AMG Review of Aperitif for Destruction [Clean]

Ronnie D. Lankford
All Music Guide

If calling oneself Richard Cheese and offering lounge versions of contemporary popular songs strikes one as funny, that's probably because it's supposed to be. In a sense, Cheese, along with bandmembers with last names like Gouda and Brie, is an extended joke, and Aperitif for Destruction is a sophisticated version of Pat Boone's In a Metal Mood. While Cheese's taste in music occasionally crosses with Boone's (both cover Guns N' Roses; and both cover "Enter Sandman"), he prefers more scandalous material, opening Aperitif with 2 Live Crew's "Me So Horny" and Slipknot's "People Equal S***." Lounge style, these songs are both tuneful and totally absurd, a mixture of bad taste performed in a tacky style. The problem with Aperitif for Destruction, though, is that it's a one-note joke best taken one song at a time. Cheese does attempt to move beyond the collection's surface quality on occasion, but these attempts never quite bloom into full ideas. On "Enter Sandman," for instance, '50s background vocals draw a link between the song and "Mr. Sandman," but the odd mixture is more quirky than funny, and never really melds. A song or two from Aperitif will probably liven up a slow moving party or give one's friends a good belly laugh, but taken as a whole, it begins to sound a lot like what it makes fun of. [A clean version of the CD was also released.]