#Tad 8 way santa album cover full
#Tad 8 way santa album cover series

Inspired by the band Killdozer and aided by the mighty Butch Vig, the band was hitting its stride and hitting it hard, something one listen to “Giant Killer,” “Trash Truck” and “Flame Tavern” proves. (The couple sued and the original cover was replaced with a band shot.) The sound was, by then, more refined, the arrangements tighter, smarter and the playing at its peak, from the opening, hook-laden “Jinx” down to the closing “Plague Years.” “Jack Pepsi,” one of the band’s signature pieces, still shines here, all three minutes and 10 seconds of it, rollicking good time of freewheeling redneck-style mania. Probably the best-known of this trio is 1991’s 8-Way Santa with its infamous cover, featuring a very stoned couple caught in a moment of strange intimacy.

#Tad 8 way santa album cover series

Still, that and a series of bonus tracks is enough to recommend the release as powerful artifact of what wilder Washington was up to at the dawn of a new decade. It takes the sheer noise terror of the previous effort and explodes it via extreme-in-the-extreme “Axe to Grind,” “High On the Hog,” and “Axe to Grind.” Once more, the main sense of exhilaration comes from the sheer volume and less from writing. This new reissue, remastered by Endino, features deluxe packaging, a previously unissued track (an early version of “Tuna Car”) as well as material from the long out of print 7” “Daisy.”Īlso part of the current campaign is the Salt Lick EP, recorded by Steve Albini. Sure, “Sex God Missy,” “Satan’s Chainsaw” and “Pork Chop” provide us with a sense of escape and freewheeling good times, but nothing takes up residency in our ears for very long after the record has wound to its close. Little wonder that it appealed to the beer and MDMA set checking the group out at the time, though listening to it in the cold, harsh light of more than 25 years later, one wonders where the actual songs are.

#Tad 8 way santa album cover full

Listening to that first record now, it’s easy to see how it impressed at the time: For a full 36 minutes, the record holds us prisoner with big, big drums (courtesy of Steve Wied), guitars that bore their way into the very center of your skull (Doyle and Gary Thorstensen) and bass that is as abrasive and aggressive as you could want (Kurt Danielson). That guy, Tad Doyle, was rumored to be a real-life lumberjack, a guy who just had to be as insane as the music he created. It was all that we would come to expect from grunge: Dark, brooding, and intense on a level that most weren’t expecting, especially not from the man smiling an enigmatic smile on the record’s cover. There was a sense of humor absent from the spandex and teased hair set and a lack of the guitar pyrotechnics that had come to define a decade. Produced by Jack Endino, it was heavier than a really heavy thing, announcing itself with bludgeoning riffs and strictly over the top attitude. Tad burst onto the world’s stage with 1989’s God’s Balls.