Astralwerks
2000
Exterminator
About This Album
Whenever indie music seems lost in its own self-righteous, unchallenging, inoffensive fundament, Primal Scream rides in to try and save it all. So just as Screamadelica tried to encapsulate the importance of ecstasy culture, or Vanishing Point tried to exorcise their own insanity, here XTRMNTR is a nasty, fierce realization of an entire world that has also lost the plot. The album starts with a gloriously vindictive sample of a kid commanding "Kill All Hippies," and this roughly states the album's modus operandi. There are songs shouting with furious, feedback-splayed anger ("Blood Money," "Exterminator"), songs of club-based revolt (both house-influenced versions of "Swastika Eyes"), and songs of utterly manic desperation ("Accelerator"). The album only lurches when lead singer Bobby Gillespie's weedy vocals can't keep up with the black noise of the music. "Insect Royalty" meanders and mumbles with a blank approach. "Pills" is a half-realized hip-hop song, with Gillespie diminishing its power on every verse (it only saves itself when it caps the song off with the album's central theme: "Sick f*ck f*ck sick f*ck f*ck sick f*ck").
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3 and 4)

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.