Sound Check — Geoff Carter: Primal Scream’s latest ‘just what we need right now’

Friday, May 19, 2000 | 9:04 a.m.

Geoff Carter's music column appears Fridays. Reach him at carter@vegas.com.

I can't recall the last time I disagreed with Alex over a musical selection. We developed a simpatico while working together on KUNV's "Radiolucent" (rest in peace), and it has continued right up through today.

Or should I say, through last week -- when we disagreed over Primal Scream's "XTRMNTR."

"I don't know about this one," he said. "I think they're trying too hard to emulate the Chemical Brothers."

Sorry, Alex, but I have to break the streak. "XTRMNTR" isn't a Chemical Brothers rip-off; rather, it's a Ministry rip-off, a la "Twitch." Primal Scream has made the record that Ministry should have made last year -- a hard fusion of the caginess that distinguished "Twitch" from every other techno-industrial record of the late '80s and the full-metal racket the band mastered with "The Brain is a Terrible Thing to Taste."

Good thing, too. "XTRMNTR" is just what we need right now, in the wake of Los Alamos, that Elian kid and the unholy terror of Bush vs. Gore: it is a near-toxic antidote to current events, executed in the classic Ministry style. Why bother throwing gasoline on a fire, when you can just pile Exxon on there instead?

"XTRMNTR" opens with "Kill All Hippies," a double-edged axiom if ever one existed: it is at once a denunciation of Baby Boomer opportunism -- thanks for nothing, Woodstock '99 -- and a sharp jab at the band's flower-pop origins. The rootsy, psychedelic Primal Scream of "Sonic Flower Groove" and "Give Out But Don't Give Up" is long gone, and in its place is an angry young whelp named 'Gorgeous' inciting unrest with a battle cry of "Subvert normality."

It's not the only time the band plays fast and loose with the narrative voice on "XTRMNTR." In "Exterminator," vocalist Bobby Gillespie starts off as the oppressor -- "Exterminate the underclass / no civil disobedience" -- then subtly changes sides, ending up on the business end of the riot line: "So look out kid, you keep it all hid / you think you're free, but you ain't free, just free to be hit." The reference to "Subterranean Homesick Blues" is likely intentional -- the band's way of noting that things haven't changed all that much in the 35 years since Bob Dylan put those words down on cue cards.

That said, it's also possible to listen to "XTRMNTR" without getting the message -- it's one wicked headbanger, on the dance floor and off. The anti-fascism, anti-rhetoric anthem "Swastika Eyes" rushes along on solid beats by Jagz Kooner and the Chemical Brothers (apparently the band liked the groove enough to put two propulsive mixes of one song on the same record). "My mind's a weapon immune from infection," snarls Gillespie, as the song leans into the corners.

Only "Pills" seems to go wrong, and only at first blush. It's built around a flaccid hip-hop beat, and the sound of Gillespie rapping is a sad one. However, before you write the entire record off, the song turns on itself -- like a man biting his own hand hard enough to draw blood.

It's a stunt worthy of Ministry's Al Jourgensen, a man who knew how to draw blood with sound in his day. The track after "Pills," an instrumental called "Blood Money," seems to pay tribute to him by referencing the bass line of Ministry's "So What." And "Shoot Speed Kill Light" is good enough to be on "Twitch 2," if Mr. Jourgensen happens to be soliciting material from other songwriters.

As I said before, I don't normally disagree with Alex. But fire departments don't normally light enormous fires to prevent them, and that Bush/Gore race is pretty scary. These are weird times, and Primal Scream has chosen to face them down.

I'd admire the band's tenacity even if the record weren't so good.

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