Nothing's Shocking

Warner Bros. gave the band a list of producers, and Farrell liked Dave Jerden's engineering on My Life in the Bush of Ghosts by David Byrne and Brian Eno. Jerden took a demo tape of eighteen songs, chose nine, set an order and had the band rehearse and record in that order. Jerden is credited with production, mixing and engineering, Farrell with production and mixing. The album was recorded at Eldorado Studios in Los Angeles.

Avery wrote several of the songs, among them Mountain Song, Had a Dad, Jane Says and Summertime Rolls, and for the last two he also created the guitar parts. Jane Says and Pigs in Zen were remade from the 1987 live album, and Mountain Song was recorded again in a higher key. Flea played trumpet on Idiots Rule. The cover is a sculpture of nude female conjoined twins on a rocking chair with their heads on fire, which Farrell and Casey Niccoli made. Farrell said the idea came from a dream.

Jane Says, Mountain Song and Ocean Size were the singles, and Jane Says reached six on Billboard's Modern Rock Tracks chart. The album sold 200,000 to 250,000 copies in its first year, peaked at 103 on the Billboard 200 and was certified platinum by 1998. It was nominated at the 31st Grammy Awards for Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance, losing to Jethro Tull. Steve Pond of Rolling Stone called the band the true heir to Led Zeppelin, and Richard Cromelin of the Los Angeles Times described a bracing throwback to old Black Sabbath and Alice Cooper. The Village Voice's Pazz & Jop poll placed it 34th for 1988.

Later lists put it 312th on Rolling Stone's 500 greatest albums in 2012, and 90th in 2002 and 134th in 2018 among Pitchfork's best albums of the 1980s. Ian Cohen of Pitchfork wrote in 2022 that it was structured the way the band played it live, praised Navarro's acoustic light and shade on Ocean Size and Jane Says, and called it a poignant, almost quixotic work of Hollywood imagination. Nick Oliveri of Queens of the Stone Age said the album influenced him a lot, especially what Avery proposed from the bass. Audio Fidelity reissued it on a 24-karat gold disc on 19 June 2012.