So Bad It Might Be Intentional

I hesitate to post this, because I don’t want to be a hater, especially an attention-seeking hater, but as soon as heard it I knew it was too bizarre to not write about. And I should clarify that I don’t literally hate this, in fact I kind of admire it, although I’m not sure if that’s for reasons that the creator intended.

There’s a whole subculture out there of cinemaphiles who watch bad movies for entertainment. They seek out the most incompetently made, most conceptually ludicrous films in order to mock them to bloody pieces, to behold the terrible power of creativity and its power to be terrible.

Plenty of music falls into this underbelly of entertainment as well. There may be less of a culture for enjoying it, but I think most people enjoy some music that they recognize as bad, and its badness is part of the reason they like it. 

There is actually a subculture for music that is intentionally bad, as some kind of artistic statement—a lot of punk rock fits here. There is also music that is satirically bad, trying to be obnoxious or over-the-top.

And then there is music that is trying to be great but fails, and fails hard on every level, yet remains admirable in its attempt, in its foolhardy confidence and disproportionate ambition.

The album I want to talk about could fit into any one of these categories, and I really can’t tell which.

It’s an artist I am slightly familiar with. I remember a couple of remixes he did years ago, and I remember his backstory, that he was previously a drummer in a death metal band but dropped that in favor of becoming a dubstep producer, when that whole wave took over.

Well I stumbled on his music again the other day when looking for a different song with the same title. Right away the cover art drew me in (as seen above). I genuinely love that cover, and I was really hoping I would like at least a song or two from the album. But then I listened to it…

The production is grating right off the bat, and then the vocals come in, with lyrics so excessively vulgar, I had to rewind and listen again to be sure I heard correctly. I’m not one to shy away from vulgarity, but Jesus this song is so aggressively sexual, it’s kind of unnerving. Fascinating, but in an ugly way.

I went on to skip around through the whole album, unable to listen to more than a minute or two at a time, but unable to stop either. A few other tracks have lyrics that are similarly obscene, in the most bald-faced, shameless, belligerent way.

It reminds me of 3OH!3, an electro-pop group from the late 2000s, who had a similar vibe of over-produced rap with stupid hyper-sexual lyrics. Their music always came off as satirical to me, and I did enjoy a few of their songs (I have not heard any of their recent albums).

Well, what’s interesting with this Borgore album is I can’t tell if it is satirical or not. It’s so fucking bad that at times I feel like it must be self-aware. This is a somewhat well-known artist, he’s been around for a while and collaborated with some bigger names like Yael and Miley Cyrus, how could this guy possibly put out music so bad without realizing it?

But then you get to a song like this:

… and it’s so nonsensical it sounds like someone who’s never made music before. Is it intentionally transgressive? Or is it an incredibly disastrous attempt at serious music? I cannot fucking get it. It blows my mind.

This album is the Spring Breakers of music, which is a movie that felt so incompetent, immature, and needlessly aggressive that it made for one of the most unpleasant theater-going experiences of my life. And yet some people will defend Spring Breakers as a transgressive masterpiece. They say it was all satire, and apparently the joke was on me the whole time.

There’s kind of a similar vibe with this Borgore album of everything being as gratuitous, pornographic, and drug-soaked as possible. It’s gross, but I can’t deny that it’s interesting.

Well, maybe you can help me figure it out. Is this album supposed to be good? Or is it a prank on its listeners? Let me know in the comments, thanks for reading!

Giblonious