by Alex Henderson
After Ozzy Osbourne, GWAR, and Alice Cooper -- not to mention G.G. Allin, Cannibal Corpse, and W.A.S.P's Blackie Lawless -- it's hard to imagine any rocker being more over-the-top. Anal Cunt gives it a shot on It Just Gets Worse, a grindcore/hardcore punk CD consisting of 39 tracks (all of them short bursts of amelodic noise) that go out of their way to be as offensive, crude, profane, and vulgar as possible. When you see titles like &You're Pregnant, So I Kicked You in the Stomach,& &I Lit Your Baby on Fire,& and &Sweatshops Are Cool,& you know that this album is about shock value for the sake of shock value. As gross and repulsive as AC's lyrics are, however, they come across as very tongue-in-cheek and shouldn't be taken seriously. Possibly, this CD could be viewed as a revolt against political correctness -- that is, assuming that it bears any serious socio-political analysis. By 1998 standards, It Just Gets Worse is hardly cutting-edge and doesn't pack nearly the punch that Alice Cooper's &I Love the Dead& did in 1974 or the Weasels' &Beat Her With a Rake& did in 1978. In fact, rockers who grew up listening to Cooper, Blackie Lawless, Slayer, or G.G. Allin -- and who probably admired Ice-T, the Geto Boys, N.W.A, and 2Pac Shakur as well -- are likely to hear It Just Gets Worse and think, &If your goal was to shock or offend me, I'm afraid you're about ten or 20 years too late.& Regardless, the band sounds like it had a lot of fun trying.