From Chaos to Ambiguity: A Theology of Noise Rock

Introduction

This text asserts that noise rock is a culturally significant and vital subgenre of rock music, that it offers multiple starting points for theological dialogue and engagement, and provides a l aunch pad for a noise-facing theology that opens us up to be more fully human and engaged with the world. Because we’re going to be covering a multitude of sounds and bands that criss-cross several decades in American music, a roadmap of where we’re headed will likely be helpful. In chapter 1 , we explore the nature and feel of noise rock by providing various gateways for listening to the music itself, from both leading noise rock bands and more obscure artists within the genre. Why is noise rock compelling and why does it matter? Chapter 2 includes a very brief genealogy of the genre by way of its ancestors, punk and no wave, in order to identify what common threads are found in all three genres and what aspects are unique to the formation and sound of noise rock. This chapter in particular leans heavily on outside voices and perspectives on those ancestral genres, as there are a few oral histories that have been collected over the years from the people who were actually there as the music formed and reverberated on the East and West coasts of the US. I purposefully chose to give them a wide berth within the chapter to help properly frame everything that comes after in the rest of this work.

From there, in chapter 3 we venture into a historical overview of noise rock, highlighting the pioneers of the genre and how they carved new paths musically within the United States. In tandem with that exploration, we also wrestle with the ontology of noise itself and the ways in which it functions when combined with music and musical structure (or lack thereof). At this point, we take all that has come before and apply it in-depth to two key bands within noise rock, Oxbow and God Bullies, in chapters 4 and 5. Each group receives their own focus within their respective chapters, looking into their histories, the conceptual themes that each wrestled with throughout parts of their discography, and closing with various frameworks for interpreting that work theologically.

Finally, we close out this noisy journey, first with a look at how noise rock intersects with three vibrant strains of theology: transgression, liberation, and weakness in chapter 6; and second with a conclusion that attempts to build out an actual theology of noise/rock in chapter 7. This constructive theology is focused on four key elements: active ears, empathetic hearts, attuned minds, and new tongues. Each of these is meant to bring together noise/rock and theology in ways that are mutually beneficial, celebrating what noise rock offers up to our existence, while encouraging a broadening and deepening of what a generous and humane theology could look like in conversation with the genre.

If we seek out the Sonus Dei wherever it might be heard, I believe that one of its centers might just be noise rock . . . if we have ears to hear, hearts that are quick to be patient, minds that are willing to understand, all while forming fresh language for engaging with the people and communities around us.

Chapter 1

The Beauty of the Ugly

Playlist:

Hitting the Wall—Cows

Visible Cow—Barkmarket

Who Was in My Room Last Night—Butthole Surfers

Mouth Breather—The Jesus Lizard

Release the Bats—The Birthday Party

Scrape—Unsane

The Talking Horse—Melvins

Scan for Playlist

¹

²

What hits you first is the distortion-laden guitar. Thick, heavy, a wall, a tangible presence. Coupled with an end-of-the-world bass line, this feels like an auditory bull in the china shop, a wrecking crew hellbent on bulldozing your eardrums, stirrups, hammers, and anvils. Galloping drums threaten to overwhelm the entire affair, filling the sound spectrum AND THEN . . . Shannon Selberg’s howling shrieks pierce through the mix and you realize that we’re only just getting started.

Hitting The Wall follows the woes of an outcast, a member of society who’s barely tolerated by the people he encounters. Indeed, he’s only tolerated inasmuch as he’s able to perform the duties expected of him or capable of paying what he owes to debtors, to society’s critics, the ones in power by virtue of being born in that position (or having enough money to buy it). Our narrator isn’t one of those folks. He’s less than, worn out and trod upon, bloody and beaten.

And that’s how his day starts. It only goes downhill from there.

Cows, Peacetika (

1991

)

* * *

The sound of a couple of car doors being shut.

A click, possibly of a stereo being turned on.

The single strum of a jangly, slightly out-of-tune guitar. The fragile notes allowed to barely ring out and flutter in the air. The cracked voice of David Sardy starts meandering, almost muttering about hell and its smell, air too thick to hear or breathe or something. It’s overwhelming . . . and then the guitars. Again with the guitars. But this time Sardy’s vocals are front and center. The guitars are off in the distance, stretched out over some desert landscape, as are the trash can drums that swoop in to join them as Sardy continues to recite some sort of fever dream about a glass gun, a hole cut in the side of an ass, and other surrealist images.

It’s not until the 1:05 minute-mark (a third of entire song itself) that the music comes in full-force, mixed in a way that the average listener is used to hearing. But at that point the brilliant impact has been made. Everything clicks at once and you’re brought fully into the madness of Barkmarket and everything that it entails. You’re told that this is the taste of fear and maybe that makes sense and maybe it doesn’t, but you’re along for the ride until it calms down or it crashes and burns and honestly, either result feels like it would be completely satisfying.

Barkmarket, Visible Cow Single (

1996

)

* * *

Why start a discussion of noise rock here? With these two bands and these two songs? There are other bands in the genre with far greater fame and/or notoriety, and, perhaps hand-in-hand with those qualities, greater impact on the genre as a whole. Bands like Swans and Butthole Surfers and The Jesus Lizard and The Birthday Party and Unsane and even Melvins (when they expanded their grunge/metal sound into something weirder and more experimental). These bands are deeply formative and foundational to the sound and ethos of noise rock, yet they were not among my first, personal experiences with the noise. That honor goes to Hitting The Wall and Visible Cow.

This would probably be a good juncture to mention that, for all the meaning that this art form has brought into my life, I have often found myself with a similar mindset towards noise rock as Daniel A. Siedell has for modern art:

But I stand before you incapable of justifying my relationship with modern art, theologically or otherwise. All I can do is confess that I cannot imagine my life as a human or as a Christian without it: that it has made a claim on me, and that God has graciously worked through that claim.³

I am at the same mercy of noise rock. It has a claim on me and I am so thankful for everything and everyone it has brought into my life over the years. It is as simple (and as massive) as that.

Thus, at the risk of sounding grandiose, I believe that, by entering into this music and these genres, we have the opportunity to join in God’s work as outlined by Jeremy Begbie in Voicing Creation’s Praise: In creating a reality distinct from himself and allowing it a measure of genuine freedom, God risks exposing himself to the pain and rejection it can bring. The divine love takes the risk of getting no return for its expense.⁴

I don’t think it’s an easy process to expose ourselves to potential pain and rejection, but yet again, I think this is a way in which the heavy genres of music can actually embody a movement of faith. Or to once again call on Begbie: To view the cosmos as proceeding in one smooth, continuous crescendo towards eternal perfection is palpably naive; the physicist today reminds us that the world, in temporal terms at least, is heading for a fairly bleak future.⁵ As I mentioned above, there needs to be room for this loss, this lament. Things do look (and indeed often are) bleak. But there is an important turn:

There needs to be an interaction with creation, a development, a bringing forth of new forms of order out of what we are given at the hand of the Creator. And there will be a redeeming of disorder, mirroring God’s redeeming work in Christ, a renewal of that which has been spoiled, a re-ordering of what is distorted. This redeeming activity will entail a penetration of the disorder of the world—human and non-human, just as the Son of God penetrated our twisted and warped existence.⁶

This is the power of heavy music, in my humble estimation: speaking truth to power, carving out room for lament, asking difficult questions and finally, providing the space for all of those things in creation to interact with the Creator. It’s a long way from playing heavy riffs and head-banging to abstract noise rock fueled by the punk ethos, but I think it’s a journey worth taking.

So what of the songs at the beginning of this chapter? As I was exposed to heavier and more eclectic music, I stumbled across Barkmarket thanks to Riley Breckenridge of Thrice and Cows thanks to Jesse Matthewson of KEN mode (who I had initially checked out due to a recommendation from Breckenridge, so thank you, Riley for unlocking the trajectory of my listening and playing habits for the past ten to fifteen years). In much the same way that Star Wars, The Wiz, Rhapsody in Blue, Strawberry Fields Forever, Homework, Be Here Now, Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Mars Volta, and so many other musical milestones made their mark on me, these two blasts of noise rock snapped so many things into place for me when I heard them for the first time. Taking cues from punk, metal, rock, and even hardcore, noise rock is the misfit stepchild of all four styles. A misfit that might find its literary voice in the writings of folks like Flannery O’Connor and Philip K. Dick. As O’Connor is rumored to have said, You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd. Noise rock is odd music for odd people. As a musician in a noise rock band, it fits my sensibilities like a broken in pair of Chucks.

And it’s where I’ve found my artistic home.

Ultimately, one’s motivation for putting music in conversation with theology comes down to what one believes is happening in cultural expressions (or traces) and what one believes about the movement and the work of the Spirit (pneumatology). Let’s start with my convictions for the former, and then we’ll tackle the latter, concluding by bringing the two together.

According to Kathryn Tanner, humans are made by their culture, but they also make their culture. It’s a give-and-take, symbiotic relationship that we will see throughout the music/theology discussion. Tanner suggests that culture is a defining mark of human existence, a pattern of behaviors and practices that help us define boundaries, tell stories, examine our own lives, and much, much more: Culture is understood as a human universal. All (and only) human beings have culture. Culture is the defining mark of human life.⁷ Additionally, it is through our varied and voluminous cultural expressions that the full scope of what it means to be human is put on display. Though culture is universal in the sense that all people have one, the anthropological use of the term highlights human diversity.⁸

Culture, broadly speaking, is a central location for meaning-making, wherein we often try to put experience under the microscope of the artistic creative process and wrestle with what we believe about the world outside and ourselves inside. It is the water in which we swim and it is the water itself that we are trying to study and reckon with. Bill Dyrness suggests that, The aesthetic desires and the habits and objects that embody these are fundamental to our human identity.⁹ Furthermore, he writes, Culture is always what we humans make of creation. That is, there is always something of the goodness of creation in human creation, however distorted this may be.

There are massive, capital C Cultures and then a myriad of smaller cultures and subcultures and probably even sub-subcultures. Being aware of them and their influence on us (and our own influence back onto them) is vitally important. It makes us better citizens of this planet and better setters of the communion table. If we know what connects with our neighbors (and with ourselves), we can craft better invitations, more knowledgeable starting points for discovery that open up discussions with our