Split into three acts, the latest new material from The Residents draws heavily upon two significantly troubling events of the late 20th Century – the trial by puppets of Judas Priest as they defended themselves against accusations of hiding subliminal messages within their songs which could drive the vulnerable to attempt suicide, and Jack Kevorkian, the titular Doctor Death who assisted well over 100 people to die through euthanasia. As you might expect, it’s not played for laughs.
There are three main characters: Maggot, Mark, and Doctor Anastasia Dark. Maggot and Mark make a suicide pact – Maggot follows through successfully but Mark survives the self-inflicted gunshot, though is left with a terribly disfigured face. Elsewhere Doctor Dark is sentenced to life in prison for assisting in the deaths of several people. The somewhat God-like Doctor Dark is ultimately able to be freed from his sentence and crosses paths with Mark who questions whether life is worth living anymore…again.
Many will be familiar with the circus trial of Judas Priest, accused of subliminal hiding goading messages in their 1978 track (actually a cover of a Spooky Tooth song) ‘Better by You, Better Than Me’. Two fans had attempted suicide after listening to their music (after taking onboard a significant amount of drugs and alcohol) – Raymond Belknap was successful; James Vance was not, but died a few years later having struggled to adapt to life with half his face blown off. The courtroom farce saw poor Rob Halford singing the track to prove that his vocal inflections merely gave the impression that something untoward was going on. Even in these batshit Reagan times, the trial collapsed but has remained the low marker in both the attitudes towards rock and metal music and the right to make art.
Kevorkian helped somewhere in the region of 130 terminally ill people end their own lives, in the process enraging the religious and cautious, and empowering voices calling for the right to do pretty much anything and everything. As tumultuous as the current day is, it’s worth sparing a moment to remember that both these events happened at a time when the ability to decipher the truth was limited to very traditional reportage – heroes were heroes and villains were very definitely villains. Witches simply had to burn.
Released on a single CD or double vinyl, this is long-form storytelling – I can only imagine that every tiny bit of room is used on both formats without the quality beginning to suffer. Musically, it incorporates more metal than you’ve ever heard from The Residents before, but it doesn’t come across as daft or sloppy, it’s a solid grounding for the opera to crawl out of. And crawl it does.
With a real emphasis on the low end, whether it be groaning cellos or dept charge synth drum blasts, the whole album is beautifully coherent, despite movements which are deliberately unsettling to mimic the real-life turmoil. Vocally, there are Greek Choruses, news report broadcasts, slurred words aping the facially destroyed Mark, donkey braying and a whole lot more, all competing to challenge you to make sense of an impossible situation. The really moving element is that with remarkable sensitivity, the band make no judgements themselves. Life deals you unfair hands and there are no easy answers. Religion, medicine, philosophy, spiritualism, art – all are the answer and all are to blame. We learn of Doctor Dark’s own story which only adds to the complexity.
The San Francisco Conservatory of Music conducted by Edwin Outwater combines effortlessly with The Residents’ garden shed of electronic and analogue weapons of choice in a way that on paper it absolutely has no right to. Many Residents albums, despite being presented as whole concepts or continuing narratives have the dip-in factor – you can slide out your favourite cues or gnaw on stand-out tracks. This is not one of those albums. This is a complete experience, an overwhelming, immersive and genuinely upsetting work which surely no other collection of artists has attempted – what – 50-odd years now after forming?!
I’m writing this after listening to it twice. Like all Residents’ albums, you hear more each time, and it catches the light in different ways depending on your own mood. This will take several more listens to really get to grips with. Other albums may contain material that is more twisted; other albums may feature more iconic songs; other albums may be more esoterically lovable.
But this – Doctor Dark released in 2025 – might just be The Residents’ best album.
Daz Lawrence