Waiting for Jimmy to Kick

Locust Abortion Technician is the Butthole Surfers at their most fully realized — the production gives it a heft the rawer early records lack, and the songs (a term used loosely) are more shapely without being less disorienting. It remains one of the more genuinely unsettling records in the American underground catalog.

Waiting for Jimmy to Kick occupies a mid-album slot that allows the previous intensity to settle before the next onslaught. Gibby Haynes's vocal processing reaches new levels of strangeness; the rhythm section operates in the pocket of something not quite blues and not quite anything else.

The Butthole Surfers' influence is frequently cited in relation to Cobain and grunge; less discussed is how much of it was absorbed by the noise rock and drone metal scenes that followed.