From the very first, distorted guitar swell of the opening track, “Shock and Awe,” it’s clear that Rocket Science is not here to hold your hand. The production, helmed by the band themselves, is gloriously filthy. It’s the sound of a four-track recorder pushed to its absolute breaking point, then doused in cheap whiskey and plugged into a blown-out speaker cabinet. Critics at the time called it “lo-fi,” but that’s too polite. This is no-fi —a raw, visceral, and intentionally abrasive aesthetic that serves as the perfect canvas for frontman Tim Pimp’s (yes, that’s his stage name) depraved poetic visions.
In the vast, often sanitized landscape of modern rock music, it takes a special kind of audacity to sound genuinely unhinged. Enter The Pimps, a band that has never been interested in radio-friendly hooks or polished production. Their 2004 (or 2005, depending on the pressing) album, Rocket Science , is not so much a collection of songs as it is a 45-minute descent into a neon-lit, booze-soaked, and sexually charged fever dream. If Hunter S. Thompson had decided to front a garage-punk band instead of writing Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas , the result might have sounded something like this. rocket science the pimps
Tracks like “Electro-Shock for President” lurch forward on a fuzzed-out bassline that sounds like it’s melting in the sun, while drummer Johnny Blaze pounds out a rhythm that’s simultaneously sloppy and impossibly tight—a paradox that only great punk drummers can achieve. Then there’s “Venus in Furs (But Make it Leather),” which is not a Velvet Underground cover, but a pounding, cowpunk anthem that features a guitar solo so out-of-tune and chaotic that it circles back around to genius. From the very first, distorted guitar swell of
Lyrically, Tim Pimp is a force of nature. He writes with the vocabulary of a beat poet and the subject matter of a late-night infomercial for adult toys. This is not an album for the easily offended. Track three, “PDA (Public Display of Agony),” includes the immortal couplet: “Your love is like a broken elevator / Stuck between lust and a hard place.” Critics at the time called it “lo-fi,” but
