THE RITE OF SPRING (AS ACID RAIN)

ACID RAIN was the original band that existed before Idiot Flesh and was formed as far back as 1985. Although Idiot Flesh often gets accused of ripping off Mr Bungle, it should be remembered that these guys actually came first and developed quite a different approach despite sharing the same genre skipping techniques that the Bunglers are famous for. As ACID RAIN, Nils Frykdahl, Gene Jun, Dan Rathbun and David Shamrock collaborated for two eclectic demos before Shamrock jumped ship not to rejoin until the project evolved into the more famous Sleepytime Gorilla Museum.

There were two releases under the ACID RAIN moniker but given the rarity of their cassette-only status, this one usually gets left out of the mix. The promotional demo "We Were All Very Worried" was the first offering which featured a very primitive SGM sound with experimental guitar riffs and avant-prog workouts with fast tempos but overall a more straight forward rock sound than anything that followed. The cassette maxed out the running time of cassettes when released in 1987 with 14 tracks that swallowed up almost 76 minutes of playing time but overall was still very far from what Idiot Flesh and SGM would progress to.

This second release THE RITE OF SPRING came out three years later, also as a cassette-only release but upped the ante in just about every way making it a very obvious early offering of the Idiot Flesh club which ceded into SGM. Yes, the title refers to Igor Stravinsky's classical hit "The Rite Of Spring" and is a bizarre and twisted avant-prog interpretation done to perfection! While the band's first offering was a guitar-driven experimental rock album with scatterings of time signature freak outs and weirdness, THE RITE OF SPRING takes rock the classics to avant-prog paradise! This is the most jittery spastic interpretation of a classical piece i've ever heard and it's a wild ride that takes you where the original composer never imagined! It's utterly brilliant. Imagine the most avant-prog laced passages of SGM and you'll get the picture.

The title track swallows up 18 minutes of this 24 minute release with the second track "Gelatinous Love of Goats" providing somewhat of a come down from rising from the altitude sickness experienced from the title track taking you so far out of the realms of 80s rock music. This second track is much more "normal" and sounds like a Jimi Hendrix inspired post-punk track with some funk that reminds me a bit of 80s Red Hot Chili Peppers. It's obvious that this was probably one of the very first tracks the band ever recorded and probably predated the debut demo release "We Were All Very Worried" which it sounds more like. It is the most primitive sounding track of any of the three bands that Frydahl and Rathbun piloted.

This is amongst the rarest of the rare and it's doubtful few if any heard this before the age of YouTube however this is a must for hardcore fans interested in the earliest offerings of one of avant-prog metal's strangest and most ingenious teams of freak-a-zoids. Somebody really needs to remaster these already and put it all out on CD. I really want to have a physical copy of both ACID RAIN releases. This particular release is proof that Sleepytime Gorilla Museum really existed in the 1980s and that this duo just hadn't quite realized it yet. Sure the arsenal of self-made instrumentation is nowhere to be heard but the creativity was already firing on all pistons this far back. This is difficult listening music so those who are addicted to safe cuddly melodies best stay clear!

4.5 rounded down