Sloppy Meat Eaters
Shameless Self-Promotion
Orange Peel
This trio is from Rome, Georgia, and is doing things like working at crappy gas station jobs while trying to make it as musicians, so I wanted to like this CD. To lead with the positives, the CD is well recorded. And the drummer’s good.
After that things fall off dramatically. The guitar and bass playing (to be fair, the bass parts were played by the singer-guitarist) give new meaning to the term “pedestrian.” OK, that could be said of a lot of bands, especially punk bands, so what’s my beef?
Two things, closely related. The more important flaw is the lyrics. They were included. Not on the liner, on the recording. The lyrics here consistently evidence a shallow, puerile worldview that makes the band instantly unlikable. And throw in sexist (“I saw a big titty girl the other day,” “they’re all the same”) and homophobic (use of “fag” and referencing “sucking dick” as a disparagement of straight people). And the total package belies the band’s probable retort that such was all in jest (wait, they wouldn’t know “jest,” better make that “fun”), from the smug bleachblond cover pose to the underage nymphets in tight “I (heart) SME” T-shirts on the liner.
One of their own song titles says it best: “A Dumb Guy in a Stupid Band.” Indeed. I predict they’ll be huge.
PO Box 6165, Rome, GA 30162, sme666@aol.com, http://www.slopymeateaters.com
