While walking by CUPS, a member of The Flail staff obtained a handful of CDs from the box outside of the station. Not surprisingly, they were all a complete waste of plastic and aluminum.
A particular “album” that stood out among the filth was titled Last Picked For Kickball by a “band” who call themselves Cacophony. The band call their personalized genre “Indie/Pop/SpokenWord” which consists of heavy bass, out-of-tune vocals and a lack of any musical knowledge.
The opening track “Love Me, Dad” is an ear-shattering combination of spastic cymbals, acoustic guitar, electronic dance music and what sounds like Google Translate repeatedly saying “why” in the background. The track reminds one of a child throwing a tantrum or a cat dying, possibly in a blender.
Following is a track consisting of nothing but the sound of a record player crackling for nine minutes and 17 seconds and is sadly the artistic highlight of the album. This leads up to the third track, which, interestingly enough, is actual audio of a feline being blended.
Unfortunately, it is unknown if the group was ever prosecuted for animal cruelty.
Although the remaining six tracks are all titled, they seem to be completely nonexistent. Upon uploading the disk to a computer, I discovered that the tracks “exist” but they are just empty sound files, which individually take up 1.2 gigabytes of storage and give computers a virus.
The album was reviewed by an underground music website called Trident and they gave the album a 1.2 out of 10. Trident stated that, “the fact that the band recognizes the unbearable nature of their music through their band name gives them some small amount of artistic credit.”
However, after listening to the album multiple times, translating the entire album notes into English (originally in binary) and taking into account that they murdered a cat, I have come to the conclusion that the work can actually be described not as an obscure art form, but as an obscenity.
To paraphrase the late Justice Potter Stewart’s idea of obscenity, “I knew it when I heard it.” I can attest that the work in fact “lacked serious artistic, literary, political, or scientific value” (Miller v. California) in every regard. For this reason, the album should be destroyed and CUPS should be fined for their promotion of the work.
In a survey given to 10 Puget Sound students, nine of the 10 agreed that Cacophony should be persecuted. The tenth student could not speak on the album, as he had an emotional breakdown midway through the third track and was later hospitalized. No word yet if CUPS will be held responsible.
“Under no circumstances should this album be considered art,” an anonymous music teacher said, “I would rather listen to a Slipknot cover of ‘Mrs. Robinson’ than be forced to endure this heinous work ever again.”