Songs About Fucking

Steve Albini has said that Songs About Fucking is the Big Black album that he is most satisfied with. In a 1992 interview with Maximumrocknroll magazine, Albini said: The band had already decided to split up before the album was recorded, prompted by guitarist Santiago Durango's decision to enroll in law school and the band's desire to quit at what they felt was a creative peak. == Music and lyrics ==

In the book Gimme Indie Rock, music journalist Andrew Earles assessed that Songs About Fucking is "the heaviest, most lyrically poignant, and hardest-rocking" entry in the Big Black's discography. According to Mehan Jayasuriya of Pitchfork, the album "covers a wide range of unusual topics [such as] grotesque execution methods, a psychedelic fungus [and] cats. When sex does appear in these songs, it’s usually as a means of getting at something darker, like perversion, domination, or violence. Save for Albini’s occasional bursts of black humor, the album is unrelenting as it plumbs the depths of depravity; a more accurate title might have been Songs About Cruelty." == Artwork ==

The cover art comes from a Japanese hentai manga. ==Critical reception==

Songs About Fucking has been called "certainly the most honest album title of the rock 'n' roll era". Lyrical themes on the album include South American killing techniques ("Colombian Necktie"), psychedelic substances ("Ergot"), and how "slowly, without trying, everyone becomes what he despises most". and it was considered "as dark and frightening as the band name suggests" by another, Treble's Hubert Vigilla, who goes on to say "Songs About Fucking is loud, it's abrasive, it's unattractive in the extreme ... So really, it's everything that made Big Black so great in the first place". Dave Henderson of Underground magazine gave the album a 2.5/3 rating, calling it "a napalm attack that sticks to your skin like burning party-jell, spiced with hundreds and thousands, a prickly sensation that's as all-consuming as it is repellent". Reviewing for The Village Voice in April 1988, Robert Christgau found Albini's innovative guitar sounds undeniable: "That killdozer sound culminates if not finishes off whole generations of punk and metal. In this farewell version it gains just enough clarity and momentum to make its inhumanity ineluctable, and the absence of lyrics that betray Albini's roots in yellow journalism reinforces an illusion of depth". Trouser Press later called it the band's "finest work" and "their most raging, abrasive, pulverizing record". When asked by The Guardian to name his top 20 albums, John Peel included Songs about Fucking as his fifteenth favourite album. Robert Plant claimed that the album had made him "an Albini fan," and Albini went on to be the recording engineer for the Page and Plant album Walking into Clarksdale (1998). In Gimme Indie Rock, Andrew Earles said that the album is "a certifiably essential part of any record collection, especially those that trod in indie rock's heavier paths." He credited the album with having an influence on the "aggro" and post-hardcore oriented sect of the underground rock movement. Accolades ==Track listing==

• Steve Albini – guitar, vocals • Santiago Durango (credited as Melvin Belli) – guitar • Dave Riley – bass guitar • "Roland" (an E-mu Drumulator drum machine) – drums • John Loder – recording engineer (Happy Otter side only) ==References==