"Hairway to Steven" was issued in April, and marked a midway point between the band's experimental roots, and the more accessible recordings that would follow. While half of the material is as extreme sounding as their earlier work, other songs are more conventional. This was the first Butthole Surfers album to make extensive use of acoustic guitar. "Hairway to Steven" did not have song titles when first released, and instead represented each track with an absurdist, often scatological, cartoon. The band traveled widely in support of the album over the next year, including a very successful tour of Europe (helped in part by the influence of new UK distributor Blast First). Like their studio recordings, their live shows were beginning to lose much of their earlier chaos.