• Hairfacts EP (1994)
• Love is Okay (1996)
• Boogie-Children-R-Us (1998)

Hairfacts EP ( 1994 )

8

(Nothing But a) Sluthead / Stay Angry / Must Be Mystery-Puke / Nice Feelings Now

Winners of the 1994 edition of the Belgian Rock Rally, The Evil Superstars were basically the brainchild of full-time eclectic and music fan Mauro Pawlowski. For a new band, they displayed a stunning technical versatility and willingness to experiment, uncompromisingly assimilating the most various (or contradictory) of genres imaginable. On the one hand, this sometimes resulted in an exhausting vaudeville gotten out of hand, but on the other hand, it was also an example of a band taking the deconstructionist approach to its extreme: a level where all genres and ideas are treated equal and are allowed to coexist. Sugar-coated pop, punk, jazz, metal, lo-fi, nothing was safe or missing from this band’s melting pot. With their eyes shut, they switched from one tempo and genre to the next, and seemed to master them all.

Love is Okay ( 1996 )

5

No More Bad People / Power of HaHa / Go Home for Lunch / Parasol / Your Dump or Mine / Rocking All Over / Pantomiming with Her Parents / Oh Funlump / We Need Your Head / 1,000,000 Demons Can’t Be Wrong / Miss Your Disease / Satan Is In My Ass / Death by Summer

The Evil Superstars were one of the most exciting things ever to happen to the Belgian music scene, which had been quite conservative and protective up till the early or even mid-nineties, when a new generation of bands started their gradual takeover of the music scene. What many of these bands (dEUS and its many sister bands, The Evil Superstars) tried to reach was incorporating certain traits of avant-garde rock in their music. Several bands started flirting with the kings of avant-rock, like Captain Beefheart, The Residents and Frank Zappa, but also the focused jazz-madness of Ornette Coleman and Albert Ayler suddenly became hip. While some of them really infested their albums with quirky ideas and out-of-place ingredients, few did this as consistently as The Evil Superstars. The first result was Hairfacts, which was an unquestionable success.

Two years later, after they had added Tim Vanhamel (guitar) to their line-up, they released their first full-length, which seemed to maintain the EP’s originality, by offering short songs that almost function as A Comprehensive Guide to Modern Pop Genres, with lyrics that seem to have been invented by an improvising lunatic.

Unfortunately, this album doesn’t really succeed in what the debut could pull off. There are a few songs that work well, but the majority of the songs seem to be too random, and ok, I admit, it is a consequence of this type of music, but I bet that wasn’t the intention. The album opener, “No More Bad People” is one of the best tracks. It starts out with a hardcore fury, but then immediately shifts to the freak-rock of Hairfacts, while also genres like funk-metal and silly pop pop up. It’s a ridiculously complex song that shows the band at its most inventive (that Van Halen-like hair metal parody!), and most importantly, it sorts itself out. That’s also the case with the band’s most famous song, “Satan Is In My Ass,” which has a few killer riffs, doo-wop backing vocals, Black Sabbath-sludge, a jazzy interlude, hints of Westcoast pop and a drive that keeps propelling the song forward. “Parasol” sounds as if the band is trying to cover The Butthole Surfers, and “Your Dump or Mine” is an attempt at a ballad, with cheesy vocal lines, smart references to Elvis Costello and Dutch death metal band Gorefest and more over-the-top lyrics: “Stars, gnomepuke and soap your zits collideascope, your dragracing divine tell me what me gonna eat ah.” “Oh Funlump” starts off with a funky blues-riff that would make Jon Spencer dance the locomotion in awe, but then suddenly transforms into a Weezer-sounding track, while the short “Miss Your Disease” is their (absurdist) take on country-schmalz, but it ain’t exactly George Jones at work here. The instrumental album closer “Death by Summer” makes use of cheesy keyboards and could serve as background music for a 70’s porn flic (preferably a French one).

The abundance of ideas did turn two of the previous songs into impressive fun tracks, while the others were merely decent, and that’s not what I would call the remainder of the album. The formula seems to have gotten thin already, very thin! Digressions from one genre that is blown out of proportions (pop is silly pop, punk is hardcore punk, weird becomes gross) to the next don’t always work, and after awhile, the metal riffs, insistent keyboards and extremely shifting rhythms start to become annoying rather than fascinating. The sound of “Power of Haha” is a bit reminiscent of The Pixies, but that doesn’t save it, as it is just too silly to be good, while “Rocking All Over,” “Pantomiming with Her Parents” and “We Need Your Head” have a cut ‘n’ paste-quality that is too arbitrary, despite the exceptional playing, smart references to popular culture (with additional wink), and inventive nonsense-poetry. You know something is wrong when a band like this turns in songs that are boring (“1,000,000 Demons Can’t Be Wrong”), right?

Maybe I’m not fair towards this album, because it’s not that different from their debut-EP, but whereas that release succeeded both in attracting my attention and giving me a kick, this album is only merely fascinating, and not one to enjoy. I guess the problem I have with this album is that they put too many ideas into one album, which ultimately becomes a drag to listen to. I’d rather have three good ideas worked out, than fifteen dozen thrown together in a blender. Perhaps they realized this later: their second album would be something completely different.

Boogie-Children-R-Us ( 1998 )

7.5

B.A.B.Y. / If You Cry (I’ll Go to Hell) / Have Been Wrong Before / I Can’t Seem to Fuck Things Up / Gimme Animal Rights / Just a Princess / Oh Girl / It’s a Sad Sad Planet / Holy Spirit Come Home / First Comes Farewell / Song off the Record / My Little Dead One / Laserblack / Love Happened

This second full-length, produced by David Sardy (Helmet, Slayer, Supergrass, etc), was finished by September of 1997, but due to problems with the record company, it was released about half a year later (spring 1998), and it didn’t sound like a continuation of the Love Is Okay-approach at all. The latter was so crammed with musical ideas, smart references, sudden tempo shifts, and other anomalies, that it almost became impossible to enjoy, and if you tried it, you had to be in a good shape to sit it out, despite its short length. This album is also quite short, finishing 14 songs in 38 minutes, with only four songs going over the three-minute border, but more importantly: it’s actually fun to listen to, and not a drag at all. The exhausting lunacy of the former album has been replaced with a much simpler and ‘open’ approach, which comes across as less pushy and self-satisfied.

Opening song “B.A.B.Y.” immediately shows the most obvious similarities and differences: while the nonsensical, often gross, lyrics (“The sheets are wet with gasoline, just sodomized a Brontosaurus while shaving the back of a disco queen”) and a general weirdness has stayed, the music has become almost the exact opposite of the songs on the first album. The ear-catcher in this case is a simple repetitive bass-line, combined with a catchy chorus, and occasional samples that are subtly added. The song shows that the band had learned to channel ideas, to synthesize their ideas into a coherent whole. This approach did not imply that the music had become conventional or mainstream, but it became listenable. Tracks like “Have Been Wrong Before” and “I Can’t Seem to Fuck Things Up” are as simply structured as the opening song. The first one employs a really slow boogie-rhythm (hence the title (?), because there are quite some blues elements present on the album) and some interesting melodies, while the second is a monotonously plodding track with grinding guitars, heavy rumbling bass, and heavily distorted vocals that were manic from the start, all creating a morbidly hypnotic and creepy atmosphere. The influence of avant-garde rock is still noticeable, for example in the angularity of “If You Cry (I’ll Go to Hell),” but the ‘weird’ elements stay within proportions. For example, the keyboards are now adding to the foundation of the songs, and are no longer a prominently disturbing factor. An unsettling creepiness is also found in a few other songs, for instance in “Gimme Animal Rights,” which starts of with 25 seconds of outrageous hardcore punk and then transforms itself into another thundering track with deep bass, echoing synths and references to sex (a recurring theme). “Oh Girl” makes inventive use of stereo-effects, with the vocals coming and going on each side, while also “Holy Spirit Come Home” asks to be heard with headphones: there’s a heavy bass-line during the whole song, but it’s interesting to search for the many sonic details underneath it. The song also contains a manic guitar freak-out at the end, and seems to have an ambiance that could be regarded as a mingling of the Queens of the Stone Age and The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion (no kidding!). Sometimes the new approach results in songs that don’t seem to have very much substance or become dull quite fast, like “First Comes Farewell” which, despite the Sabbath-esque tempo and nice strings-samples, doesn’t work well. The same goes, in my opinion that is, for “Song off the Record” and “Laserblack,” which are letdowns compared to the earlier mentioned tracks. Like Love Is Okay, the album also has a ridiculously ‘cute’ track, in this case “Love Happened,” which starts off with only acoustic guitar, and later bass and drums, but the perversion is of course to be found in the lyrics (“Love happened today with a kiss and a fax to the parents, the law allows happiness and a sparrow by the name of Clarence”).

A much more enjoyable album than Love Is Okay, Boogie-Children-R-Us confirmed that The Evil Superstars were one hell of a band, especially when they succeeded in making a much more focused and purposeful album, as they did with this one. The band seemed satisfied, the album’s single and only ‘normal song, “It’s a Sad Sad Planet,” got lots of airplay, and they got rave reviews from many critics, some of which predicted the band had a great future ahead of them. However, the public never bought the record, and the band called it a day and gave a last performance during the annual Pukkelpop festival later that year. Singer/guitarist/chief Pawlowski participated in several other projects before he recorded a surprisingly conventional album a few years later, while other band members would end up in several other bands (drummer Dave Schroyen is the drummer of two-piece noise-rock band Vandal X, while Vanhamel has become a critic’s fave in the meantime, with his own band Millionaire (also with Schroyen on drums)).

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