Steel Pole Bath Tub

***In the fall of 1996, Darren Mor-X, Mike Morasky and Dale Flattum began making recordings for what was scheduled to be their second album on a major label with offices in Los Angeles and New York. The trio first spent 72 hours holed up in guitarist Morasky's living room, and later moved the operation to a small recording studio behind an auto repair shop in downtown San Francisco. The results were regarded by the band as its crowning achievement, and by the label as an unmitigated disaster. Why, there wasn't one track that could even possibly be considered a single. Can you imagine? The official word was that the album was "unlistenable," that the band had completely lost focus and created a "soundtrack to nothing." A loophole was found, the band was dropped, and the recordings remained unheard until now. 
 
* The long lost album by one of the mid-'90s' noisiest, most amped up and TV-damaged noise-rock bands * Worshipped and emulated by Unwound and many other bands to follow * Cited as one of the reasons Richie Unterberger resigned from OPtion magazine * Liner notes by Darren Mor-X 
"Pathologically stark." --Discorder 
 
"No music in anything they play at all." --idiot Faith No More fan, etext.org 
 
"Steel Pole Bathtub must've fallen down an awful lot [as kids]. Their [music] sounds like the musical manifestation of some very scarred minds....[V]ery depressing … discordant guitars and resonating feedback create an aura of frustration. ... [T]heir anarchic, guitar-driven, feedback-and-sampling-infused indie rock sounds much like ... a product of Seattle ... [but] what distinguishes their … grueling engine noise, squeals, drum beats and fuzzy feedback ... according to drummer Darren Mor-X in an interview with Rolling Stone, is that "we're not patriotic flannel." --Ann Abel, Thresher