Kinison Is Back. Aaaaaaaaaagh!

By RICHARD CORLISS

Could there be poetic justice for the bard of black humor? Yes, and of a kind he might have appreciated. Sam Kinison, the frenetic comedian whose very mildest joke was a recommendation that his audience "drink and drive," was killed in California last year when a 17-year-old with a lot of beer cans in his vehicle smashed into Kinison's car. Witnesses said the teen surveyed the carnage and woozily exclaimed, "God! Look at my truck!" As for Kinison, a former Pentecostal minister turned scourge of all things decent, he seemed to be in an urgent discussion with the Almighty. "But why?" he asked, and died. He was 38.

Well, you can't keep a bad mouth down. The satanic prince of heavy-mental satire is back in a "new" album, Live from Hell. The set was recorded in Houston in late 1991, and by the high standards of Kinison's albums Louder Than Hell and Have You Seen Me Lately?, it's a little lazy -- and, of course, morally reprehensible. But Live from Hell is still a blast from below, a blizzard of belligerence against underdogs (gay men, the homeless) and a parade of celebs whose exploits Kinison considers more lurid than his. Rick James? Axl Rose? "These guys make me look like Pat F-----' Sajak!"

The Russians? "They wanna be us, but they'll never be." The Kurds? "Losers" who don't know enough to come out of the desert and get a Big Mac. The Iraqis? They're asking for U.S. aid because their cities have been leveled and their people killed. "Yeah, that's basically what we wanted to do to you. That's why they call it a f-----' " Kinison suspects that the Allies finished the war in six days because they wanted to skip town "before Bob Hope comes back with another cavalcade of loser has-been stars."

Kinison was not Lenny Bruce -- more studied, less sharp and attacking society from the redneck right instead of the hip-humanist left. But he was no lame-brain Andrew Dice Clay either. What's the difference? Well, stand back, because we have to scream this in a print approximation of the sonic blast that was Kinison's trademark. SOMETIMES HE'S FUNNY! We're not happy about this, but there it is. Alive or dead, in a comedy club or in hell (granted, a fine distinction), Kinison lived up to his self-appointed epithet, Leader of the Banned. For him, hell is just another tough room to work.