Cryptic Slaughter

A question popular among followers of thrash metal is undeniably this, “Which is considered the fastest thrash metal album of all time?” There would be a high percentage of answers supporting Reign In Blood, Darkness Descends, Pleasure To Kill or even Eternal Nightmare. Now here’s a startling reality. Wehrmacht’s debut album makes those albums sound as if they were meant to be listed under progressive metal…

As the second Millennium AD drew to a close, The Residents began to take stock on a couple of thousand years of reasonably fruitful human endeavour. One text, they felt, had inescapably set the tone and dominated the narrative throughout the Western world for most of that period, often clouding the view as they looked back. Sure enough, The Bible, Testaments Old and New, seemed like fertile ground for a confused, anonymous band approaching their fourth decade. Throughout 1998 and 1999, The Residents set about writing, recording and extensively touring a set of songs based around some of the more curious, unsettling and downright messed up stories they found upon revisiting their old Sunday School Bibles, and present here the results of those industrious years. Complete with demos and sketches, two full live recordings, a live-in-the-studio reworking and the usual assorted ephemera plus later live recordings, 'The Wormwood Box' showcases a project the band still think of very fondly, and have often revisited. Join us and marvel as the Eyeball Oddballs somehow cram murder, rape, incest, vengeance, slaughter and, erm, circumcision into a radio friendly pop format!