Monte Cazazza

This could be the only album that begins with a warning from a professional psychiatrist, Dr. Bart Alberti, who informs listeners that Monte Cazazza is "disturbed" and his music "worthless, a sonic mess." The former might well be true, but the latter certainly isn't: from his earliest experiments with tape recording in 1978 onward, Cazazza, one of -Industrial Culture's most colorful figures (it was he who originally coined the term "industrial music") revealed a grasp of structure and drama that was all too often lacking in the music of his peers. This compilation includes his earliest singles for the Industrial label ("Candy Man" and "First/Last"), the ridiculously rare new wave masterpiece "Sex Is No Emergency" (which originally appeared on the legendary and obscure French Sordide Sentimental label in 1982), and a selection of previously unreleased gems, including "Rabid Rats" (in which Cazazza recounts with evident glee the U.S. Army practice of using the above to flush out enemy guerrillas in Vietnam), "Mary Bell" (Throbbing Gristle's Cosey Fanni Tutti guests on vocals to tell the tale of the infamous child killer, accompanied by a toy piano), and "Kick That Habit Man," in which Cazazza reprises Brion Gysin's celebrated permutational poem. The somewhat over the top sampling and synths in the later works have aged somewhat, but the mournful Tuxedomoon-like strings of "Six Eyes from Hell" and its grim, plodding groove are clear proof of a good ear at work. Unfortunately, though, Cazazza retired from music in the mid-'80s to make True Gore with M. Dixon Causey, a film subsequently banned in no fewer than 38 countries. Despite the bloody teeth adorning the disc, the music on The Worst of Monte Cazazza doesn't bite as hard, but it's certainly an essential document of an important movement in underground popular culture. ~ Dan Warburton, All Music Guide