Boyd Rice is one of the most provocative and controversial underground figures of the post-punk era. First coming to prominence as an avant-garde audio experimentalist (recording under the moniker NON), Rice was a seminal founder of the first wave of industrial music in the late 1970s. In the 1980s, through collaborations with Re/Search Publications, Rice further established his position in the underground with recountings of his uproarious pranks and the promotion of 'incredibly strange' cult films and 'industrial' culture. Rice's influence on subculture was further exerted through his vanguard exhibition of found photographs and readymade thrift store art, as well as his adamant endorsements of outsider music, tiki culture and bygone pop culture in general. Rice is also notorious for his public associations with nefarious figures both infamous and obscure, including friendships and ideological collusions with the likes of cult leader Charles Manson and Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey, among others. His work continues to profoundly affect the countercultural underground at large, inspiring and enraging in equal measure.

"Brian M. Clark's eloquent [biography] depicts Boyd Rice as not only a key figure in experimental music but also someone who has broken the chokehold of political correctness and, in his flirtations with what the censors would regard as 'evil', acknowledged the essential duality of man – darkness and light, god and beast combined."

    – David Stubbs, The Wire
      (England)

"Brian M. Clark's extensive biography covers all Boyd Rice's artistic endeavours from his experimental noise output as NON... [to] his extensive involvement and subsequent fallout with the editors of Re/Search. ... Clark doesn't flinch from the more dubious aspects of Rice's career. Space is allocated to discuss his appearance in a Sassy photoshoot with the leader of the American Front, and his volatile relationship with Lisa Carver, editor of the 'zine Rollerderby, with whom Rice sired a child. Clark also manages to put forth a balanced account surrounding the accusations of fascism that are forever leveled at Rice."

    – Tony Dickie, Compulsion Online
      (Scotland)

"In crafting his biography of Boyd Rice, Brian M. Clark seems fully aware of the potential pitfalls in discussing such a contentious figure. ... Thorough and factual, Clark's [biography of Rice] steps back from knee-jerk emotional reactions and presents the full spectrum of his subject's activities. ... Clark points out that with increased calls for restrictions on speech in academia and the media by proponents of so-called political correctness, it's important to talk about provocative voices like Rice's in a rational fashion. To relegate Boyd Rice to the trash bin of the underground is to ignore the influence he had on so many enduring veins of interest – a fact that Clark rightly identifies as revisionist, short-sighted, and ultimately petty."

    – Tenebrous Kate, Heathen Harvest
      (United States)