Vim Fuego
Dan Lilker’s place in extreme music is well cemented. He had a go at thrash, with Anthrax. Then there was crossover thrash, with Nuclear Assault and S.O.D. When thrash was dying a death, Lilker reinvented himself once again, this time taking on grindcore with the highly influential Brutal Truth. Through all this Lilker redefined the dark art of the bass guitar. What is less known is he gave grindcore drums a go too.
Yep, Extra Hot Sauce’s “Taco of Death” was a one-off grind/crust album from 1988, featuring big Danny on drums. It’s rough, spontaneous 80s grind with a sense of humour. If you know Unseen Terror and Spazztic Blurr, just imagine a band somewhere between the two and you have Extra Hot Sauce.
“Lookout For The Cheeba Man” is a funky reggae workout, a la Bad Brains, until it hits a mosh section, then a full on grinding blur, before skanking back down a couple of gears again. It’s silly but fun. “Passive Terrorism” is Nuclear Assault with a turbo charger and crust punk vocals. “Homina Homina Homina” is a seven second hardcore blast of a song.
There’s a bit of the aforementioned S.O.D. politically incorrect humour included, but like S.O.D. there’s the odd serious message thrown in to. Or it seems like there is. The lyrics are a bit hard to decipher, but the song titles look that way. Or they could be a complete piss take. Who knows? On “Tony’s Dilemma”, Tony is complaining because a girl he picked up gave him AIDS, while “I Need A Job” speaks for itself.
There are three covers on the album. What would you generally expect a grindcore band to cover? Discharge? GBH? The Exploited? How about Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, and Lynyrd Skynyrd? No? Well, that’s what ya get here. Yep, supercharged, supercheesed, supershort versions of “Paranoid”, “Communication Breakdown”, and “Freebird”. None of these are very clever, but it’s lots of fun!
And fun really is the recurring theme. None of this is to be taken too seriously, but it’s seriously well executed. The whole album is an exercise in exploring musical dynamics, song structures, and the seemingly limitless possibilities of a fledgling genre.