Locust Abortion Technician is the third studio album by the Butthole Surfers, released in March 1987. The album was originally released on both vinyl and CD on Touch and Go, and was remastered on CD on the band’s label, Latino Buggerveil, in 1999.
Locust Abortion Technician was the first Butthole Surfers album to not be recorded in a professional studio. After growing tired of living on the road, the band relocated to Winterville sometime in 1986, where they rented a small two-bedroom house, and used their meager savings to purchase an old Ampex 8-track tape machine and two microphones. Having set up a temporary home studio, the band set off to record what would become their third full-length LP. Despite the band downgrading from the equipment used on their previous record, guitarist Paul Leary believes that the inferior equipment forced the band to be more creative than they might otherwise have been.
Additionally, the new studio freed the band from having to worry about recording costs, allowing them to experiment even more than on previous releases. Jeff Pinkus has also said that the home studio gave them the luxury of taking extended breaks for drug use.
Many of the album’s tracks also underwent extensive in-studio development. Although doing this had become a Butthole Surfers tradition, Locust Abortion Technician was one of their last recordings done in such a manner; on subsequent releases the band would go into the studio with more fully formed songs. Pinkus has expressed the opinion that the earlier, more chaotic recording sessions resulted in much of the spontaneous creativity that had propelled the group’s early albums.
Tracklist:
- Sweat Loaf
- Graveyard
- Pittsburgh to Lebanon
- Weber
- HAY
- Human Cannonball
- U.S.S.A.
- The O-Men
- Kuntz (written by Kong Katkamngae, performed by Phloen Phromdaen)
- Graveyard
- 22 Going on 23
Credits
Gibby Haynes: lead vocals
Paul Leary: guitar
Jeff Pinkus: bass
King Coffey: drums
Teresa Nervosa: drums
