Band:	Crotchduster
Album:	Big Fat Box Of Shit
Style:	Avantgarde metal, Death metal
Release date:	October 05, 2004
Guest review by:	Karlabos

01. True Nature Of Williams
02. Big Top Williams
03. Cain Sings The Blues
04. Let Me Into Starfish Land
05. Mr. Indigent Erection
06. Mammal Sauce
07. Jogging In Hell Forever
08. Stars Ingenious Cooter [live]
09. Crotchopus

I just want to begin by advertising that this album is a big fat box of shit! But anyway, if you can read you must already be aware of that, and if you can't then well... This review is useless anyway. So let's begin.

The "purpose" of this release is to be a humorous approach to metal, and to fulfill this purpose you can expect everything from dirty, offensive lyrics or dialogues to screams, samples and all that TV like stuff that is considered humorous, and you can expect unusual genre blending, on Mr Bungle style. Oh, and guess what: The lyrics also contain the well known ironic humour concerning the metal scene.

The joke starts within its members: Slippery Jim on vocals, Jason Suecof (Capharnaum) on guitars, and then there's a fictional friggin' dog named Cain on the drums. If you are not exactly familiar with the term avant-garde when it comes to music, especially metal, then you should stop reading here and never remind the name Crotchduster again, however if you are interested in the avant-garde genre and are inclined to listen to original stuff and fusion of unusual genres in metal then you can either hate or love this album.

I am a bit skeptical when it comes to multiple genre fusion on metal because often it's not well-done, on the sense that it's not a fusion, but rather it's more to "now we play metal" and "now we play genre x" side. And unfortunately with Crotchduster it isn't very different. There are indeed many things going on here: Hip-hop, heavy metal, death, pop, some acoustic parts, the samples, and so on... However it's not really a fusion, it actually sounds like there is a bit of genre x, and then all of a sudden the music switches to genre y, in a way such that one can even feel the break of sound. Of course, every bit is well executed, especially the vocal work. But there's always that "'minus" the record gets for mood breaking on the discontinuity of the song structures, if there are any. It kind of seems like I'm listening to a bunch of samples (lolicore, anyone?), or to one of those gore grind albums with 50 songs. That's it.

Big Fat Box Of Shit doesn't really sound like anything I've heard before and I can't even categorize it as anything except as avant-garde metal, but if you really want to compare it with something I guess it would be Mr Bungle, Fantômas or any other weird Mike-Pattonesque project like that.

Overall, for me the album is well-executed, the idea is interesting, however the lack of "feeling" caused by what seem to be the random overlapping of song bits ruins it all for me. However there are those who enjoy this kind of stuff, and if you are one of them, then definitely check this out.