Image via buttholesurfersmovie.com.

Butthole Surfers made waves today with the release of a trailer for Butthole Surfers: The Hole Truth and Nothing Butt, a forthcoming documentary detailing the heyday of the infamous post-punk pathbreakers. Pulling together jaw-dropping archival footage, oddball animation and testimonials from some of the loudest voices in punk, the movie tells the full story of a relentlessly iconoclastic band and all the chaos and glory left in its wake. The tattered bits and pieces here offer a taste of the unflinching account to come, formed from the words of legends like Dave Grohl, Flea and Thurston Moore, who count themselves among the band’s legions of fans.

Butthole Surfers is directed by Tom Stern, whose close affiliation with the group makes clear that this project is a long-term labor of love. “I started documenting the Butthole Surfers in 1986 at CBGB’s as a film student when I checked out a camera from NYU, and I have been collaborating with them ever since,” the filmmaker offers, “This movie, produced with the full collaboration of the band, will be the culmination of my close relationship with the Butthole Surfers… It’s a story I’m uniquely capable of telling because of the trust the band and I have built over the years.”

But it would be disingenuous to the formidable figure of the Butthole Surfers to paint the band with nothing but rose-tinted nostalgia. Stern makes this clear by avowing that the project “won’t be a hagiography,” promising to shine a light on “sex, drugs, rock and roll, the beautiful, the ugly, and the weird” alike. With such a complex legacy of unbelievable and deeply stirring stories on hand, the film “will be irreverent and funny, but also sincere and heartfelt at times as we get these post-punk rock legends to look back on their strange and extraordinary lives.”

The defining highlight of the new trailer is the film’s blinding star-power. Among those featured are Grohl, Ice-T, Kathleen Lynch, Moore, Flea, King Buzzo, Eric Andre, Richard Linklater and many more. Dean Ween asserts that “Butthold Surfers are the greatest live band of my lifetime,” while Henry Rollins recalls that the live experience was “terrifying, because the gun goes up, the fire comes up, the boom was deafening.” The Surfers comment throughout, and fireball frontman Gibby Haynes is shown stabbing at the documentarian. In a fitting final note, the late punk legend Steve Albini states, “I regret getting involved with them, because I don’t want to be associated with people that awful.”

Butthole Surfers: The Hole Truth and Nothing Butt does not yet have a release date. Until that time, fans can find more information at buttholesurfersmovie.com.

Watch the new trailer below.