Anal Cunt

/wiki/Anal Cuntcreator
Seth with AxCx at Relapse Festival 1993 crop

Anal Cunt is a Stealth Parody. You need to know this before you take a look at some of the band's song titles and get all offended.

Anal Cunt, also known as AxCx and A.C. for censorship reasons, was an American Grindcore band that formed in Newton, Massachusetts in 1988. The band was known for its frequent lineup changes, ending with Seth Putnam, Tim Morse, and Josh Martin. They built a name for themselves from extremely offensive lyrics and song titles as well as a distinct (and distinctly painful) musical style that took Grindcore well beyond its initial limits. Songs rarely lasted for more than a minute, thus, it was not uncommon for their albums to include 40-50 tracks, but with song titles such as "I Lit Your Baby On Fire," "Recycling Is Gay," "I Sent Concentration Camp Footage to America's Funniest Home Videos", and "Howard Wulkan is Bald", perhaps brevity was a good thing. They were also known for being shamelessly tongue-in-cheek, releasing, among other things, an acoustic grindcore single, EPs with increasingly and ridiculously large amounts of songs in them, and a completely insincere acoustic folk album, comically at odds with their entire discography.

The band folded, however, in June of 2011, when Putnam suffered a heart attack and died. He was 43.

Anal Cunt provides examples of the following tropes:

(fill in the blank) is dumb
(fill in the blank) is gay
(fill in the blank)'s a cunt
And Tom Pascual is short

  • Ass Shove - The lyrics to "Pottery is Gay" features "YOU MADE A CLAY DILDO AND SHOVED IT UP YOUR ASSSSSSS"
  • Beyond the Impossible - "5643 Song EP". How they got all the songs in is by playing, on each side, one song followed by many incredibly short songs in rapid succession. At any given time, sixteen of them are playing at once.
  • Bowdlerization - Subverted:
    • On multiple recordings, the name is abbreviated to A. C. or AxCx, with the letters drawn to resemble the orifices.
    • When they were forced to censor the lyrics to some songs on "It Just Gets Worse," they covered them up with the tag anal cunt--FUCKING offensive.
  • Careful with That Axe
  • Comedic Sociopathy: The assumed persona on "It Just Gets Worse".
  • Comically Missing the Point: The speaker of "I Sent Concentration Camp Footage To America's Funniest Home Videos;" after his submissions get rejected, he mails the show a copy of "Birth of a Nation."
  • Credits Gag: On I Like It When You Die, they did this to a couple of the songs they covered. The original writers for the Hungry Hungry Hippos jingle and "Just the Two of Us" are credited as "Some asshole" and "Some fucking retard," respectively.
  • Dead Baby Comedy - Literally in at least two cases, one being "I Lit Your Baby on Fire".
  • Department of Redundancy Department - "Extreme Noise Terror is Afraid of Us" has this line:

You’re gay homosexual faggots, plus you’re fucking gay

PARENTAL ADVISORY: AC LYRICS

  • Genre Adultery - Picnic of Love and, to a lesser extent, Fuckin' A.
  • Genre Savvy/Self-Deprecation: Near the end of "I Like It When You Die" is the song "You (Fill In The Blank)", which was about how formulaic the songwriting had gotten.
  • Grindcore - They were a parody of it by making their songs go Up to Eleven.
  • Harsh Vocals: Seth was notorious for both his constant screaming and his capacity to sound like he used lye for mouthwash.
  • Heavy Metal Umlaut: On the album "Fuckin' A," they appear credited as Anäl Cünt.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight - Based on his own experience, Putnam believed that "You're In A Coma" was spot-on.
  • Indecipherable Lyrics: Putnam, full stop. For example, the first verse on "I Ate Your Horse" is either "Your dad took out a second mortgage to buy you a horse" or "Yaragabawagabwaryagh."
  • Infant Immortality - Devastatingly subverted with "I Lit Your Baby on Fire".
  • Intentionally Awkward Title - The band's name, as well as most of their songs.
  • In the Style Of: For a while, they would turn everything from The Guess Who's "American Woman" to the theme song to Three's Company into grindcore, and there's also the self-explanatory "Stayin' Alive (Oi Version)".
  • It's Popular, Now It Sucks - This tendency (that has never really afflicted the band) was made fun of with the song "I'm Not Allowed to Like A.C. Any More Since They Signed to Earache".
  • Laser-Guided Karma - Putnam, who wrote a song titled "You're In a Coma", had a near fatal drug overdose in 2004 that resulted in him falling into a coma for almost a month.
    • Reportedly, he played "You're in a Coma" and "Pull the Plug" at a concert after his hospitalization.
    • Additionally, "Ha Ha Your Wife Left You." He later got divorced. Allegedly, follow-ups to both were written, but didn't get recorded.
  • Long Title: Some of their song titles.
  • Meaningful Name: They chose their name because it was "the most offensive, stupid, dumb, etc name possible."
  • Memetic Molester: In-universe-er, studio: Jim Howell, Freddie Mercury and Artimus Pyle.
  • Missing Episode: Only about fifty copies of Howard Wulkan Is Bald were made. However, it is easily available on the internet, thanks to circulation of the album.
  • Mohs Scale of Rock and Metal Hardness: This is the band that defined 11, barring Picnic Of Love (a textbook 1) and Fuckin' A (around 7 or so.)
  • Motor Mouth: More often than not, the lyrics are incomprehensible because Putnam sang so damn fast.
  • No Such Thing as Bad Publicity: Putnam mailed copies of "Morbid Florist" to people who wouldn't like it just to get unfavorable reviews.
  • Refuge in Audacity: Examples of song titles: "I Went Back in Time and Voted for Hitler"; "I Sent Concentration Camp Footage to America's Funniest Home Videos"; "I Became a Counselor so I Could Tell Rape Victims They Asked for It"; "Conor Clapton Committed Suicide Because His Father Sucks" (changed for the record label's fear of being sued to "Your Kid Committed Suicide Because You Suck"), "You're In a Coma" (which became very ironic when Putnam fell into a coma in 2004 as a result of a drug overdose), and "Hitler was a Sensitive Man".
  • Refuge in Vulgarity - Gee, I wonder what possibly could be offensive about a band that calls itself "Anal Cunt".
  • Running Gag - Two throughout "I Like It When You Die:" "(X) Is Gay" and "You (X)/You Are (X)" which culminated near the end of the album in "You (Fill In The Blank).
  • Self-Deprecation
    • The cover of Howard is Bald has self-caricatures of them, including a fat drunken bucktoothed Seth Putnam.
    • "Hey, who complimented us by saying we're a bunch of Nazis?"
    • And of course there's album titles like It Just Gets Worse and Wearing Out Our Welcome and the song "Everyone In Anal Cunt Is Dumb".
  • Shout-Out: "Dictators Are Cool" alternates between praising actual dictators and praising the members of the band The Dictators:

Mussolini got pissed on by his people
Hitler had a Charlie Chaplin mustache
Dick Manitoba grabbed my sister's tits
Mark Mendoza was in Twisted Sister

  • Stealth Parody - Of grindcore, black metal, and offensive lyrics in general.
  • Straw Misogynist: Plenty, but known examples include "You're Pregnant, So I Kicked You in the Stomach"; "I Fucked Your Wife"; "The Only Reason Men Talk to You is Because They Want to Get Laid, You Stupid Fucking Cunt"; "I Pushed Your Wife in Front of the Subway", and "Women: Nature's Punching Bag".
  • Stylistic Suck - It was all part of the joke.
  • Surprisingly Gentle Album - Picnic of Love. Knowing them, it's of course Played for Laughs.
    • Fuckin' A, a parody album In the Style Of Motley Crue. It's still somewhat high on the Mohs Scale of Rock and Metal Hardness, but the very fact that every song has a recognizable riff makes it surprisingly gentle for them. It even has a power ballad (of sorts) in the form of "I Wish My Dealer Was Open".
    • Outside of albums, there's also "I Just Saw The Gayest Guy On Earth".
    • Howard Wulkan Is Bald is a very lighthearted poke at a music executive they are friends with named Howard Wulkan. He's bald. There is vulgarity, but it is much more sparing than the other albums. Like Picnic Of Love, a lot of the songs are covers, except with the lyrics changed to focus on Howard and how bald he is. Really, almost nobody could find it offensive. Howard didn't.
    • It should be noted they were heavily drunk, or hung over, when they made it, and they knew it was a crappy album - they just put on random songs and replaced the lyrics. It also has a tribute to Wesley Willis in the last song.
  • Take That
    • "Chris Barnes is a Pussy", written after Chris Barnes (of Six Feet Under and formerly Cannibal Corpse) challenged Seth to a fight but never showed up.
      • Sometimes, their Take Thats are inside jokes between them and the targets. "Anyone Who Likes The Dillinger Escape Plan Is A Faggot", "Howard Wulkan's Bald", "Kyle from Incantation Has A Mustache" and any song with "Mike" or "Mike Mahan" (one of the former guitarists) in the title are playful (for AC) ribs towards the subjects.
    • The song "Locking Drop Dead in McDonald's" refers to influential hardcore punk band Dropdead, whose members are all members of PETA and the ALF, as well as being vegan. Anal Cunt did indeed lock them in a McDonald's for a photo shoot
    • Another example is "Extreme Noise Terror are Afraid of Us", written after Anal Cunt were kicked off a tour in 1997 by Extreme Noise Terror.
    • "The Word Homophobic is Gay" features the lines "Anti-homophobe by Brutal Truth / Is a pathetic attempt to be PC / Kevin's obviously not a homophobe / Because he's a fucking faggot!"
  • Those Wacky Nazis - The Nazis were mentioned frequently as an attempt to offend people.
  • Title-Only Chorus - A large portion of their songs - if you can understand the chorus at all.
  • The Unintelligible - The lyrics are often nigh-impossible to discern, thanks to Seth's reptile-growl-roar-thing. Yes, that's not just pure screaming, there are lyrics.
  • Unplugged Version: parodied by their Unplugged EP: Side A is their songs played with undistorted (but still electric) guitar, Side B is a live performance where their current guitarist played an electric guitar that was literally unplugged, as in not plugged in.
  • They Plotted a Perfectly Good Waste: They strove to be deliberately So Bad It's Good.
  • Three Chords and the Truth
  • Up to Eleven - As if AxCx wasn't enough, Putnam also set up another Stealth Parody act in the form of "acoustic black metal" band Impaled Northern Moonforest, lampooning the ridiculously "grim and frostbitten" lyrics of many a Black Metal band.
    • This was also the premise of "It Just Gets Worse;" take "I Like It When You Die" and make it even more offensive. Four songs had to have their lyrics censored and one had to have its title changed.
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