The Batlord

For anyone anyone who doesn't know, Twiztid are sort of the heirs to the throne of ICP. They're pretty much the only other Psychopathic group I have any love for. After them the critics are perfectly justified in saying whatever they like about the rest of it. So, we'll start with their debut, which I'm reasonably familiar with.




Twiztid actually didn't wear the face paint back then, and I could be wrong, but I don't think they talked about juggalos either. Starting with the next album that all went out the window and they started towing the company line. From what I can tell it was around the late nineties-early 2000's that the whole juggalo thing really took off and Psychopathic Records became a business whose purpose was to take money from white trash that would have just spent it on dimebags and Zig Zags anyway. Since this was released in '97 I guess it was just a little too early to be caught in the jerkoff-fest. Good deal.

I must say, this album certainly goes for the throat from the word go. Gunfire and screams lead into "2nd Hand Smoke", a track of horrorcore fire that could probably win over at least a few critics. A few. Much of the album is made up of these kind of hard-hitting, high-energy tracks that are perfectly suited to a perpetually adolescent metalhead such as myself. Lyrical geniuses they may not be, but a song that seems to be loosely based on the movie Halloween, creatively titled "Murder Murder Murder", that includes animal mutilation, necrophilia, and masturbation pleases me nonetheless. Bitchin'.

I'm a terrible judge of rapping skills, but Twiztid aren't nearly as awful as ICP. They might just be in shouting distance of perfectly decent.

Oh wait, there was a juggalo reference. But it's in a cover of an ICP song so it doesn't count. Who covers rap songs anyway?

"85 Bucks an Hour" is one of the greatest things I've ever heard. It starts with Violent J from ICP throwing down a self-consciously terrible verse, even for him, where he proceeds to not rhyme, stop his verse to make a prank phone call, and best of all at one point he says "Psychopathic Records are geniuses/Get off our penises". Later on he comes back in on the track to make a "free-style" where he steadily loses speed as he struggles to come up with anything to say ("I kick free styles/For miles/My gold comes in piles/I picked up deer shit/And now I spit raps/I snap your neck/Cause my freestyles are fresh..."). Brilliant.

Last song, "Renditions of Reality" is a bit of a departure and shows a more melodic, gothic atmosphere than the grimy, lo-fi horrorcore of the rest of the album. Twiztid would explore this part of their sound more fully on the next album (with varying degrees of success [and by that I mean half the album sucked]). But it works on this song.

Fuck all of you, I'm buying this shit.

P.S. I have a warm, fuzzy place in my heart for Monoxide Child for his public love of cigarettes. Even if he does smoke Newports. Blech!

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