- "With a Bang! Say goodbye to everything
'Cause complete inhalation is the reason he came
And a Pow! He's wiping everything out
Turn your whole fuckin' world into a mushroom cloud
And a Boom! It's you're inevitable doom
Nobody escapes and everybody's consumed"- The chorus to the Title Track
Bang! Pow! Boom! is a 2009 album by the Hip-Hop act Insane Clown Posse. Musically, it continues the Pop Rap and Rap Rock direction of their previous releases starting with The Wraith: Shangri-La, although it is more Hip-Hop in sound than The Wraith: Shangri-La. At the time Bang! Pow! Boom! was released, Hells Pit was thought to be the last Joker's Card album. However, after releasing this album, ICP revealed that Bang! Pow! Boom! was the first Joker's Card of a second deck, marking the start of a brand new Concept Album cycle.
The entity known as "Bang! Pow! Boom!" basically comes to clean up the Dark Carnival grounds when they are too condensed with the absolute worst souls known to men, sending them all to Hell.
It's best known as the album the magnet song came from.
Track listing
- "Intro"
- "Beautiful Doom" (Blue Edition) — or "Freaky Creep Show" (Red Edition) — or "The Clowns Are Back" (Green Edition) — or "Triple Threat Mix" (Nuclear Edition)
- "In Yo Face"
- "The Bone"
- "Zombie Slide"
- "To Catch a Predator"
- "Boing Boing"
- "I Found a Body"
- "Love"
- "Fonz Pond"
- "Imma Kill U"
- "Juggalo Island"
- "Vultures"
- "Vera Lee"
- "
Miracles" - "Bang! Pow! Boom!"note
Bang! Pow! Tropes!
- Alternative Character Interpretation: The gradual shift of Insane Clown Posse's musical style from gritty Sampledelic Hip-Hop to aggressive Rap Rock to Pop Rap could be interpreted as the group reflecting their audience's awareness of the true meaning of the Dark Carnival, as once ICP revealed that the Carnival is God and they want Juggalos to find Him, they no longer needed to hide their Pop nature behind characters that railed against Pop Stars and could more openly become the Pop musicians they had always intended to become. Or maybe when J and Shaggy started smoking weed, they mellowed out a lot. Or maybe their style is no longer as aggressive as it once was because they got rich and were no longer pissed off about being broke and struggling financially. Or maybe they chilled out a lot because they've gotten more mellow as they've gotten older. The weed probably helped, though.
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Approval of God: Chris Hansen, who hosts the "To Catch a Predator" segment on NBC's Dateline, approves of the ICP song and subsequently became friends with them, interviewing them on his YouTube channel to discuss allegations made against Dahvie Vanity, and on ICP's Patreon account. Hansen also appeared on a Weekly Freekly Weekly segment. - Call-Back: The whole concept of "I Found a Body" calls back to J's verse on Esham's "Hard Times".
- Chick Magnet: J and Shaggy describe themselves as this on "Boing Boing".
- Ending Fatigue: "Bang, Pow, Boom!" drags for about 3 minutes after the lyrics have finished, simply repeating "With a bang." until the fadeout.
- Genre Mashup: Violent J is a big fan of The Beach Boys, a Pop Rocknote band who were best known for performing a vocal variant on the instrumental Surf Rock genre. So on "The Bone", Insane Clown Posse take the idea of "Vocal Surf" and present to you Rap Surf.
- Hidden Track: Three distinct editions of the album. Each featured a different Hidden Bonus Track.
- I'm Going to Hell for This: On "To Catch a Predator", Violent J admits that he's probably going to "burn" for torturing a man to death, and there's nothing he can learn from the experience, but despite all that, he sure does enjoy torturing and killing these pedophiles.
- Measuring the Marigolds: "I see miracles all around me,
Stop and look around, it's all astounding,
Water, fire, air and dirt,Fucking magnets, how do they work?
And I don't wanna talk to a scientist,
Y'all motherfuckers lying, and getting me pissed!" - Memetic Mutation: "Miracles", both the music video and some of the lines from the song itself (eg. "Fuckin' magnets, how do they work?", "Magic everywhere in this bitch"). Based on some of their comments, it seems that this might be one of the only recorded successful attempts to create a Memetic Mutation by the creators of the meme themselves.
- Nightmare Fuel: "To Catch a Predator", in which J violently tortures pedophiles by pretending to be a little girl and enticing them to his house. The neighbors and mailman see him dragging one of his bloody victims into his house, but make no attempt to have J jailed because they know the man he is torturing is a pedophile.
- "Fonz Pond", about a haunted pond that drags down those who dare to swim in it.
- No Such Thing as Bad Publicity: Invoked, with "Miracles". note
- Pay Evil unto Evil: The recurring theme of the album:"You're the evilest pedophiles, racists and abusers
All together we got
50,000 of you losers" - Rap Rock: The title track off provides the most hyperactive rock-n-roll rap one could possibly associate with a song about a being that resembles a giant living explosion.
- Surprisingly Improved Sequel: The Tempest was received less than enthusiastically by fans, and the general impression that a lot of people got was that ICP were lost without the Joker's Cards saga; this new Joker's Card marked a significant improvement over The Tempest for many fans.
- Setting Introduction Song: Three distinct editions of the album were released. Each featured a different Intro Song. Judging by the Nuclear Edition Intro, which edits all three songs together into a "Triple Threat Mix", the official Intro is actually "The Clowns Are Back", given that it directly segues into the actual album on the Nuclear Edition.
- Tear Jerker: "Vera Lee": Violent J is haunted by the ghost of a girl nobody else ever paid any attention to.
- Together in Death: Vera Lee is a tragic figure who is implied to want this.
- Updated Re-release: Bang Pow Boom: Nuclear Edition, a three-disc set. The first disc is the original album, with the three separate Intro Songs from the three original versions blended into one song; the second disc contains all three "hidden tracks" from the originals and three unreleased tracks; the third is a DVD.
- Vigilante Man: On "To Catch a Predator", Violent J poses as a child on the Internet to lure pedophiles to his home in order to torture them to death in his basement. At one point, one of the pedophiles escapes and the neighbors and mailman all see him, but no one says a thing because the pedophile deserved what was coming to him.
- What Could Have Been: After revealing that Bang! Pow! Boom! was the start of a second deck of Joker's Card albums, Violent J said that the saga would consist of 20 albums in totalnote However, in 2021, J announced that ICP were retiring from touring due to his heart problems, so there will most likely only be 14 albums/12 cards total, since they wouldn't be able to tour to promote many new albums due to Violent J's heart problems.
