So it’s about four in the morning right now. I’m home alone and bored as fuck. Lights are out. Everything’s pretty quiet. I say, “Fuck it. Let’s go on YouTube and check out some weird music.”
I think for a minute about what you fellow Prongers have tossed about the boards, so I say, “Hey, I like noisy stuff, and the noise-o-philes like Peligro rave about Whitehouse.”
I type that into the search bar, and after endlessly scrolling through shitty political commentary, I click on this.
That was pretty messed up. Here’s a recent video from members of the australian weird noise band Yclept Dinmakers. I love the old conductor near the end.
You Jumped out of your chair (damn me to), Whitehouse should come with a warning! Guys like Peligro should’ve warned us of the danger of falling out of a chair and breaking our own fucking neck. I visited their myspace page sometime ago, he yells his ass off, silly at times but its some good shit.
Tracks like “My Cock’s On Fire” and “Lightening Struck My Dick” make it a little hard to take Whitehouse too seriously. I did enjoy “Birthdeath Experience” back in the day and “Cream of the Second Coming” has a good edit of the Whitehouse/Nurse With Wound track and also some stuff with David Tibet on it.
Apparently your cock has never been on fire or been struck by lightening. Often, the first is a result of the second. It is definitely something to be taken seriously and is worthing singing about.
Truer words have never before been spoken in this forum, I stand corrected sir.
I think for a minute about what you fellow Prongers have tossed about the boards, so I say, “Hey, I like noisy stuff, and the noise-o-philes like Peligro rave about Whitehouse.”
A ‘noise-o-phile’? Well, I’ve been called worse.
Yes, Whitehouse is quite the spectacle. Perfect for knocking unsuspecting types out of their seats at 4am. You do realise it’s comedy though? Black comedy. Think…Andy Kaufman.
As of now, my top 10 albums of all time:
Brian Eno - Here Come The Warm Jets
The Flaming Lips - The Soft Bulletin
Boredoms - Pop Tatari
Coil - Restitution Of Decayed Intelligence
John Zorn - IAO: Musick In Sacred Light
Whitehouse - Cruise
Mayhem - DeathCrush
David Shea - The Art Of Memory
Whitehouse - Asceticists
10.Aphex Twin - Selected Ambient Works Vol II
Whitehouse is indeed the sickest form of comedy out there. After listening to a digital copy of the “Bird Seed” album in its entirety and analyzing the lyrics of “Why You Never Became a Dancer” over and over again, it’s not hateful or violent at all. It actually reminds me of a few of my ex-girlfriends who had that whole rape-victim-succubus-who-feeds-off-pain-and-sympathy-and-doesnt-do-a-Goddamned-thing-to-better-their-situation complex thing nailed to a T and constantly made me feel like shit for things that happened to them that I didn’t even fucking do. The way I see it, it’s a wake-up call under a veneer of mysoginy.
I’m rather inclined to check out “Cruise” as it’s allegedy sonically similar to “Bird Seed.” Got a taste of their early Eighties material and MAN, is that stuff fun and spacey.
Yeah Whitehouse is cool. ‘The Great White Death’ is a classic. The music is crazy and fun while piss drunk. And I of course love misogyny in music. The lyrics are great!
Extreme music with extreme themes. It’s fun.
Though I found ‘Asceticists 2006’ and ‘Racket’ to be frustrating because I love the tribal rhythms and shit but the vocals have so much treble it is painful.
I get the whole punishing the audience thing but frankly I just like the music and want to be able to listen to it on headphones…
Seriously, eventually I reached a point where this sort of thing crosses the line into tedium and cliche. One of the best part of the Sandman comics is when the serial killers murder the Peter Sotos analogue.
EDIT: does anybody actually see the little eye-rolling emoticon, or does it just have the word “crazy” in brackets?
Jesus fucking Christ is right. This is Whitehouse we’re talking about.
I first heard of them from Paul Lemos of Controlled bleeding (local hero!) when he was writing for Under The Volcano and he name-dropped them.
Whitehouse is absolutely over-the-top. I’m not kidding. I suggest you keep any and all infants and toddlers away from stuff like this. No joke. Nothing gets me more upset and very angry just listening to them. Play this loud and I guarantee you’re going to get a lot of people extremely red. Even the subject matter and some of the members interests (aside from art and movies) sets off huge red lights.
I cannot think of anything more hateful, extreme, or anything lower (OK, quite possibly GG Allin or Napalm Death’s Mass Appeal Madness EP) than Whitehouse.
I suggest picking up their last four albums (Cruise, Bird Seed, Asteticists 2006, and Racket) for some real head-on damage, especially “Just Like A Cunt”, “Wriggle Like An Eel”, “Mouthy Battery Beast”, and the super-high-pitched “Philospohy”.
I laughed because it was so bad and hilarious and I was under the impression that it’s not meant to be taken too serious. Kinda like Kompressor or something.
I have heaps of Whitehouse in my collection. Favourite is probably ‘Asceticists’ - lyrically it’s amazing.
Definitely not for everyone though - I can understand why most people would be pretty sickened by that sort of thing. Funny that they’ve more or less escaped the wrath of the PMRC all this time - while hammy pop metal acts like Judas Priest, Kiss and Ozzy cop all the flak.
Whitehouse should have a place in the collection of every ‘extreme’ music fan. Most people think death metal, black metal or grindcore when extreme music is mentioned but the problem is that those bands basically keep on repeating themselves ad nauseum, tweaking the production and trying to play a little faster each time, which is hardly an ‘extreme’ approach, I would say. On the other hand, a band like Whitehouse constantly changes to be all the more punishing and in different ways on every release. This doesnt necessarily make their albums fun to listen to (I like noise but Whitehouse I cant take in larger doses) but it does at least mean they still have their integrity.
for my money, the 1980 album “Erector” is the best, it still holds up after all these years as the most disturbing, violent, and perversly fascinating record, you can’t call it an album, it’s not music, you can’t call it art, it just isn’t, but it’s this assymetrical “thing” that moves from a visceral shriek to a terrifying silence and back again. Other releases by them I like are:
Birthdeath experience
Total sex
Wriggle like a fucking eel
dedicated to Peter Kurten
Bradford red light district
…there are 2 great compilations of whitehouse & related material that kind of collate all the material they released on their own COME ORG records, I think they are called come org compilation 1 & 2
