Foetus

Gash
Sony, 1995

"The alternative boom of the early 90s reached a point of no return when someone, somewhere, thought J. G. Thirwell would fit at home on a major label", Victor W. Valdivia.

Gash is so dense – so full of impenetrable noise – that the disc feels as if it should weigh a tonne. The opening track, 'Mortgage', sounds like it was mixed together from field recordings of an old factory, with wheezing hydraulics and a cacophony of pistons. The lyrics are suicidal and the beat plodding, but there's also something beautiful about it. Who'd have thought a song could be made from such strangeness?

J. G. Thirwell is one of Australia's most eccentric expatriates. He left Melbourne for London in the late seventies with the likes of Nick Cave and settled in New York a decade later. Rather than varying album titles, Thirwell experimented with band names. Under monikers such as Foetus, You've Got Foetus On Your Breath, Scraping Foetus Off The Wheel and The Foetus All Nude Revue, he released umpteen albums with strictly four-letter titles: Hole, Nail, Deaf, Ache and so on.

Gash was one of Thirwell's creative peaks. 'Verklemmt', which translates into "emotional tension" in two languages and a type of sandwich in another, is the most accessible track. Mainly, because its pummelling rock melody hides the lyrical references to hepatitis and strangled chickens. On 'Slung', Thirwell trades in noise for a brass section and finger-clicking swing beat. Putting a twelve-minute swing track in the middle of an otherwise tortured, ear-shocking album might be ridiculous, if it wasn't so brilliant.

One of the most raucous moments of Thirwell's impulsive output, Gash was also the only one released on a major label. Keen to cash in on the mainstream success of Ministry and Nine Inch Nails, Sony looked to Foetus for another industrial hit. Unfortunately for them, deafening tracks like 'Take It Outside, Godboy' and 'Mighty Whity' didn't sell quite as well as the polished funk of 'Closer'. Thirwell was promptly dropped from the roster. Six years later, he would release a follow-up, Flow, which was just as good. The same couldn't be said of his aforementioned peers.