Punky Brüster – Cooked on Phonics

Occupation

• Guitar, Vocals: Dr. Skinny ( Devin Townsend )
• Bass: Squid Vicious ( J. R. Harder )
• Drums: Dances With Chickens ( Adrian White )

Cooked on Phonics is a studio album, which published the Canadian rock musician Devin Townsend under the name Punky Brüster. It was first published in 1995 only in Japan and was released in March 1996 in North America.

Background

The concept album is a parody of the beginning of the 1990s emerging pop-punk movement. It is about a Polish death metal band with the name " Cryptic Coroner ". The unsuccessful band changes their style in pop -punk, is taken from a major label and win a " Granny Award". The recordings for the album took place in the Red Stripe Studio takes about the same time as the recording of the debut album of Townsend's Strapping Young Lad project, the final mix was done in the Mushroom Studios in Vancouver. As a session musician musicians were involved from the Strapping Young Lad, under different drummer Adrian White.

Content

Between the single radio play songs like passages are inserted, which tell the story of the band " Cryptic Coroner ". This begins with an appearance in the fictional punk club " Malone's ". During the gig the guitarist breaks a string so that it can no longer play the typical death metal deep tones. Then the band improvised a punk piece. Since the appearance is transmitted randomly from the local radio station, the song is a hit. The band changes its name to Punky Brüster to, is a commercially successful punk band and eventually winning a Granny Award. The story ends with displace the punk elements during a performance at the award ceremony, the musical roots of the musicians in Death Metal.

Title list

The tenth piece Picture Of Myself / The Girls Next Door / Larry's O was performed in the 1996 edition due to a manufacturing error as track number 10 to 12.

Reception

Michael Rensen of music magazine Rock Hard described the album as " slanted rock opera ". Tobias Wagner of the online magazine earshot.at sees musical parallels to German Fun Metal band JBO. Stylistically, orienting the music of the individual title at the history and are largely attributable to the punk rock, although in songs like Crusty 's At The Ivanhoe also influences from metalcore were heard.