch your children/ Watch your children/ It’s the
summer of hate/They’re gonna kill you in the summer of hate…” And then, with the jarring sound of a needle scratching across a record, it’s over, and yr blinking back in the sunlight, gamely trying to adjust to the banal reality of 1993.
That same year, Jared and Dylan fleshed out Chemlab with some Chi-town superheavies (I don’t remember which one, but I’m sure you could pick ‘em out of a Pigface line-up) and took “Burnout at the Hydrogen Bar” on tour. They came to Boston and played in industro-fetish sinpit Manray, backed by Metal Blade labelmates Skrew, a Texan industro-metal hurricane, and a horrid hippy-dustrial prog-noise band, Grotus (honestly, don’t look ‘em up, it’s not worth it). That show remains one of my favorite live performances ever. Skinny and rubber-legged, clad in the blackest threads Retail Slut could provide, Chemlab were like evil leather robot lizards from the 22nd century, reacting more on instinct or maybe search and destroy mission orders than emotion. Under sickly green lights and surprisingly free of much more than the standard rock band set-up, they created a vast murderscape of calamitous sexnoise that was menacing, enthralling, and like nothing I’d ever seen or heard before. Or since, for that matter. Quite obviously, they were the future of rock n roll, shock troopers of the new digital age – part blood-minded cyborgs, part twisted fetish pornographers, part designer druglords, part Satanic heavy metal creeps. They were all the things that society feared would happen once technology creeped into their daily lives. They were an apocalypse you could dance to.
And
then? Well then, they kinda dropped the ball. In ’96, Chemlab
released “Eastside Militia” (Fifth Column/Metalblade) but,
besides the truly amazing gangmetal meltdown of opener “Exile on
Mainline”, the album was filled with speed metal-as-computer-game-muzak,
sex disco, and remixes of the songs you’d just heard. It was an attempt at
streamlining the Chemlab sound, of slipping into the mainstream
like an invisible virus, but it lacked the focus and fire of “Burnout”,
and Chemlab, after touring (separately) with White Zombie
and Gwar, eventually unraveled. The pioneering “Glamdustrial” of “Burnout”
was quickly co-opted by laptop heavy metal goons, who Pro-Tooled
Chemlab’s sound into car commercial and Crow soundtrack
accessibility. Jared, fed up with the music biz, ran away to Wall
Street, where he became a successful stockbroker. He returned to rock n’ roll in 1999 with a new band, “Jared Louche and the Aliens”, and an album, “Covergirl”, which featured jazz-lounge-industrial covers of Leonard Cohen, Roxy Music, and Stooges songs, among others. He also began playing with industrial supergroup Pigface, as well as numerous aggro-dustrial side-projects, including Hell3ent and Vampire Rodents. In 2002, he started a weekly radio show on Total Rock called, fittingly enough, “Glamdustrial”, which means either I ripped the title of him or vice versa. More recently, he has gotten a new Chemlab line-up together that includes member of Acumen and Bile. An album, “Oxidizer”, is in the works.
Whether or not Chemlab Mach II kicks the glamdustrial revolution back into high gear is anyone’s guess, but whatever happens, “Burnout at the Hydrogen Bar” remains one of the most flagrant displays of affordable firepower ever committed to tape (disk, whatever), and it never fails to inspire me. It is not an over-exaggeration to say that it almost killed me a few times back there, too –the 90’s were nothing if not intense for yr old pal Sleazegrinder- and really, what more can you ask for in a rock n’ roll record? I’m kinda glad I don’t literally relate to lines like “Every time I move, I feel like something's broken/ Every time I laugh, I feel like maybe I'm choking” anymore, but during the hurricane years, I could not have imagined enduring without the ice-water clarity and pure rock fury of Chemlab reverberating off of the ever-shrinking walls. If you wanna know what rock and roll sounding like back when it really was dangerous, look no further – “Burnout at the Hydrogen Bar” is Danger Rock personified.
Further:
Official Chemlab website
Unofficial Chemlab fansite
-Sleazegrinder
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