BUTTHOLE SURFERS
Finally Release
AFTER THE ASTRONAUT
For an album that was supposed to come out in 1998 but was, at the last minute, pulled from the release schedule because it wasn't "commercial" enough, AFTER THE ASTRONAUT is finally seeing the light of day, allowing musical provocateurs BUTTHOLE SURFERS to have the last laugh. Released today, June 26, 2026 via Sunset Boulevard, their ninth album has fans and critics alike reveling in the album that almost wasn't. Iconic tome CREEM in its extensive feature called it "abrasive dadaist post-punk, dosed with brown acid, sarcasm walking hand-in-hand with sincerity. And man, it was really fucking good if you got it." FLOOD celebrated how ahead of the musical curve they were by praising, "It turns out that their lost masterpiece [After the Astronaut] wasn’t lost at all—Butthole Surfers were just waiting for the world to intersect with its inflexible, interstellar-surfing orbit." Not to be outdone, SPIN proclaimed, "The Butthole Surfers are living legends, and now they're back, sort of..."
Never before released, the mythical, shelved album comes at a pivotal time for the band. Coupled with a complementary and equally-celebrated music documentary The Hole Truth and Nothing Butt, Butthole Surfers are enjoying a renewed rearview-mirror focus. Originally planned as the follow-up to their unexpected mainstream breakthrough Electric Larryland which spawned a chart-topping single "Pepper," After the Astronaut didn't make it past the advance-cassette-to-sent-
“We were pretty stoked to make another album after the success of our previous album and ‘Pepper’,” recalls guitarist Paul Leary. “Capitol Records was stoked to get that next record... until our relationship soured.” After some legal wrangling, Butthole Surfers were released from the major label’s roster and their contract was sold. “Hollywood Records bought the album but wanted to make changes to it which was an uncomfortable experience for us,” he notes (the reconfigured and reworked album was eventually released as Weird Revolution in 2001). “Now we have the right to release the original recording the way we intended it to be with its original title, After The Astronaut.”
With three singles released, "Jet Fighter," "Imbuya," and "Intelligent Guy" (which put the band back on radio charts at #3 on the SubModern format), After the Astronaut is being showered with new accolades. NPR affiliate KXT says, "The 12-track effort sounds as arresting and ferocious as it must have in the late 1990s — songs like 'Jet Fighter,' 'Venus' and 'Imbuya' throb with a bristling creative anarchy." Far Out Magazine hails, "Wielding hip-hop shuffle, sampling psych and teeming electronic gurgle, After the Astronaut points to where the Butthole Surfers could have artistically headed, while also serving as a fitting close to their chaotic waver between the punk underground and pop mainstream." SoundSphere adds, "Built around Paul Leary’s jagged guitar work, King Coffey’s mechanical drum programming and Gibby Haynes’ surreal stream-of-consciousness lyricism, [After the Astronaut] feels as unhinged and unpredictable as ever."