Thought Industry
Recruited To Do Good Deeds For The Devil (Metal Blade)
by Austin Nash
And you thought I was dead. But out of boredom and some poor decision-making, I have been recruited to write bad reviews for the Editor. Like a fat old Honduran squash champion brought out of retirement to once again blow the horn of, well, whoever’s got one at the time, I am prepared to entertain. This, of course, required a tasty tidbit which, when dangled in front of my cave, was sufficient to compel me to reach out and grab it ever so delicately with my teeth by the edge. On May 5th, 1998 Thought Industry released album number five out of seven on Metal Blade, and it’s got many treats for new and old TI fans alike. I get a bisected impression from this extravagant largesse [(lar jes’, lar’jis) n. [see large] 1. Generous giving 2. a gift generously given], Recruited To Do Good Deeds For The Devil.
First of all, it neatly wraps up an era by including numbers from as far back as the demo before the first album (Songs For Insects), in the form of remixes of previously released songs (including a Goth remix of “Earwig” by some digital band in Pennsylvania), recordings meant for any of the albums that were not published for various reasons, and acoustic renditions of “Love Is America Spelled Backwards,” “Watercolor Grey,” and “December 10th.” The album is plenty deep with live tunes to benefit those of us who do not live in the Midwest, as TI has dropped off touring of any distance since the Mods Carve The Pig album, inciting a virulent strain of poverty as the principal infection. Some of the live baubles include, from Black Umbrella: “My Famous Mistake” and “Blue;” from Mods Carve The Pig: “Republicans In Love” and “Gelatin;” and from Outer Space Is Just A Martini Away: “The Squid” and “Watercolor Grey” (with arrangement errors intact).
Second, enclose a disc of already recorded songs and live recordings (78.94% of which were recorded and engineered by now-bassist Mike Roche with the equipment that I believe TI buys with their budget, thus acquiring unlimited studio time) in a simple black, two-page sleeve with print on it, and one might think somebody is tired of not profiting from a life of artistic pain and nausea. In my opinion, it being aged and wise, the two greatest reasons to own this album, aside from the obvious diversity of its contents, are a song called “Final Ballet” from a five-cut Thought Industry demo tape recorded in 1988, and a sufficiently metaled-out live version of “Cornerstone” from the bands debut, tastefully devoid of its industrial component and finally enjoyable. Personally, I never liked “Cornerstone,” and they played it live for years. In fact, it is the only song they still play from that album. To the bands credit, I think the songs they are able to play from that album are limited to those in traditional tune due to the inflexibility of the lock-nuts at the top of Paul “the stonesman” Enzio’s neck and his subsequent inability to change his tune during a show (didn’t that guitar finally get stolen by some assholes?).
“The Final Ballet” is a remarkable industrial metal tune cruising at a cool 200 mph that later metamorphosed into “The Ballerina” from Mods Carve The Pig. This song alone, from TI’s teenaged years, is reason enough to own this album. The demo tape still exists in numbers that can be counted with one fist, and in my opinion (which is?… right, aged and wise), may still be Thought Industry’s richest memory for me, and to be honest, I never expected to see the name of any song off that demo tape on this disc’s sleeve. Never even Thought of it. Another hot dog (it’s National Hot Dog month. Just thought I’d let you know, fucker) on the album is “Encounter With A Hick” (one of the few tunes credited to guitarist Paul “the stonesman” Enzio). I fell in love with this song for a few weeks (like a good woman) after fishing a studio demo tape out of a pile of garbage emptied from the then pockets of the now-respectable Brent Oberlin after an astonishing bout of cheap beer drinking during dollar piss beer pitcher night at Upper Crust Pizza in Kalamazoo MI, 1993. This song was left off of the album Mods Carve The Pig: Assassins, Toads and Godsflesh, obviously sabotaged by the lyrics “jacking off on MTV,” which would not have been cool at the time, and because of the amazing similarity between the predominant ‘in lieu of solo’ metal riff and a certain riff in a then current Soundgarden single. You can’t miss it.
I am very glad to have this. It answers many questions, fills many empty spaces one might not have even recognized (being that they messed up the Foghat rule, third album live), and allows TI and their fans to move forward with no payload. Recruited To Do Good Deeds For The Devil presents itself with a finality that emphasizes the necessity of its evil, and might even leave the avid fan a bit worried over whether the marketing decisions made were out of laziness, as a precursor to dissolution, or skewed by economic issues. That’s the pessimistic view. The optimistic view, which I support, is that the songs are just too good to be left behind. Simple as that. After all this bullshit, just don’t read into things. Out of 20 tracks, only one sucks. Judge for yourself.
(2828 Cochran St. PMB #302 Simi Valley, CA 93065)
