Bloodcow, Crystals and Lasers: Yes They Did
It would be hard to review Crystals and Lasers, the fourth full-length from Council Bluffs, Iowa, five-piece Bloodcow, and not focus on the lyrics. Operating under various assumed names/titles — Bones and 1987 on guitar, Navin on bass, Run DMFC on drums and The Corporate Merger on vocals — cleverness and delinquent charm is nothing new for the band or to any listeners who might’ve caught onto them since the 2007 release of their third offering, Bloodcow III: Hail Xenu, but Crystals and Lasers brings that element more forward than it’s ever been. It is not the only way in which Bloodcow are going for broke. The 13-track/54-minute album was recorded and mixed by Jim Homan, and was finished and pressed thanks to a successful Kickstarter campaign (to which, in the interest of full disclosure, I contributed), and it’s easily the most professional-sounding work they’ve done.
With six years between records and a tenure as a band that now spans more than 12 years, one might forgive them the record being on the longer side, between a general buildup of material and the lingering who-knows-when-they’ll-get-to-make-another factor. Still, they rise to the occasion, and while songs like “Keys to the Kingdom,” “Dick for Days,” “Ultra Super Sexual” and “After Party” are all the stronger for the attention to detail on every level. While the music behind varies between punk, thrash, stoner riffing and various kinds of classic metals — Run DMFC proving versatile in anchoring every turn and keeping the record at several points from flying completely off the handle — The Corporate Merger spits out lyrical themes ranging from crossdressing on “Another Country,” “Ultra Super Sexual” and “After Party” to cocaine “After Party,” “HIVampyre” and the faux-tropical ’80s-style instrumental “Coke Break” (though one might call the background yips a cocaine reference, given the title) that serves as the centerpiece, but nothing is quite so prevalent as death.
Opener “Blood and Guts,” “Keys to the Kingdom,” which follows, “Exploding Head,” the masturbation-themed “Sock,” “Crystals and Lasers,” “Little Chromosome,” “After Party” and closer “Torture Days” all feature some explicit reference to death, and that’s just what I could deduce without a lyric sheet. In “Sock,” it’s the narrator dead in front of a computer with porn on repeat. In “Crystals and Lasers” itself, it’s death at the hands of a robotic future. In “Blood and Guts,” it’s a nightmarish devouring, and so on. Nearly each song has its own personality, from “Ultra Super Sexual”‘s self-mocking sleaze — “Do ya wanna do me baby?/Do ya wanna do me now?” — (the ending of that song might also be the pinnacle of the record in terms of vocal arrangements), to the almost unfortunately catchy “Dick for Days,” which revamps Bon Jovi-style glam to a lyric about an all-male gangbang, The Corporate Merger adding whispers of “No you didn’t” after each chorus only to answer, “Yes I did.”
The arrangement on “Dick for Days” is especially telling of the kind of nuance and effort Bloodcow put into this material and their overall mindset. What seems at first not only politically problematic but just plain dumb is actually subverting any number of stereotypes, from the hyper-chauvanistic vision of glam (“I got your medicine inside my fucking dick”) denying its own homoeroticism to the simple fact that while “Dick for Days” could easily tip into some childish mockery of gay sex — particularly two tracks after the very-hetero “Sock” — it never actually crosses that line. Similarly, “Sock” acknowledges the ridiculousness of male fantasy — “They love me, this world of young coeds” — after blindsiding the listener with the opening lines, “When I was just/A young man/I started fucking myself with my own two hands,” and rattling off a list of pornstars, mags and sites perused. That turn isn’t new for Bloodcow either, but between the crispness of the production here, the instrumental tightness of the performances and the ease with which they shift between the freneticism of “Exploding Head” and the later “HIVampyre” and the more complex metal structures of “Sock” and “Little Chromosome.”
“Little Chromosome” is a highlight of the back half of Crystals and Lasers, but the real standout, musically, vocally and thematically, is the penultimate “After Party,” which directly takes on the issue of aging in a party lifestyle:
You have to tell me everything is cool with my life
I’m at the doctor’s office, they’re telling me
That they’ve got some bad news
And it’s time to go under the knife
Repetitions of “Bad for your heart” follow before the song careens into a slowdown wherein The Corporate Merger, as his own doctor, rips him off and tells him he’s going to die because he doesn’t have insurance. As brutal conceptually as it is sonically riotous, “After Party” perfectly sums up the perspective from which Bloodcow work on the album — self-aware within a kind of nihilistic safe zone. Followed by the subdued beginning of closer “Torture Days,” it hits with all the more impact, and while earlier cuts like “Keys to the Kingdom,” “Blood and Guts” and “Exploding Head” seem like they’re all in good fun, it’s “After Party” and the escapism of the prior “Another Country” — early call and response leading to an overwhelming crush of financial worry — that add the depth to make one look beyond the “I’ll push your balls to the side” in “Dick for Days” to really try to understand where they’re coming from.
Ultimately, Bloodcow will not be for everyone, and that point of view is going to be part of it, but it has value as an expression and even when it’s raging about cyborgs and robot lords harvesting unicorn organs, Crystals and Lasers keeps a sense of honesty at its center that makes it an even richer listen. When, or if, Bloodcow might put out another album, I don’t know. This one was in the works for at least three years. But if this turns out to be their last or if it doesn’t, it’s difficult to give Crystals and Lasers repeated listens and not consider it a definitive work, because while they seem to be creating a tornado that touches down on these multiple aesthetic points, they’re also very clearly guiding that energetic tumult with an admittedly unlikely steadiness of hand.
