God’s Balls

Thomas Andrew Doyle, aka Tad, had a vision. His eponymous band was easily the heaviest of the first wave of Sub Pop acts, a sonic steamroller propelled by Kurt Danielson’s massive bass and Steve Wied’s rockslide drumming. Doyle’s and Gary Thorstensen’s guitars sounded like belt sanders, like pavement saws, like air raid sirens, creating a kind of psychedelic metal with the leader roaring from the center of the storm, and while his lyrics were simple, they weren’t dumb (the power fantasy of “Helot” begins “I will, I will/Assert my dominance over you…You will, you will/Do as you’re told/Do as I say” and he goes on to turn the destruction of Pompeii by an erupting Mount Vesuvius into a sexual metaphor).