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Mindless Self Indulgence
You'll Rebel to Anything

Metropolis Records

Posted: Wednesday, March 29, 2006
By: Ilker Yucel
Editor

What can you say about Mindless Self Indulgence? You either like them or you don’t. For a number of years now, the quartet of Jimmy Urine, Steve, Righ?, Lyn-Z, and Kitty have demonstrated a complete and uniquely venomous disregard for authority, a trait that could grant them the label of being one of the last few bands to truly employ the spirit of punk. Their music (which is admirably difficult to categorize) mixes electronic and industrial programming and dirty guitars with fast-paced tempos and anarchic progressions that give the indication that the members of the band must suffer from attention deficit disorder. Their latest album and their first on Metropolis Records, You’ll Rebel to Anything is no different from their past output. However, given that the band’s sound is fairly original (not too many bands sound like MSI), this album is just as fresh as anything they’ve done up to now.

Tracks fly by with the speed of a bullet, which does keep true to their punk attitudes; the average length of an MSI song is 2 ½ minutes long. The lyrics are unapologetically vulgar and distasteful, and yet sung in vocalist Jimmy Urine’s quirky falsetto that would inspire a few laugh riots (and riots are what this band is all about… their live shows are known to be just as chaotic). Of course, with song titles like “Stupid MF,” “2 Hookers and an Eight Ball,” and the appropriately titled closing track, “Bullshit,” you can be sure to hear the most vulgar language since Tarentino, though much of it is sung so fast that most of it gets lost on the listener. They even mock the listeners for it, like on the track “Stupid MF,” in which Jimmy sings, “Should I talk slower like you’re retarded?” It’s not without its element of humor; with lines like “Do you believe that I write this shit? / Stupid people thinking that I am cool” from “2 Hookers and an Eight Ball,” or “I like my coffee black / just like my metal” from “Shut Me Up,” the band certainly seems to have no illusions about taking themselves or the rest of the world seriously. The title track is a shameless bashing of the music-listening audience. Even the cover image of a crucifix made up of video game controllers and joy sticks (let’s face it, video games are as legitimate a deity as Jesus these days, or at least MSI think so), or the disclaimer on the inside cover in which the band chides parents for blaming bands and musicians for their children’s bad behavior indicates that MSI has no problem with pointing the proverbial finger at authority, be it government, parenting, or religion.

The only downside to the album is the cover of Rush’s seminal hit “Tom Sawyer.” Aside from being a classic track about nonconformity, its message seems much more substantial than MSI’s punk-ish derision of anyone and anything, making it seem more serious and out of place on the album in spite of the band’s performance of the song in their own style. Then again, this reviewer is a fan of Rush and is generally against covers anyway, so perhaps it’s mere bias. Nonetheless, You’ll Rebel to Anything is Mindless Self Indulgence at its best, strengthening all of the elements that have made up their music up to now. Notoriously offensive and certainly not for everybody, You’ll Rebel to Anything is just the album for anybody in need of something to piss off the status quo or anybody who needs a good laugh.