Bugeyed Monsters Rule my World

Bugeyed 'Monsters Rule my World' (Words of Warning, 1992)

I first became interested in Words of Warning (WOW) records when Norrie made me one of his infamous punk compilations which featured an excellent, in context, track by Welsh punks The Cowboy Killers. Through this introduction I researched the band, found their label through a distro and bought both their albums and 'In Defence of our Earth' by Oi Polloi.

I was pretty happy with the service I received and the political fanzines that were included in my package. I was particularly impressed by the anarchist Tintin comics so I started making fairly regular orders from an anarchist bookshop in Bristol which seemed to have ties with the label.

As often happened in the punk scene things quickly turned sour with WOW as I began to hear stories of how much of a rip off the label head honcho was, how he'd never paid Oi Polloi and how the label had gone down the tubes because all involved thought they were going to become rich off the back of Dub War's quick rise to notoriety (although I'm sure Benji told me that his experience of WOW wasn't great as well). I didn't particularly care about any of that until I purchased a label shirt which took nearly six months to arrive. For all intents and purposes it could have been woven using toilet roll such was its lack of durability and it was destroyed after one wear in a moshpit at an Entombed and Napalm Death show. That was it for me; WOW and I were finished!

'Monsters Rule my World' sounds like Venom meets Black Flag; downtuned, sloppy, negative punk rock. I think members of Doom were involved which would have piqued my interest at the time. The insert I have is from the wrong record so I can't really comment on the lyrics although it sounds like the vocalist is repeating hangover regret mantras laced with incurable misanthropy. It's notable on a bleak and heavy punk record that there's some really awful, disconcerting harmonica on show at some points. I know a lot of people who would have loved this in 1992 and probably stand by it now, but as Midge Ure famously said; 'This means nothing to me...'

Thanks to Johan for the excellent photo assistance.

Peace