101 Damnations is the debut studio album by English rock band Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine, released on 15 January 1990 through Big Cat Records.

[1] While performing with the Ballpoints, Bob came across bassist Les "Fruitbat" Carter of Dead Clergy at the rehearsal space The Orchestra Pit in Streatham, South London in 1979.

[2] Following a name change to Peter Pan's Playground,[3] the band split and the members pursued different projects, including busking, children's entertainment and solo careers.

They composed six songs, namely, "Everytime a Churchbell Rings", "An All American National Sport", "The Taking of Peckham 123", "Good Grief Charlie Brown", an early version of "A Perfect Day to Drop the Bomb" titled "Will I Go to Hell If I Kiss in Front of Jesus" and "G.I.

[8] Between February and November 1988, Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine played further shows throughout London;[9] as Fruitbat was unable to pass his driver's test, they were forced to use buses to travel to their gigs.

[14] Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine recorded their debut album at Important Notice Studios; the band and Painter acted as producers.

[17] 101 Damnations incorporates drum machines, samples and loud guitars, employing extensive cultural references and puns,[18] while being lyrically concerned with real life events seen in the news.

[19] Ned Raggett of AllMusic characterised the album's musical style as "brash, quick, punk/glam via rough early eighties technology pump-it-up pogoers" and described the heavy usage of puns as "Carter's calling card as much as anything".

[18] Gavin Stoker in The Rough Guide to Rock wrote that it combined "frantic guitars with samples, hip-hop beats, keyboard blasts and lyrics that namechecked south London haunts with alarming regularity".

[20] James Muretich of Calgary Herald considered it to be a mix of the work of David Bowie and Pet Shop Boys "while adopting the literary, politically appropriate, socially sarcastic British pop intellectual stance".

[21] In a review for NME, DJ Steve Lamacq described the lyrics as being adaptive of other media mediums: "the colour and atmospheric backdrops (film), the plot and the dialogue (comics) and the descriptive prowess (if Carter were a book, they'd be a Martin Millar novel - really)".

[30] "An All-American National Sport", which had gone under the titles "Digging a Hole" and "Cardboard City Cut-Out" with different publishers,[31] discusses a homeless person being set on fire by two strangers.

[18] "Sheriff Fatman" was highlighted as displaying the album's characteristic sound; Raggett said "the song itself may be about a total rat-bastard of a slumlord, but the name of the game is energy and fun.

[25] "Crimestoppers A' Go Go" is an instrumental track[22] that is followed by "Good Grief Charlie Brown", which is about Bob's parents divorcing,[34] and sees him reciting marriage vows in the style of a vicar by its conclusion.

[36] Its title refers to a length of road dubbed the Murder Mile where Bob would walk from a bus stop in West Norwood to his residence in Crystal Palace.

[39] "A Perfect Day to Drop the Bomb", which begins with a clip of an Atari ST booting up,[40] reuses the hook from "The Message" (1982) by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five.

"[18] Trouser Press writer Ira Robbins called it a "fully realised debut" and "mind-blowing in the most stimulating sense";[41] Stoke was similarly impressed that the band "had ideas and energy to spare".

[20] Colin Larkin in The Encyclopedia of Popular Music said that the album was an "invocative melting pot of samples, ideas and tunes" delivered with "a punk-inspired ethos".

[71] In Artforum, veteran critic Greil Marcus described 101 Damnations as "the noisiest and smartest record I’ve heard since early Wire—and more hysterical, in both senses of the word.

Lamacq considered it the band's "(Tooting) Broadway debut, a big screen collage on a shoestring budget - rough-edged Rascal Pop with a searching script".

[22] Associated Press writer David Bauder said that the album was the "aural equivalent of a horror movie, an unrelenting series of word pictures of a society gone mad"; however, he noted that there was "only so much of this" he could hear, suggesting that "most listeners will simply shudder and move out of the neighborhood".

[73] Record Collector's Jonathan Scott wrote in a 2011 review that the band were the "most interesting" of their contemporaries, saying that their music featured "both a naïve, DIY charm and a rousing anthemic quality".

[75] In 1992, NME included it in their list of the 20 best debut albums, writing that it stood in contrast to the Madchester boom of early 1990 by "[capturing] Carter's live resilience and ability to translate punk's social awareness into a new pop phenomenon", while also praising its DIY qualities.