Review: Dave Brokie Experience

Dave Brockie Experience
““Diarrhea of a Madman””
(Metal Blade)

I’m not sure what to expect when an album from Gwar’s frontman opens up with a song that seems to be a cover of a The Knaack song, but isn’t.  Catchy, for sure, this record is.  Inspired, not at all.  Since Dave Brokie is one of my favorite vocalists I have no problem with this album.  The humor is far more juvenile, perhaps somewhat broader, than Gwar, and not at all more crude as I had expected.  One highlight is the song You Want to Suck My Dick.  The title should give you a fair idea of that which this album consists.  Mostly the album songs are played as straight up Rock and Roll as compared to Gwar’s metal noodling, but oddly at times, the songs bear the stamp of the emo sound.  The songs that bear that particular sound are the ones that are clearly disposable, for me anyway.  Thus, half of the album succeeds while half was in need of lots more thought.  They choose to end the album with two rambling spoken word pieces over various noises, almost like a book on tape if books on tape were recorded by D&D geeks on a week long acid trip.  But for any negative grumbling I have about the album, it does give exactly what it promises, more or less, and that’s the diarrhea of a madman.  Gwar fans can’t go wrong buying this album, everyone else, if you’re not a Gwar fan, then you’ve already gone way too fucking wrong in the first place.  Stick around to the very end for a hidden track: Brokie’’s folk song tribute to Lady Di.