Atomizer released

Albini claimed to be aiming for a “big, massive, slick rock sound” with Racer-X , which was less frantic than Bulldozer , but ultimately felt that the EP was “too samey and monolithic.” The band had already begun writing new songs by the time Racer-X was released, stating in the last sentence of the EP’s liner notes that “The next one’s gonna make you shit your pants.” Big Black’s first LP , 1986’s Atomizer , found the band at their most musically developed and aggressive level yet. Riley’s funk background brought a slightly greater sense of melody and danceability to the band, while Albini and Durango’s guitar work was more violent than ever before. Michael Azerrad comments that “by this time Big Black had both refined the ideas first suggested on Lungs and exploded them into something much huger than anyone but Albini had ever imagined”, while Mark Deming of Allmusic states that the album “upped the ante on the musical and lyrical ferocity of Big Black’s previous body of work, an unrelenting assault of guitar sounds and imagined violence of all sorts.” Albini later remarked that “we just had a higher-than-average percentage of really good songs.” The lyrics on Atomizer presented sociopaths committing evil acts that most people only sometimes contemplate: “Big Money” deals with a corrupt police officer, “Bazooka Joe” profiles a shell-shocked veteran who becomes a contract killer , “Stinking Drunk” describes a violent alcoholic , and “Fists of Love” presents a sadist . One of the album’s most controversial songs was “Jordan, Minnesota”, about the 1983 scandal in Jordan, Minnesota that saw a large number of the rural town’s adults indicted on charges of involvement in a huge child sex ring.