Welcome to the latest edition of ‘Golden Vault’, where we delve into the annals of music to bring you a classic album. You’ll know some like the back of your hand and nothing of others. We hope to get you reacquainted with old friends and create new favourites. The album to be taken out of the Golden Vault for reappraisal this week is 'Rembrandt Pussyhorse' by Butthole Surfers.

‘Rembrandt Pussyhorse’ is America viewed through a kaleidoscope of Woodstock’s brown acid. The sacred, untouchable genres of americana, hardcore punk and classic rock are all defiled at the hands of Butthole Surfers. It’s a righteous flag-burning of an LP, proving that nothing is sacred and that nothing should be.

Like all belief systems, rock n’ roll’s quote-un-quote “values” are largely based on “can’t-dos” as opposed to “can-dos”. You can’t reimagine a classic rock staple like The Guess Who’s American Woman as a pounding, nigh-industrial parody. But Butthole Surfers did. Rendering the original’s ballsy riff almost impotently wimpy and intensifying the drums’ power to Godflesh levels of ferocity. It’s desecration of a most hilarious sort.

From the band’s name on down, Butthole Surfers revel in comedy. A surreal, LSD-riddled brand of parody. On ‘Rembrandt Pussyhorse,’ they are satirising those strains of all-American music and the pedestals they’ve been placed on. The hallowed styles beyond criticism.

The three grand piano chords that make up opening track Creep In The Cellar lend it a southern-gothic majesty, á la Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds’ ‘80s output. But juxtapose it with the backwards fiddle track that skates on toothpick-thin ice over the top, and you have a psychedelic burlesque of that most ‘merican genre: country and western.

Waiting For Jimmy To Kick could be the soundtrack to a Jerry Lee Lewis detox: pounding minor-key piano, demented low-mixed vocals and murky howling from accountant-turned-Surfers’ vocalist Gibby Haynes. Strangers Die Everyday’s B-movie organ and bubbling cauldron sound effects conjure up images of late nights at an anonymous drive-through, watching a black and white flick of some long-lost monster movie. And Whirling Hall Of Knives, with its demented waltzing beat and electric guitar drone, is a stately ballroom dance through that slaughter-hall of the song’s title.    

‘Rembrandt Pussyhorse’ is the sound of a troubled adolescent’s mind: nonsensical, angry, creative. At the time of the album’s release in 1986, hair metal reigned on the airwaves and TV screens. A nauseating day-glo fad that bands such as Butthole Surfers reviled and that alienated them from the homo-sapient pack. But this alienation gave them total creative freedom. An emancipation that did not go to waste.

Butthole Surfers took full advantage of their underground liberty. The ‘80s rock n’ roll megastars’ albums were produced to within an inch of their lives. Squeaky clean as their platinum certifications but with almost none of the fearless studio-experimentation that came to define the synth-pop wave of that same decade.

In stark contrast, the Surfers’ experiments with tape-editing and sound-manipulation would make ‘Rembrandt Pussyhorse’ a most experimental album in an illustrious catalogue of experimental albums. Recording technology had advanced lightyears since its inception in 1887, 99 years previous. But few rock bands made full use of these advancements.

Though Butthole Surfers were never your average rock band. Devoid of the usual trappings of song structure - verse, chorus, bridge, repeat - the nine tracks on ‘Rembrandt Pussyhorse’ are malformed proof of that fact. Tracks such as their reevaluation of the theme song from the TV show Perry are more like sideshow circus-freak renditions of beloved musical styles than faithful interpretations.

Parodies, lampoons, caricatures, that’s what the songs on ‘Rembrandt Pussyhorse’ are. And this does not diminish their creative worth. In fact, quite the opposite.

Comedy is the usurper of thrones. A joke can flay skin, strip emperors of their clothes and drag Gods screaming down to the earth that spawned them. By over-exaggerating these hallowed genres almost to the point of tastelessness, Butthole Surfers utilised a creative tool that is undervalued: laughter.

To dismiss a joke as “trite” is like scoffing at an atom bomb. It is to undermine its worth and thus, to unfairly compromise a part of the human condition: creativity.

Butthole Surfers’ ‘Rembrandt Pussyhorse,’ as well as being far more than merely quality music, is a comedic triumph. Much like Bill Hicks’ comedy, it proves the only that’s sacred is humans and our creativity. But even then, it’s important to laugh at yourself. After all, you’re not that important.