Dog Fashion Disco: Anarchists of Good Taste

All right, try not to laugh too hard when you listen to Anarchists of Good Taste. I’m pretty sure vocalist Todd Smith didn’t mean to sound like Weird Al at times. But that only seems fitting, as everything on this record is 100% wannabe shock rock that it turns into self-parody within the opening track’s first verse. Dig, if you can, these fine words from “Leper Friend”:

Each grain of sand is a universe
Laser beams and cattle prods
Sacrifices for the gods
Divinities orgasmic hymns
Will fuck you with prosthetic limbs
As ulcerations form they know
They soon will lose fingers and toes

All I can say is send ’em back to the third grade, as youngsters these days can certainly write better caca-filled poems than these. The music as you may have guessed, is yet another round of chugging power chords done ad infinitum with loads of screamed vocals piled on top. My only question is why do these faux metal babies still exist? There are tons of these bands lurking about (Remember Flybanger? It’s OK if you’ve already exorcised them from your minds already.) and they all sound the same. Dog Fashion Disco is yet another entry into the already saturated metal poser market.

Even the press written for the group is too funny to take seriously. Does something like “When you listen to Dog Fashion Disco, you realize what it’s like to be chased by an evil clown with a knife” (Nothingface’s Matt Holt decreed this nonsense) really sound appealing, or more like H.R. Pufnstuf on crack? The press kit then goes on to name drop such baddies as Charles Manson (Yes, yet again. Come on guys, it’s time to pick a different villain by now.) and respectable heavy groups like Mr. Bungle and Tool. But these dudes are a FarmClub product (An enterprise that notoriously tried to screw over The Rosenbergs) and not much else.

Tracks like “9 to 5 at the Morgue”, “Corpse Is a Corpse”, “Pour Some Urine on Me”, and “Cartoon Autopsy” are only as interesting as their titles allow. Yes, this is definitely music for those who are still enjoying reruns of Beavis and Butthead, but I get the feeling that even those two would ridicule the pap offered by Dog Fashion Disco. They really want to be evil with lines like “I am coming, I am coming to California to kill you / I am coming, I am coming to rape and murder your family you” (from “Headless”) and “Hermaphrodites with X-ray eyes / Shapeshift into paradigms / March like Nazis to a polka dirge / To conjure the spirit of Lucifer” (from “Valley Girl Ventriloquist”). But this is just plain disposable music, through and through. It’s as if they’re really wanting you to notice that they bought stock in the coattails of Marilyn Manson (who isn’t even this ridiculous) and Eminem (whose similar goofball lyrics didn’t deserve all the attention they got, but Em was still first in this race).

Dog Fashion Disco’s musical twist is that they try to meld “evil circus music” within their “rock”, but again they were already beaten to the punch in that area by Mr. Bungle. Groups like these are not unlike those movies that are made for the straight to video market. They’re cheap, forgettable, and wind up in the bargain bins within a month of being released. Maybe not surprisingly at all, Anarchists of Good Taste was produced by Drew Mazurek, who oversaw the work of Gwar as well. So to answer the question asked in the title — no, we don’t need another Gwar. For they are in a league of their own and Dog Fashion Disco would be much better off taking their ball and going home. ‘Nuff said.