Let's talk about guilty pleasures for a second: 99.9 percent of them are bullshit. No offense to local cover band Guilty Pleasures, but nobody should feel guilty about musical choices they made in their youth, or for listening to old music deemed uncool by their contemporaries. No, we're talking about the 0.1 percent of music that you should actually feel guilty about. Like, go-to-confession, apologize-to-a-stranger, maybe even turn-yourself-in-to-the-cops guilty. We're not talking aesthetic offenses here — we're talking moral and philosophical ones. We're talking about 1987's classic crossover-thrash album U.S.A. for M.O.D. by metal institution M.O.D., aka Method of Destruction.
It should be noted that it takes a lot to offend this author — my brow is so low that it frequently obscures my vision. Unrefined and patently offensive are my stock-in-trade; crass and unrepentant are my bread and butter. I once went to church wearing a Cannibal Holocaust T-shirt depicting a field full of impaled people — and as a humor-loving, over-accommodating liberal, I am willing to give wide berth to people who can make or take a good joke. What's more, I love thrash metal — I came of age in the late '80s, when every miscreant with a misanthropic demeanor was issued a skateboard and a Slayer record. I think that was a result of Tip O'Neill's much-revered Thrash America bill. Just kidding.
So you'd think, given my flexibility, that repeat listening to U.S.A. for M.O.D. would be guilt-free smooth sailing through the seas of nostalgia. But no: For all my love for this album — it is belligerent and hilarious, bludgeoning and goofy all at once — I still can't listen to it all the way through without feeling like a bad person. Songs like "Bubble Butt," "Ode to Harry" and "Don't Feed the Bears" are absurd, juvenile jokes. Songs like "Trash or Be Thrashed," "You're Beat" and "Parents" are the sort of blast-speed goonery that made hardcore-metal hybridization so appealing in the first place. "Imported Society" and "AIDS," on the other hand, are entirely and unapologetically fucked up. And I know all the words.
Even as a preteen pretty much devoid of social consciousness, I knew these songs were wrong on a lot of levels. "Imported Society" is pure, unadulterated jingoism and ethnocentrism wrapped in one angry, pointed attack on immigrants. "AIDS" is Westboro Baptist Church-grade homophobia via eighth-grade jokes. But they are both very much of their time — I can remember my humorless, conservative uncles spouting the same views. They're songs that, however ineloquently, capture a portion of the Reagan Era zeitgeist that most would rather ignore. But in the context of the rest of U.S.A. for M.O.D., could these songs actually be satire of the casual racism and anti-gay sentiment that passed for political discourse in the late '80s? U.S.A. for M.O.D. is like hanging out with a goofy friend who suddenly spouts some incredibly politically incorrect and callous shit — is this all in fun, or is this more serious than we thought?
To M.O.D.'s credit, in the 26 years since U.S.A. for M.O.D.'s release, they've never returned to that questionable territory. The rest of their catalog will never earn them a Nobel Peace Prize — though the shark-eating-a-surfer's-leg cover art for 1988's Surfin' M.O.D. should probably be in the Smithsonian — but in terms of gut-churning ignorance, M.O.D. never went as far into the inappropriate paint as they did on their debut. Chock it up to the ignorance of youth, or the era, or just write the whole thing off completely — I wouldn't blame you. But what you can't deny is that U.S.A. for M.O.D. is essentially American: It's big, brutish and uncouth. It's a bully and a buddy, a mess of contradictions and a commonwealth of discordant ideas. It has moments of genius (cough, "Don't Feed the Bears," cough) that are often overshadowed by its loutish behavior. And like America, I love it despite its many faults and the overwhelming guilt I feel about its most base moments. Sometimes you just have to accept things for what they are.
Email music@nashvillescene.com.
