Book Review: Damnation by Alabama Sharp
Over the course
of 35+ years, Alabama Sharp has led such legendary and infamous
underground Alabama bands as The Knockabouts, Monster Dog, Monster
God, and the Go-Go Killers, all the while quietly writing some of the
sickest fiction ever imagined. Seriously, the reason why we’re just
now reading this stuff is because no one was brave enough to publish
any of it. In the true spirit of D.I.Y. (of which he was an early
purveyor), Mr. Sharp finally said, “Fuck it!” and decided to
publish the work himself. This means that Sharp doesn’t answer to
anyone, which in turn means we get even sicker stuff than we would
have gotten had somebody else published him.
The first
half of the book is a collection of Sharp’s art. Simple crude pen
and ink drawings of hyper-violent and over-sexed demonic debauchery.
Readers of our print zine have likely bared witness to some of his
work, which is downright quaint when compared to some of the demented
smut found in these pages. Like Clive Barker guiding the hand of
Helen Keller to mock Picasso. Or a five-year-old trying to explain
why the house is empty and there’s blood everywhere. Reminds me of
the little kid’s art in Jay Anson's Amityville Horror book, but instead of
a sprinting pig, we get a two-headed three-breasted naked lady with a
dead baby draped between her necks. *And the prosecutor points to
the child’s drawing, “Is this where the devil touched you?”*
Doodles of the damned. Viciously visceral. A gnarly introduction and
a helluva visualization of what might come.
The text
portion of the book ranges from brutal abstract poetry to deranged short stories.
Alabama Sharp is a man who's brain is packed with a lot of
(fucked-up) ideas, but I’d wager that this being something of a
compilation picked from different periods in the writer’s life has
added an even deeper layer of stylistic variety. Luckily,
Pissed-Off-Kid Sharp is just as talented a writer as
Punk-Rock-Elder-Statesman Sharp. The entire book is well-written.
Which makes it even more hard-hitting. Any warnings of offensive
content should be taken very seriously, but make no mistake, this is
finely-crafted. Interesting stories that really pull the reader in.
But these are intense stories. We’re talking extreme violence,
rape, murder, rituals, and gore. Ramshackle prose gives way to
slice-of-life torture porn to the tale of a family trip gone waaaay
wrong to the musings of broken-brained stalkers and serial killers to
what amounts to a throbbing Penthouse Forum gone bad. Much of it from
the monsters' (human, inhuman, and non-human) perspectives. All
masterfully imagined and the very definition of explicit. EXPLICIT. Gorehounds rejoice, but this book is not for everyone. It will haunt you and disgust you and
it will get under your skin. This book is grotesque and challenging.
Damnation was clearly published to push buttons, let’s hope one of
those buttons isn’t your doorbell. -Harmless
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