1992 was a very odd time for hard rock and metal music. Bands like Nirvana, the Screaming Trees, and Pearl Jam were emerging with not just a new sound but a look that completely made most hard rock/metal bands look pretty fucking dumb. Gone were the leather pants and obnoxious t-shirts with homophobic slurs and womanizing images and in was the look of flannel and blue jeans. It was all a very no-frills image that matched the no-frills sound of their music.
At this point, hard rock/metal was on the decline and those bands who were once filling arenas with lavish stage performances were now playing clubs to 300 or so people and it just got worse for them as the years passed. In ’92, if you were a hard rock band looking to break into the scene, you had better be doing something musically different and visually different as well.
There was a band from North Carolina called Animal Bag who performed a unique blend of hard rock, metal, and a touch of prog with a hippie mentality while decked out in tie-dye and a singer that looked more like a Deadhead than a metalhead. White Trash was a band of college dropouts who played a mix of funk and hard rock that sounded like a poppy version of Fishbone. Then, you had Life Sex & Death out of Chicago/Los Angeles.
Life Sex and Death was something that stuck out. ¾ of the band were good looking dudes with amazing hair and the singer, Stanley, was a greasy, stinky, disgusting homeless-looking guy wearing a tattered suit and shoes that nearly had no soles to them. If the goal at this point in the game was, as I previously stated, to stand out looking and sounding different, Life Sex & Death succeeded. They had the image down but how about the music?
Life Sex & Death released their only album The Silent Majority. I saw their video for the song “Tank” on Headbanger’s Ball and I didn’t love it. It wasn’t a bad song at all but I was intrigued. They looked so different. The image of the band, in my opinion, was kind of a stab at the overall image of the hard rock bands that, at the time, were their peers. The lead singer, Stanley (Chris Stann), was the anti-rockstar with this crazy, unique, really good voice. LSD’s music was pretty cool as well. It was heavier than hard rock and more strange and different than metal. Their sound rested somewhere in between the two. I also saw the video for “Schools for Fools” and thought it was so campy in an Alice Cooper like way. This convinced me to pick up the album.
Why am I writing this piece after all these years? I am mainly doing it because while compiling all the shows I have ever seen into a spreadsheet (dork alert) I remembered that I saw Life Sex & Death live here in Atlanta in front of about 30 people at most. I remembered it being a really fun show but I could barely remember what their music sounded like. For most bands, this is not a great thing as this files the music in the “forgettable” category.
I pulled up the album on Spotify to listen to and suddenly I was reminded why I forgot about this band’s music. The image and gimmick of Life Sex & Death completely overpowered the band’s music and maybe this is why they disappeared as fast as they hit the scene. “Schools for Fools” was a fun listen and the rest of the album had some good moments. “Jawhol Asshole” (not sure what Jawhol is) and “Fuckin’ Shit Ass” had me rolling my eyes because it was a band trying way too hard to achieve shock value. Maybe it somewhat worked back in ’92 it just seemed stupid in 2020.
On the good side, “Train” is actually a really cool fucking song. Musically it was a fun listen with some great harmonica playing and one of the coolest breaks in a song I’ve heard. Lyrically “Train” had some cool gems in there like, “She’s a roped-up car collision. She’s an open heart incision. She’s in every tab of acid that I score.” I thought that was fucking well thought out. “Raise a Little Hell” was another anthemic number that had the band showing their Alice Cooper (lyrically) influence. “Guatemala” is also a cool song. It has this kind of dark psychedelic vibe to it. It’s a song that I can’t describe only to say that it sounds like something I’ve heard many times yet I can’t quite tell you from who or where.
“Big Black Bush.” Really? Again, just kind of eye-rolling silliness. The song isn’t bad musically as it does have a great ending with a cool break down that grooves but it just isn’t enough to make it a good song. The album closes with a terrible piano ballad called “Rise Above.” I’m guessing that this song is supposed to evoke Stanley’s pain and suffering that apparently drove him to be this homeless, stinky, gross bum but it makes me shake my head. This particular song seems to take this whole gimmick and stretch it to caricature level. Tsk Tsk Tsk.
Now I remember why I couldn’t remember the songs of Life Sex & Death. LSD was a band with an image that dominated the music. The fact that I could remember the gimmick vividly and not the songs speak volume. I have read from people that supposedly worked with the band in some fashion that the Stanley thing wasn’t a gimmick and that before shows their manager or a roadie would have to go fetch him out of a dumpster behind the venue. This is all too weird for me because not too long before this, LSD had a video out called “American Noise” which pre-dates the Silent Majority album. Stanley was Chris Stann and he had long hair, shaking his hips, and they sounded just like an average to a sub-par hard rock band.
Many people to this day look back on Life Sex & Death as a band that should have been huge. People go on to even call them groundbreaking. Life Sex & Death has a strong cult following that believes they could have been something much bigger but I look at them as a band that got completely eaten and swallowed by their gag. The joke ate the comedian. It was a gimmick gone awry and a joke that very few got. After listening to The Silent Majority, I’d be fine if I didn’t listen to this album again because I’m sure in another 20 years (when I’m 67) I won’t remember what they sound like. I’ll also probably be dribbling tapioca pudding out of my mouth but that’s a whole other story.
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