Lords of Acid – Farstucker [2001; Antler-Subway, Fingerlicking Good Records, Max Music Mexico S.A. De C.V., Never Records]

With their fourth album (which would be the band’s last until Deep Chills in 2012), Lords of Acid dive further into their high-energy and highly sexual house/techno/breakbeat blend, with Deborah Ostrega doing a fine job in her replacement of founding member Jade 4 U on vocals. “Scrood Bi U”, a take on “I Wanna Be Loved By You”, a song made famous (again) by Marilyn Monroe, opens the album with a clear demonstration of the group’s humor still being intact, with follow-ups like “Rover Take Over” (an ode to doggy-style sex), “Sex Bomb”, “A Ride with Satan’s Little Helpers”, and “Surfin’ Muncheez” keeping it in the forefront.

The album features more of an industrial rock influence than the band’s previous releases, but the synths and other electronics are still the core of the material, with warping melody lines and keyboard jabs carving up the most guitar-driven tracks, while “Lucy’s F*ck*ng Sky” takes right off on a loop-mad techno soundscape and “(A Treatise On The Practical Methods Whereby One Can) Worship The Lords” launches into near-gabber acid blurting. Though lacking in the earworm choruses and clear hooks of earlier albums, Farstucker shows the group still operating at high intensity, and while it may be something of an abrupt drop into their decade of hiatus, the sense that they had no intentions of going missing for that long is both a relief and an explanation for why so much get thrown at the wall on this release.

Here’s the original cover art.

Lords of Acid – Our Little Secret [1997; Antler-Subway, Columbia, Krypton Records, Never Records]

Continuing their trend of putting three years between each album release, Lords of Acid updated their established EBM style with more of a breakbeat emphasis on their third album, while holding fast to lyrics revolving around sex (suggested by track titles like “Rubber Doll”, “Cybersex”, and “Pussy”) while Jade 4U’s vocals can swing on a dime from sultry to banshee. Hot-edged synth sizzles come in looped bursts, downbeat drum fills are smoothly inserted, and bass-line surges roll through the arrangements with flair.

The vocals get overwhelmed in the mix from time to time, but as they’re often verging on chants of a verse (e.g., “Spank my booty!” in “Spank My Booty”), it doesn’t impact things too much. Aside from that, for all the juvenile vulgarity and over-the-top lustiness, the music shows impressive knowledge on the technical side of its composition, with loops tweaked and re-engineered for post-chorus returns, dozens of layers fitted together without undue acoustic clouding, and bass swells that assert their presence without making things swampy. A trio of remixes and a previously-unreleased bonus track on the remastered edition help round off the original’s semi-abrupt ending, with the down-side of leaving things a little bloated. While the album’s content may alienate some, it also puts across a sense of being exactly what the band intended to create, and being carefully crafted to achieve that.

Here’s the alternate cover art.

And the remastered cover art.

Lords of Acid – Voodoo-U [1994; American Recordings, Antler-Subway, Caroline Records, Mad Vox, WHTE LBLS]

With their second album, Lords of Acid tighten up the sprawl of electronic styles they explored with Lust, and find a tighter combination of high-speed techno, Euro breakbeat, sultry vocals, and sexual lyrics. Absurd perversity (e.g., being brought to orgasm by pubic lice in “The Crablouse”) is a frequent quality, and one that the group is careful not to let get drowned out by the barrages of keyboards, percussion, and samples. BDSM (”Do What You Wanna Do”, ”She & Mr. Jones”), drugs (”Marijuana in Your Brain”, “Blowing Up Your Mind”), teen sex (”Young Boys”), and a range of related topics receive focus over the course of the album, with a brashness echoed by the occasional use of electric guitar loops for extra swagger.

Dips into fully-functional dub territory, music-box imitation, and nods to disco serve as further accentuation of the group’s playfulness, but it’s rare for the songs to let that silliness rob them of their ability to bang on strong. While a track or two could have been dropped for more concentrated impact, the album taken all together has a nice flow to it, jumping from groove to groove without sinking too deeply into repetitiveness and dropping in enough instrumental breaks to keep the lyrical goofiness on the right side of overwhelming.

Here’s the censored cover art.

The cover art used in Japan.

And the cover art used for the remastered edition.