No Film Clips or Strobe Lights, but the Fun Is Still Disturbing

Veteran freak-rockers the Butthole Surfers usually perform with strobe lights and vividly disturbing film clips of surgeries, insects and other creepy things washing over the players, enhancing the mind-blowing effect of their psychedelic punk-metal. But on Thursday at the Viper Room, the Texas noise heroes got back to basics by leaving out those elements of their multimedia shtick.

It made sense, in a way, as the 20-year-old quintet offered 90 minutes of older material from the days when its light show was relatively primitive. But without the visual distraction, nerve-grating aspects of the band’s presentation eventually overwhelmed its bizarre delights.

The players scarcely needed the movies to create their surreal sense of damaged fun, what with all the silly string flying, smoke machines belching, colored lights pulsing and squirt guns soaking the capacity crowd. Leader Gibby Haynes grinned with maniacal glee, his distorted vocals making it nearly impossible, as usual, to discern much of the lyrics beyond snippets of subversive political themes, scatological absurdity, classic-rock mocking, calls to self-immolate and the blues tune “Going Down.”

Much of the set roiled with sludgy intensity, accelerating in spots to a mosh-pit-inducing frenzy of warped guitar, thundering bass and furious double drum kit tattoos. For the mostly die-hard fans, about the only thing that might have made the experience more fun (or not) would have been a cameo by Viper Room co-owner Johnny Depp, Haynes’ erstwhile bandmate in his side project P.