Lust Control - "The Big M" (1992)

But really, you should be ashamed. Very ashamed...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esy2b7qA9U4  

So I was doing some research on terrible Christian music for this blog, and I found a seemingly innocent link to a band called “Lust Control” who were described as Christian thrash punk. My curiosity was piqued, because I can't think of anything less punk rock than doing Christian music. Punk rock is all about going against the system, and questioning authority after all. I should know how punk works by now, I listen to way too much Bad Religion. No Control may be better than Lust Control, but it'll never be nearly as funny!

So of course, I had to listen to this track. What does Christian punk sound like? Why does it exist? Who invented liquid soap and why? As it turns out, these questions were about to be answered.

The song is called “The Big M” which as it turns out isn't one of the members' prison names. No as it turns out, there here to give you a heartfelt message on the evils of masturbating. You fiend!

Oh, lord, I'm really in for a really great review! This is the kind of awful dreams are made of!

Well, let's start with the band themselves. The band were formed by an editor of a Christian music magazine, a pastor, and two members of another bad Christian punk band called One Bad Pig. And in case you were wondering, yes, the lyrics do reflect a line up that criminally lame. Lust Control are like the equivalent of your parents trying to be cool, and failing in spectacular fashion. It's like a bunch of out of touch 40 year olds got together in a board room, tried to figure out "what the kids are into these days," and came up with a really half-assed version of punk rock. The only thing that could have made this funnier would be Christian hair metal, which apparently also exists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stryper

The band don't ever show their faces, presumably because they don't want their mugs associated with this song. Instead, they wear ski masks, looking like bank robbers. And this is right around the point where I start asking questions: did they want to go with Kiss-style full makeup, but decided a bunch of cut up ski masks would look less threatening? Lust Control are kind of like Insane Clown Posse because both have lyrics too ridiculous for me to take seriously, and both have comically awful get-ups as their gimmicks.

This looks like a nice, wholesome band...

The funniest thing about this song is how ham-fisted the message is. Punk isn't often subtle about the message, but that doesn't mean lyrics can't still be clever. By contrast, the chorus to this song is the phrase “Masturbation is artificial sex” repeated three times. If they're just going to slap me in the face with the meaning of this song like a soggy fish, why not just call it "Masturbation is Artificial Sex" instead? There's no point in beating around the bush about what your song means, so why even bother? Ordinarily, I would say that they should be more creative about how they write the lyrics, but when you're making a song about how beating off is terrible, where can you really go from there? Your song has all the inherent subtlety of a goddamn freight train!

The verses are no less subtle, and just as on-the-nose. The song begins with “It's natural/ It's a release” repeated a few times before just repeating “it's a release” a few times before just jumping into “A release from what? Your sexual appetite?/ Forget it, get real!/ It's artificial sex!” Then it repeats “Masturbation is artificial sex” like it was the most brilliant thing ever put on tape. It's enough for you to start laughing uncontrollably. And these are hardly the only so-bad-it's-good lyrics in this song...

The way some of the lines are written just leave me with more questions than answers. You do get what they're going for, but it just comes out wrong. For instance, one of the pre-chorus lyrics reads:

“The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord/Your body is for the Lord”

I'm... supposed to have sex with the Lord? Boy, the church must've changed a lot! I feel like I'm listening to a Faith +1 song here.

I want to get down on my knees and start pleasing Jesus!

The biggest problem with this song is of course that the teenaged boys it was probably aimed at will listen to this message and stop pleasuring themselves, which they most likely won't. Lust Control deal with an already awkward subject with all the finesse of your High School Sex Ed class; and just like your Sex Ed class, it leads to some really uncomfortable moments. Moreover, you're really expecting teenagers, a group who are known to disregard the rules and question authority, to toe the line? To use Lust Control's own words, "forget it, get real!"

 

Outro:

Ultimately, this song is a failure. A really funny failure. It tackles an uncomfortable subject in a very inept way, the message is ham-fisted, and the lyrics sound like they were written by your born-again Christian mother. However, if you're in need of a good laugh, I can't recommend this god awful track nearly enough!