A Foetus by any other name....Steroid Maximus--Gondwanaland--Extreme Fake Soundtracks

Who doesn't love a little Foetus? If you are or were a devotee of Nine Inch Nails, maybe you scratched a little deeper below the surface and picked up some works by JG Thirlwell, aka Foetus, who has created an impressive, ground-breaking body of electronic/industrial recordings over the last couple decades. Not for the timid; there is a real vigor and aggression to his music. And despite the hugeness of the Foetus sound, for the most part he has been a one man army, which makes these recordings even more impressive. And despite the over the top nature of a lot of the music, Thirlwell manages to incorporate cartoon, soundtrack, jazz, big band, country, blues, even lounge music.

Foetus has been a shape shifting entity over the years, because all his releases had different band names, like Scraping Foetus off the Wheel, Foetus Interruptus, etc. like a succession of dead baby jokes, gross out humor. But I guess at some point Mr Thirlwell's varied musical interests strayed so far from Foetus that he had to come up with a new branding, just like Disney came up with their Touchstone imprimatur. Of course Disney had Touchstone to put out less family friendly adult oriented fare, while Steroid Maximus is quite the opposite. This music is more instrumental, and soundtracky sounding, compared to the aggressive violent electroscreed of his main output. While not as aggressive as the Foetus work, the music is just as challenging; more subtle perhaps, but the same Thirwell aesthetic is at work. I suppose if a Foetus album came out sounding like Gondwanaland, some of his fans would be disappointed or even a little confused.



I picked up Gondwanaland just recently and finally got around to listen to it yesterday. I am very impressed.
There should be a line forming of directors wanting to use him to produce their soundtracks. After all, Danny Elfman doesn't have time to do them all! It is true that he creates the music for The Venture Brothers on the Cartoon Network, but I would have to think that his music would put a distinctive and edgy stamp on my movie if I was the director.

Some of the music is heavy and ponderous, like an old east European Communist National anthem. Other music here is right out of a James Bond movie, with 60's Peter Gunn style horns. Other bits are reminiscent of Sergio Leone, and Martin Denny. Under the Steroid Maximus moniker Thirlwell can explore a variety of genres and place his own special imprint on them. Of course, on some of the music he is basically charting out new maps of Hell, with moans, screams, explosions, broken glass, buzzing flies.



On Gondwanaland Thirlwell even does a heavy blaring take on Raymond Scott's Cartoon Opus Powerhouse; if you've ever watched classic Looney Tunes from the 40's and 50's, you have heard this one.
On this album Foetus covers a  whole gamut of musical territory with consummate artistry. It's never boring, full of surprises and a lot of attention to detail. Of course, I would recommend most of his work as it is extremely challenging aggressive music. A good place to sample Foetus is the Sink anthology if you are at all interested. But I think that Steroid Maximus is music that fans of good soundtrack music would appreciate, in addition to the fans of Ministry, or Nine Inch Nails.