The 9th Best Album of the 90s: Opeth - "Still Life" (1999)

I've written about this album once before to celebrate the occasion of my phat as shit Opeth tattoo last year. Ah yes, good times.

After a promising but somewhat lacking debut (1995's Orchid), a brilliant second album (1996's Morningrise) and a third album that took the band in a slightly new direction (1998's My Arms, Your Hearse), Stockholm's progressive death metal heroes Opeth made their very first bonafide masterpiece. Morningrise came close, but with Still Life everything fell into place and they once and for all found their voice, their personality and the template they still use to this day.

To be honest the term "progressive death metal" can mean anything, but when applied to Opeth it means "death metal that is progressive in the sense that it incorprates elements of 1960s and 70s style progressive rock", which is something that Opeth had done from day one, but on Still Life all the flaws that sometimes littered their first three albums were gone.

For My Arms, Your Hearse the band moved away from the twin guitar harmonies of the first two albums and moved into a different, more brutal realm. Singer/guitarist/main songwriter Mikael Åkerfeldt also dropped his high, shrieking black metal-styled voice for a more guttural death metal bellow, and lo and behold - the Opeth we know today was born. This also the first album that featured the classic Åkerfeldt/Lindgren/Mendez/Lopez line-up that would do five album together before drummer Martin Lopez left the band for health reasons in 2006.

Rumor has it the band only rehearsed twice preparing for this album and that Åkerfeldt only had rough notes of the arrangements scribbled down for the band to play by. If that's true it's absolutely staggering, as Still Life is arguably Opeth's most complex album songwriting wise where each song veers off in a dozen different directions and very few riffs and parts are repeated.

Still Life is a concept album about a man returning to his deeply religious home town fifteen years after being banished for not being religious (I guess) to seek out Melinda, the woman he left behind and the love of his life. I'm not gonna ruin the ending for you, but they both die.

Oops!

Interpretations of what each track means usually run wild on various metal message boards and the official Opeth board in particular, but Åkerfeldt has to my knowledge never explained the story in any great detail. On the Opeth board there's been speculations whether Still Life would make a good basis for a movie. I doubt it though, since (although it's a good story) not only would they probably cast Ben Stiller and Jennifer Aniston in the lead roles, but it would never be as good as the movie you see in your head when you listen to the album.

If you give a shit, in my mind Melinda looks like Mary Magdalene as played by Monica Bellucci in The Passion Of The Christ:

There's also been discussions about whether the title of the opening track The Moor doesn't actually refer to a moor, but rather a Moor. Is it possible the nameless main character is a Moor? Could he be one of the people who Dennis Hopper described in True Romance as doing "so much fucking with Sicilian women that they changed the whole bloodline forever"? I guess we'll never know.

While this may not be Opeth's best album (their best is of course 2001's Blackwater Park), this is an undoubted masterpiece that will forever stand the test of time and maintain a big chunk of my heart.

(mp3) Opeth - Moonlapse vertigo
(mp3) Opeth - White cluster (recommended!)

Buy Still Life @ Amazon.com.

The Moor live in 2004:

The 10th Best Album of the 90s: Queens of the Stone Age - "S/t" (1998)

We've made it to the top 10! Wahoo!

After dissolving stoner/desert rock pioneers Kyuss, guitarist Josh Homme went to Seattle and played rhythm guitar in Screaming Trees for a few months, after which he went back to California and formed Gamma Ray in 1996 and released an EP (featuring members of Monster Magnet, Screaming Trees, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden), which was later re-released a split EP with Kyuss under the new name Queens of the Stone Age.

This their debut full length was recorded with Homme on vocals, keyboards, guitar and bass and former Kyuss member Alfredo Hernandez on drums, with the occasional contribution here and there from desert rocks legends such as Hutch, Chris Goss and Dave Catching. Shortly after the recordings were finished, Kyuss/Dwarves bassist Nick Oliveri joined the band.

Although QOTSA has played nearly every type of music imaginable in their 13 year career, the early incarnation was a continuation of the low rumble howls of Kyuss, but with a clearer pop sensibility and more defined songs with considerably less jamming and spacing out. Homme's high, effeminate voice was also a big change from John Garcia's Ronnie James Dio-esque alpha male drones.

To some this is the only QOTSA album that counts, while I happen to like them all more or less equally. But for many different reasons, since they all sound and feel completely different depending who Homme chose to collaborate with on any given recording, and what kind of music he was tripping on at the moment.

On my other blog I've posted to big collections of QOTSA rarities, so in case you've missed them you can find them here and here. A third one will be posted shortly, so keep you eyes open for that one.

And if you feel like looking into this "desert rock" thing a bit more, I made a giant post about it here.

(mp3) QOTSA - How to handle a rope (recommended)
(mp3) QOTSA - Mexicola
(mp3) QOTSA - You can't quit me baby

Buy S/t @ Amazon.com

Mexicola live in 2001:

The 11th Best Album of the 90s: The Hellacopters - "Grande Rock" (1999)

The Hellacopters (R.I.P.) will forever hold a special place in my heart, and I will always regard them as the best rock & roll band of all time. Big words, I know, but I honestly can't think of another band in rock history that was as consistently amazing as this Stockholm quintet. Seven albums between 1996 and 2008, and all seven are masterpieces. Not too shabby, eh?

Grande Rock, their third album, was a big leap forward and would set the template for everything they did up to their parting ways in the winter of 2008. Their early singles and the 1996 debut album Supershitty To The Max! were big noise fests where everything was distorted, even the distortion itself. It's the sort of album that murders any speaker and made The Stooges' Raw Power step down from the Ear Torture Throne and retire to a sheep farm in New Zealand where it remains to this day knitting wooly knickers and cries in its porridge each morning.

The follow up, 1997's Payin' The Dues, surprised everyone by being slightly less noisy and exhibiting a more refined sense of melody. But that was nothing like progression that was Grande Rock. And album that in several ways was a sort of rebirth for The Hellacopters.

After Payin' The Dues, Dregen, guitarist and the biggest star and focal point of the band left due to his commitment to his original band, sleaze rockers Backyard Babies, and left The Hellacopters in a bit of a limbo regarding the second guitarist position. By the fourth album, 2000's High Visibility, they'd settled for former Silvermachine guitarist and current Thunder Express/Dundertåget frontman Robert Dahlquist (who would remain with the band for the rest of its days), but on Grande Rock keyboardist Anders "Boba" Lindström took on additional guitar duties, giving the album a give different flair absent from all other albums in the Hellacopters catalogue.

This was also the first album to be recorded outside Stockholm - the band went to an old prog studio from the 70's out in the woods in the middle of nowhere. Apparently quite traumatic for the asphalt & concrete dwellers in the band, but it did give the album a very classic 1970's sound. Clean, dynamic, bone dry, and very different from anything they had done before.

For whatever reason the band sounded more loose and relaxed on this album. Perhaps it was the result of growing up a bit and realising you don't have to be all rebellious and live your "FUCK YOU!" attitude 24/7 and make the biggest ruckus you can muster. They discovered it's okay to tone things down, to be mellow and embrace melodies. Maybe the leaving of Dregen liberated them a bit as well. It's possible since the band recorded their most memorable releases without him, starting with this one.

I hate to use the phrase "classic rock", but there is really no other term that sums this album up better. Influences from Motörhead, New Bomb Turks, The Stooges etc that were prevalent on their early works are almost entirely absent here, instead replaced by MC5, Sonic's Rendezvous Band, early Status Quo, Kiss, and even Ted Nugent.

Not The Hellacopters' best album (that title would go to 2002's epic By The Grace Of God), but of the three albums they released in the 90's this is the brightest shining star.

And unfortunately, sadly overlooked.

(mp3) The Hellacopters - Alright already now
(mp3) The Hellacopters - Move right out of here
(mp3) The Hellacopters - Venus in force (recommended!)

Buy Grande Rock @ Amazon.com, why don'cha.

The video for Move Right Out Of Here:

The 12th Best Album of the 90s: Mad Season - "Above" (1995)

Formed in 1994 by drummer Barrett Martin (The Screaming Trees, Queens of the Stone Age), guitarist Mike McCready (Pearl Jam) and bassist John Baker Saunders (The Walkabouts). Layne Staley (Alice In Chains) was brought in to sing, and the band was complete. Calling themselves The Gacy Bunch, the band started doing gigs around Seattle.

They soon changed their name to Mad Season (after the time of year 'shrooms are in bloom) and released their only album, 1995's Above. It received a measly two and half stars (out of five) in Rolling Stone. But then again, when did Rolling Stone ever know what the hell they were talking about? Above went gold after only three months. A great home video, Live At The Moore Theatre, was released the same year, and the singles River Of Deceit and I Don't Know Anything did well on the rock charts.

By 1997, Staley's drug addiction was getting out of hand and he chose to leave Mad Season. Mark Lanegan (who had done a guest appearance on Above) was recruited as the new singer and the band changed its name to Disinformation. Material was written, but the members' busy schedules meant an album never came to fruition. When John Baker Saunders died of a heroin overdose in 1998, Disinformation was permanently shelved.

Layne Staley's death in April of 2002 disintegrated all hopes for a Mad Season reunion. In an interview with Close-Up Magazine in 2002 (issue #55), McCready told reporter Martin Carlsson that he might one day team up with Mark Lanegan and Barrett Martin again to record the Disinformation songs, but under a different moniker out of respect for Saunders and Staley.

One can only hope. If Above, truly one of the most beautiful albums of all time, is anything to go by, the Disinformation album would be an essential purchase. Just listen to McCready's guitar sound at the beginning of Lifeless Dead - does rock 'n' roll get any more gorgeous than that?

Does rock 'n' roll get more graceful and tender as the sombre epic Wake Up? More sombre and delicately bluesy as Artificial Red?

The answer is obviously no.

(mp3) Mad Season - Wake up (recommended!)
(mp3) Mad Season - Artificial red
(mp3) Mad Season - Lifeless dead

Buy Above @ Amazon.com, why don'cha.

I Don't Know Anything live @ The Moore in 1995:

The 13th Best Album of the 90s: Faith No More - "King For A Day... Fool For A Lifetime" (1995)

Faith No More's most admirable quality was their way of annoying people by never doing the expected. So I suppose that someone like myself, who has derided their recent reunion tour as nothing short of an abomination, should be happy they haven't changed a bit in their quest to rub you the wrong way.

I was and still is (at least in principle) against this reunion for the same reason I'm against all reunions: Nostalgia is destructive, let sleeping dogs lie. I've seen footage of this reunion tour, and yes, the band is on top form and they sound fantastic. I still hate it in theory though, which makes me admire the band even more for not doing what I want them to. And since FNM seemed like the last band that would reunite, then reuniting would be exactly that unexpected thing they should be doing.

Aw fuck it, this could go round and round forever. And it makes my head hurt.

The art of annoying people just for the sake of it is something that FNM share with bands like The Melvins and Queens Of The Stone Age, and it never ceases to put a smirk on my face. There's no harm in being a bit of a crowdpleaser and giving your fans what they want, but never give them exactly what they want. You have to remember to always hold something back, mess with their heads a little and poke some fun at them. Something always have to feel a little off and uncomfortable.

Faith No More were (and apparently still are) the masters of this.

They could have just released a clone of The Real Thing, but no, they turned everything on its head and released Angel Dust instead. And for this their next album they went even more extreme. "More of everything" is a tired old cliche that too many bands use. "Yeah, like, the heavy parts are even heavier and the melodic parts and like even more melodic". Sigh. Spare me. But in the case of King For A Day... it's actually true.

Where Angel Dust was a fascinating exploration of mixing up everything at once, King For A Day... is almost entirely polarised. In the past they might've squeezed three different genres into the same song, here every style gets a track of its own. Much of this album isn't far from what singer Mike Patton was doing in Mr. Bungle at the time, perhaps because Bungle guitarist Trey Spruance played on it.

Star A.D. and Evidence are snazzy show tunes that would be played all over Las Vegas if its mayor was David Lynch. Caralho Voador is a laidback bossa nova sung in Portoguese, Take This Bottle is a sentimental country & western-tinged ditty that Kenny Rogers could probably do a good cover of, the title track is perhaps the sole track on the album that harkens back to Angel Dust, and The Last To Know and the utterly brilliant Just A Man are true show stoppers that just keep soaring and soaring. Most of it's pretty heavy though - Cuckoo For Caca, Digging The Grave, The Gentle Art Of Making Enemies, Get Out, What A Day and Ugly In The Morning are snarling beasts and probably as aggressive as FNM ever got. Maybe it's the result of the emotional release they felt after finally firing guitarist Jim Martin and being rid of all his tiresome behaviour.

Two years later FNM released their last album Album Of The Year which was a small step back to the Angel Dust days while retaining the ferocious quality of King For A Day..., a great album as well. But nothing beats this one, a real once-in-a-career type album.

(mp3) Faith No More - The gentle art of making enemies
(mp3) Faith No More - Digging the grave
(mp3) Faith No More - Just a man (recommended!)

Buy King For A Day... Fool For A Lifetime @ Amazon.com.

The video for Digging The Grave:

The 14th Best Album of the 90s: White Zombie - "Astro Creep 2000" (1995)

That many people would pick La Sexorcisto: Devil Music, Vol. 1 (1992) over Astro Creep 2000 is yet another proof of mankind's ineptitude.

For this album, White Zombie's 4th, kept the hell-bending, booty-shaking grooves of La Sexorcisto and the countless movie samples, but added an industrial tinge which sometimes reminds me vaguely of Die Krupps. The album's Wikipedia page claims the exact opposite, that this album is less industrial than La Sexorcisto but I humbly disagree.

Pantera/Soundgarden producer Terry Date also came on board to give the band their heaviest sound ever, and former Testament drummer John Tempesta luckily replaced the lacklustre Ivan de Prume.

None of the involved have worked on an album this good ever since. Guitarist Jay Yuenger may have produced a great Fu Manchu record (The Action Is Go, 1997) but hasn't done much else worth paying attention to. Bassist Sean Yseult is nowhere to be seen. Which is a bummer considering how hot she is.

Rob Zombie's solo career (which included Tempesta on drums) started off well with 1998's Hellbilly Deluxe but went pear-shaped soon after that. Educatued Horses? Ha! Don't make me laugh. At least his movies are alright.

I only got to see White Zombie live once, at Globen in Stockholm in 1995, where Mudhoney, Kyuss, Blind Melon and some other band I can't remember (Sponge, perhaps?) played and White Zombie and Soundgarden headlined. As much as a I love Soundgarden, their show was one of my most anticlimactic concert experiences after seeing White Zombie's high octane Mad Max-meets-Tim Burton stage antics.

(mp3) White Zombie - Electric head pt. 1 (The agony)
(mp3) White Zombie - Super-charger heaven (recommended!)
(mp3) White Zombie - Blood, milk and sky

Buy Astro Creep @ Amazon.com, why don'cha.

The video for Super-charger Heaven:

The 15th Best Album of the 90s: Misery Loves Co. - "Not Like Them" (1997)

A fantastic (if not flawless) band I've previously blogged about here. Click that link for band history and such.

This was their second album out of three, and on this one they were beginning to find their own voice. Whereas on the first album they were quite often a Ministry clone (This Is No Dream, I'm looking at you), on this one they began to incorporate influences from Joy Division, The Cure (who they would cover on their next album Your Vision Was Never Mine To Share) and XTC (who they covered on this album).

By the time Not Like Them hit the shelves, Misery Loves Co. was no longer a full-on industrial metal machine kicking your face in with grinding guitars and cold mechanical mayhem, but rather a more organic, darker kind of metal which at times sounded and felt downright suicidal. Misery Loves Co. lived up to their name without ever feeling like the fashionable "O woe is me" type that was so trendy with heavy bands in the 90s.

Not Like Them is so introverted and destructive that Nine Inch Nails' The Downward Spiral feels life-affirming and inspirational in comparison. Truly the pinnacle of Misery Loves Co.'s career.

Singer Patrick Wirén is now a full time journalist and has a popular blog right here. Well worth a read if you understand Swedish.

(mp3) Misery Loves Co. - Prove me wrong (recommended!)
(mp3) Misery Loves Co. - Complicated game
(mp3) Misery Loves Co. - Infected

Buy Not Like Them @ Amazon.com.

The video for Prove Me Wrong:

The 16th Best Album of the 90s: Metallica - "S/t" (1991)

Today's entry will be a short one for two reasons.

1. I'm kinda busy today
2. This is an album that most people already have strong opinions on anyway, being Metallica's second most reviled album (after 2003's St. Anger) and all.

I can't think of much to say about it that hasn't been said before. They ditched Danish producer Flemming Rasmussen after working with him for three albums and got hot shot Billboard 100 stalwart Bob Rock instead. A grade A audiophile and a stickler for perfection, Rock demanded more of the band than perhaps anyone ever had. Endless takes of everything, it all had to be perfect. With heated daily arguements as a result.

Selling out? Hardly. More like buying in.

As a result this is Metallica's perhaps more powerful sounding album, where every power chord kicks you in the man-tits and every hit of Lars Ulrich's snare sounds like a gunshot. Sometimes it goes too far, like on The Struggle Within where the backing gang vocals sound more like Bon Jovi than the Bay Area. Other than that it's a great song though, a speedy corker of a finisher which follows the tradition set by the predecessors Master Of Puppers (1986) and ...And Justice For All (1988), both of which ended with fast tracks.

Yes, perhaps the songwriting was much simpler here (many songs have only two or three riffs) but the songwriting was top notch and while this is hardly Metallica's best album (that would of course be 1984's Ride The Lighting), it's a fantastic album and an undeniable metal classic. Except I think Enter Sandman and Nothing Else Matters are terrible and boring and should never be played live ever again. But that's just me.

(mp3) Metallica - Sad but true
(mp3) Metallica - My friend of misery (recommended!)
(mp3) Metallica - The struggle within

Buy S/t @ Amazon.com, why don'cha.

The 17th Best Album of the 90s: Stone Temple Pilots - "Core" (1992)

At my announcement of this countdown, I warned you there would be a hefty helping of grunge. Well, there hasn't been much that (yet) apart from Nirvana at #30, so let's dig the flannel out of the closet, don't shower for a week and wear the ugliest hat you can find.

Formed as Mighty Joe Young in 1986, later changed their name to Shirley Temple's Pussy and finally, at the record companies insistance, changed it to Stone Temple Pilots. Probably wise.

Core was their debut album and they were immediately labelled imposters and were accused of just jumping the grunge bandwagon. Scott Weiland's Eddie Vedder-esque vocals didn't help. And perhaps they did jump the bandwagon. So what? As I've said countless times on this blog, an unoriginal good band is always better than an original bad band. And if you were willing to dig a little deeper, underneath all that grungification, Stone Temple Pilots were most definitely a good band. Unlike other grunge posers like Bush, Silverchair, etc.

Both musically and lyrically it's rooted in the late 80's/early 90's Seattle scene, and while they never quite reached the heights of, say, Alice In Chains and Pearl Jam, they had one great song after another that would crawl under your skin and you'd never get them out of your head.

By 1994 they had found their own voice and the Seattle traces were a little harder to detect on the follow up Purple. Also a very good album, but it doesn't have the raw (if not downright sexual and perverted) quality of their debut.

(mp3) Stone Temple Pilots - Sex type thing
(mp3) Stone Temple Pilots - Piece of pie (recommended!)
(mp3) Stone Temple Pilots - Plush

Buy Core @ Amazon.com, why don'cha.

Wicked Garden live on Letterman in '93:

The 18th Best Album of the 90s: Peace, Love And Pitbulls - "Red Sonic Underwear" (1994)

Since the readers of this blog consist of about 90% non-Swedes, I reckon a little history lesson might in order:

Joakim Thåström was born in the suburbs of Stockholm, Sweden in 1957. Singer and guitarist in legendary punk band Ebba Grön in the late 70's and early 80's. He then fronted the highly successful political punk/pop/rock band Imperiet until they disbanded in 1988. His first solo album, simply titled Thåström was released in 1989, which was a smash hit.

Now here's where it gets interesting. By now Thåström had become a celebrity and a national icon, and he couldn't have hated it more. As a way of alienating himself from he made Xplodera Mig 2000 in 1991, a noisy industrial rock album that still remains one of my all time favorite albums. The album sold quite well despite its abrasive nature, but it was nothing compared to what was coming next.

Thåström relocated to Amsterdam and got nerdy with a sampler. His new project, which he had named Peace, Love & Pitbulls, released their first album in 1992. Basically it was Xplodera Mig 2000 taken one step further. Heavy, angry, experimental industrial rock/metal in English that left everyone confused. This marked the beginning of the low point in Thåström's carrier critically. Mainly because the critics didn't understand what the hell he was doing or why he was doing it. They wanted him to be the same old guy making the same old kind of music they grew up with in the 70's and 80's.

With PLP's second album Red Sonic Underwear in 1994 he scared away most of the last few fans, and Red Sonic Underwear remains one of the true unsung masterpieces of the 90's. PLP released their third and last album (imaginatively titled 3) in 1997, and it was considered by the critics and know-it-alls to be Thåström's return to form, since it was less industrial, a little more accessible and he sang for the first time in years, as opposed to screaming his balls off like he did on the last two albums. 3 is by far PLP's worst album, but still far ahead of anything most bands will ever record. Two years later in 1999 Thåström released a straight up rock album, and once again became the critics' darling, but still on his own terms. This is not a man who compromises.

As a rabid fan of all things Thåström, I'd have to say this is his ultimate Masterpiece (yes, with a capital M). It's angrier and noisier and more aggressively in-your-face than anything he's ever done before or since, with thumbing drums (well, drum machines, but they sound real enough most of the time), grinding guitars and screaming vocals under layers of rubble, rusty debris and rotting trash. Almost as if saying "You thought the last PLP album was heavy? Bah! That was nothing!".

I got the SNES game Alien 3 for Christmas in 1994, and used to blast this album while I played, and these two have since become forever linked in my mind. Everytime I play this album I see images in my head of Ripley running down desolate, grey concrete and steel corridors with a flame thrower taking out facehuggers.

Thåström has always had a thing for eastern Europe, and East Germany in partiuclar. Back in the old Ebba Grön days he wrote songs with titles like Scheisse (about oppressive regimes) and Die Maurer (about the Berlin wall separating two lovers), and his solo album he's had songs like Ich Liebe Dich. This trend continues on Red Sonic Underwear with track number two, Das Neue Konzept. None of these songs have lyrics in German though.

The lyrics are almost a chapter onto themselves. Thåström has himself been critical of the English lyrics he wrote for PLP, saying they don't really mean anything, they were just words that sounded good. Well I happen to think that's good enough. Lines like "Life is a picnic on a factory floor" (Warzaw), "Pig machine open up your door/Pig machine electronic war" (Pig Machine) or "I need to break out in a true Snake Plissken style" (Das Neue Konzept) are perhaps not cryptic metaphores for profound thoughts, but they evoke images that suit the unrelenting music perfectly.

This is truly one of the best heavy albums of all time, one that deserves to be heard by as many people at possible. Fifteen years after its release it's still as mind boggling, heavy, extreme, brutal and amazing as it was the day it was released.

And keep in mind that industrial metal albums never age very well - they date and grow old faster than an open carton of milk on a hot day. But ask the risk of sounding repetative, Red Sonic Underwear is as fresh and crushing as it ever was.

Do yourself a favor, citizen. Download these three tracks from the album and revel in their amazingness. Crank it way up - this is music meant to play loudly.

(mp3) PLP - Warzaw (recommended!)
(mp3) PLP - War in my living room
(mp3) PLP - Pig machine

Buy Red Sonic Underwear @ Amazon.com, why don'cha.

Pointless trivia: Alien 3 on the SNES.

The 19th Best Album of the 90s: Korn - "S/t" (1994)

It would be easy rag on Korn in general and this album in particular for all the lame imitations it spawned. Countless terrible bands formed because of it, and formerly good bands like Machine Head and Sepultura re-shaped their sound after it, even going as far as hiring the same producers and engineers to recreate Korn's sound. And of course losing their way entirely in the process. Machine Head snapped back into shape after a couple of albums, whereas Sepultura got lost in the haze where they remain to this day.

Even someone like grunge wannabe Daniel Johns of Silverchair dropped his baby faced Kurt Cobain image and adopted Jonathan Davis' look for a while in 1996/97 with the long, straggly hair (although he could never quite pull off the dreadlocks) and the double eyebrow piercing. He even started banging his head the same way.

This abomination is known today as "nu metal", a bastard genre of funk and hiphop beats filtered through thick walls of (solo-less) guitars and angsty vocals.

But back in 1993 when the album was recorded, none of that baggage existed. There was no "scene", there was no trend in running around in enormous Adidas tracksuits and wailing about how your stepmother treated you like shit, that a friend of the family raped you as a kid and how everyone in school bullied you.

Metal was a lot of things, but emotional was not one of them. Personal and heartfelt? Yes, many a sappy love ballad would be proof of that. But to express pure, raw emotions, even to the point of breaking down crying while recording your vocals (the final track Daddy), was unheard of. Metal was, and largely still is, 100% machismo, cro-magnon posturing with mean looks, tattoos and chestbeating. Only the strong survive, whoever drinks more beer, beats up more queers and bangs more chicks win. Pussies and faggots need not apply.

Sure, they might write a song or two about how badly their parents treated them, but those would be angry songs. Attitude ridden pieces about how much they wanna fuck people up, because they're so fucking fucked up anyway, they don't fucking give a fuck. But to write songs about the actual hurt the childhood abuse caused? To get right down to the core of the pain and rip it right open for everyone to see? Naming a song "Faget" and screaming "I'm just a faggot" over and over?

Unthinkable. Until Korn's debut album in 1994.

This tiny little snowball of honesty soon became a huge avalanche. Suddenly more and more bands stopped singing about how they didn't care about anything and instead turned to how terrible they were feeling, how everything sucked. The scars of the soul and all that. It wasn't a sign of weakness to express feelings anymore, in fact it was kinda cool.

Of course there's only so much honesty and raw emotion people can take, and soon enough the whole "woe is me" trip grew old. Or "stock", as Lars Ulrich would put it (as a sidenote, I'd even go so far as to say Metallica's Some Kind Of Monster and all their therapy sessions were an extension of Korn loosening metal up a bit).

All the bands crying and weeping and "oh how my life fucking sucks" became generic sooner than you can say "pass the hankies". It became something that was expected of you, if you were in the nu metal genre it was downright mandatory. Not to mention goths and emos took a few cues from this new feeling-shitty trend. Apart from this album and Slipknot's 1999 selftitled debut, nu metal was and still is an entirely useless genre.

Even Korn themselves ran out of steam by their third album Follow The Leader in 1998. Jonathan Davis still sang about the same stuff, but it had all become a pose. Lyrical angst had become synomous with the band and he did his best to maintain that image, but anyone with half a brain could tell he had exorcised his demons on the first two albums and it wasn't real anymore.

But on Korn, it felt really friggin' real.

I first came in contact with Korn in 1995 when I saw the Blind video on ZTV, and it blew me away, I had never heard anything like it. The weird sound of the kickdrum (which I later learned was actually the bass), the contrast between the tightened, high pitched drums and the ridiculously downtuned the guitars (which I later learned was an attempt to mimic Carcass' guitar sound), the intro that seemed to go on forever (which I later learned was copied from Primus' Too Many Puppies), the overall strange vibe, everything single thing appealed to me.

This "Korn" band soon grew into a big mystery. There was no information at all on the TV screen, just the name of the band and the name of the song. I didn't even know the name of the album. I went to every record store I could think of. No one had heard of the band. I mentioned the band in school, but nope. No one had seen the video, they had no idea what I was talking about.

There was no internet to speak of, and even if you were one of the lucky few who had access to it, there was no information about obscure metal bands anyway. A few months later ZTV aired a video called Shoots & Ladders which made me freak out even more. "Is that a BAGPIPE?! Is he hanging upside down in a corn field? What the fuck IS this?! Who ARE these people?!"

Finally later that same year the album was distributed in Europe, and I bought a copy via mail order. Cost me a fortune, but it was worth it. I ogled over the creepy photos of dolls, porno mags and bugs in the booklet and stared at the ominous cover of the girl on the swing looking up towards an unknown predator.

I now knew a little more, such as the name of the band members, but I still knew nothing about them. These were a bunch of inbred delinquents recording their demons as part of their therapy at the loonie bin for all I knew. Everything about Korn was dark and creepy and unsettling and murky and claustrophobic and just plain verboten.

I even used to rush to the CD player and turn it off after track 11, Helmet In The Bush, because I didn't want to hear Daddy, it just freaked me out too much. Hey, I was 13 and impressionable, gimme a break.

But as time went on and Korn got more attention, more info would seep out and it turned out they were pretty normal people after all. What a bummer.

We all know what happened next, Freak On A Leash, Grammies, millions of records sold and all that. These days they're barely a band, they lost one guitar player to Jesus and both the drummer and the other guitar player went on "hiatus" for long periods of time.

They became rockstars and although they continued to make decent records, nothing ever topped this one and even today all that blingy MTV crap is washed away every time I put this record on, it's like nothing after about 1996 ever happened. I am instantly transported back in time to that dweeby 13-year old that was almost too scared to play the CD because it might be haunted.

Ah yes, those were the days.

(mp3) Korn - Blind
(mp3) Korn - Clown (recommended!)
(mp3) Korn - Lies

Buy S/t @ Amazon.com.

The video for Blind:


Daniel Johns in his Jonathan Davis phase:

The 20th Best Album the 90s: Therapy? - "Troublegum" (1994)

Brilliant album, easily Therapy?'s best. I've been told the band plays something called "pop metal". A bit weird, but with their thick riffs and inspired hooks, I guess it fits.

Although I always felt Troublegum was a little too long. 14 tracks are a bit much, and although the last thre tracks (Femtex, Unrequited and Brainsaw) are by no means bad, it just feels like the natural conclusion of the album is track 11, Turn. So that's usually when I turn it off.

Some total classics on this one, such as Nowhere, Die Laughing and Trigger Inside, songs the band still plays live to this day. The first time I remember taking notice of Therapy? was when I saw the Die Laughing video in 1994 on MTV Europe (yes, MTV was good once) and thinking the song title was in German.

Later that year I saw the MTV Europe Music Awards in (I think) Berlin, where the band performed the song live, and I remember being struck by how fucking hard the drummer Fyfe Ewing was hitting, this dude was Dave Grohl times ten. Sadly, 1995's Infernal Love would be his last album with the band.

Therapy? is still around, still putting out records and touring, and they're still worth a listen but their undeniable peak was in 1994.

Buy Troublegum @ Amazon.com.

The aforementioned performance of Die Laughing at the 1994 MTV Europe Awards:


Unbeliever live at Brixton Academy 1994:


The video for Turn:

The 21st Best Album of 90s: Pantera - "The Great Southern Trendkill" (1996)

How many of you were expecting Vulgar Display Of Power? Quite a few I bet. Well fuck that.

As I stated in my VDOP post last September, that album, and the video for Walk in particular, opened a huge metal door that might otherwise have remained closed. But in hindsight, I like both Far Beyond Driven (1994) and The Great Southern Trendkill much better. Cowboys From Hell, you say? Meh. Overrated.

By the mid 90's, relations within the band were at an all time low, singer Phil Anselmo's heroin addiction was getting increasingly worse by the day (he even OD'd a couple of times), he travelled on a separate tourbus from his band mates (whom he barely spoke to anymore) and his time on stage was spent rambling and mumbling incoherently and cursing whoever or whatever bugged him at the moment. Occasionally he'd sing a song. Then he'd ramble for another ten minutes.

Perhaps this was one of the reasons The Great Southern Trendkill became Pantera's angriest and most brutal recording. A pitch black, claustrophobic album without even a hint of sunshine through the thick clouds. One look at the cover and you might expect what the record sounds like - a huge fucking evil snake ready to bite your face off. If that doesn't do it for you, perhaps the Se7en-like scribblings in the lyric sheet will drive the point home.

Another reason may have been Anselmo's side project Down (which had released its debut album NOLA in 1995) that steered him in a darker direction. But more than anything it was probably Pantera's statement on the current state of metal in the U.S.

After years of grunge and with nu metal emerging and growing ever stronger, metal was just about the untrendiest thing on the block. So naturally the band who were the poster boys of heavy fucking metal only five years prior decided to make a point - we're metal, metal is awesome, and go fuck yourself if you don't agree.

After a decade or so of Judas Priest inspired glam metal, Pantera in the late 80's and early 90's pioneered what became known as "groove metal" along with Prong, Machine Head, Exhorder and few others. Basically a slower form of thrash with hardcore style singing, to simplify the genre to an absurd degree.

On The Great Southern Trendkill however, little of that remained. Drag The Waters is really the only song evoking the bouncy Walk-style grooves of old. The rest is either violent and furious attacks (Suicide Note Pt 2, the title track, Sandblasted Skin) or moody, meandering death blues dirges unlike anything they had done up til then (10's, Floods).

Even the balladry of old was gone. No Cemetary Gates, no Hollow, no This Love, no Planet Caravan. Instead we get the acoustic Suicide Note Pt 1 which, well... let's just say it lives up to its name.

Anselmo had also become a fan of grindcore and black metal and invited Anal Cunt ringleader Seth Putnam to contribute some hellish screams straight from the abattoir. Anselmo had adopted quite an impressive pig squeal of his own, so it's not always easy to tell the two loonies apart. A lot of the time it sounds like a couple of drunken junkies (which, to be honest, is exactly what they were) taking turns puking bile on the mic.

To further the separation from Anselmo and the rest of the band, he recorded his vocals away from the others, in Trent Reznor's (Nine Inch Nails) house in New Orleans. A house Reznor later sold to actor John Goodman. A bit of useless trivia I'm sure you were aching for.

But enough about Phil Anselmo, his three guilty parties were on high form as well. Rex Brown and Vinnie Paul were easily one of the tightest rhythm sections metal had ever seen, and Dimebag Darrell's riffs were more evil and fucked than ever. Following Dime's death in 2004, the solo for Floods has been hailed as one of his very best. I've never been a big fan of guitar solos and usually zone out during them, so I wouldn't know. What I do know is that the reverb laden guitar sound in the outro of Floods is one of the most beautiful sounds I've ever heard.

That's all for now, #20 coming up tomorrow.

(mp3) Pantera - The great southern trendkill
(mp3) Pantera - 10's (recommended!)
(mp3) Pantera - Floods

Buy The Great Southern Trendkill @ Amazon.com.

Floods live:

The 22nd Best Album of the 90s: Slipknot - "S/t" (1999)

This album and Machine Head's The Burning Red formed my soundtrack of the fall of 1999, but where as the latter has aged terribly, Slipknot's major label debut still packs one fuck of a punch.

I first heard about them in a tiny blurb in Metal Hammer that summer where a member of the band (probably percussionist and ringleader Shawn "Clown" Crahan) called his band "the metal version of Wu-Tang Clan". I later realised he just meant that both groups had nine members, but at the time I had no idea, I just thought it sounded cool.

Having listened to crappy 30 second RealAudio clips on Amazon, I order the album (the now very rare 19 track digipack version) and was hooked from the moment (sic) kicked in.

Hailing from the inbred plains of Westilldonthavetheinternet, Iowa (Des Moines), Slipknot consisted of members of local bands such Bodypit, Modifidious, Anal Blast and other terrible bands with even more terrible names. Singer Corey Taylor was recruited from Stone Sour. As the story goes he was threatened with an ass kicking if he didn't join Slipknot, but with the band's tendency to stretch the truth at times, I'd take that story with a grain of salt. Taylor replaced former singer and Max Cavalera-wannabe Anders Colsefini who then went on to sing in the abysmal trainwreck known as Painface (what is it with these people and crap band names?).

Other members had come on gone prior to this album, but since the release of S/t the band hasn't switched a single member, which is pretty impressive. The last person to go was guitarist Josh Brainard who was replaced by Taylor's Stone Sour buddy Jim Root after the initial album session. A while later the band recorded Purity and Me Inside, but it's Brainard who plays on the rest of the album.

Built on a foundation of mainly nu metal and death metal, with hints of hiphop, thrash and groove metal, S/t gave my ass a thorough pounding, and it has an intensity the band has never been to top or even match.

It's probably a case of FAS (First Album Syndrome), which is defined by a tangible sense of excitement mixed with desperation and a feeling of "Fuck it, this might be only chance we get".

Let's not forget Slipknot was a band of nobodies from nowhere who were destined to be corn-munching hog farmers for the rest of their lives if the band didn't work out, so it's no wonder they jumped at the chance of going to the big city (Los Angeles) to work in a real studio (Indigo Ranch) with a name producer (Ross Robinson). Of course they held nothing back and poured every drop of sweat and blood they had into it.

This "all or nothing" attitude is so alive on the album you can almost taste it. While the band followed up this album with one that was even heavier and more intense (2001's Iowa), it never felt as genuine as here were all they wanted to do was just for people to take notice and prove they were worth a damn.

Another story is how Joey Jordison recorded all of his drums in two days, and the album consists of first takes only. Again, I don't know if this story is true, but it certainly sounds like it could be true. He plays like his life depended on it, literally. That goes for the rest of the band too for that matter.

Corey Taylor has for example sounded more brutal and guttural on later albums, but his screams here are the best of his career just because of the sheer force and determination. He doesn't care about protecting his vocal chords or even trying to sound a certain way, he just let's it rip and whatever comes out of his throat will do. He sounds like a guy who no one ever really listened to or paid much attention to and who went into the studio with one thought on his mind: "I'll make you fucking listen, motherfucker. I'll scream so fucking loud no one can ignore it".

I've heard tales of Ross Robinson going apeshit during the sessions, taking all his clothes off and nude tackling the band as they were trying to record, threw potted plants at them etc. Whatever he did worked, the album is one long release of nine lifetimes worth of pent-up aggression and frustration.

Man, with all this rambling this is turning into a very long post. And I haven't mentioned the masks, the boiler suits, the masochistic live shows and their "maggot" fans yet. I didn't even bring up the lawsuits that made the band withdraw Frail Limb Nursery and Purity from the album and replace them with Me Inside.

Ah well. I'll save that for another time.

(mp3) Slipknot - (sic)
(mp3) Slipknot - Eyeless
(mp3) Slipknot - Frail limb nursery/Purity (recommended!)

Buy S/t @ Amazon.com.

The 23rd Best Album of the 90s: Dropkick Murphys - "Do Or Die" (1998)

As a rabid Dropkick Murphys fan (I consider them to be one of the top five bands in the world), I had to include them on the list. My favorite album of theirs is actually Sing Loud, Sing Proud from 2000, but since this is a strictly 1990s mix and the only other album the Murphys released in that decade was The Gang's All Here in 1999, I had to go with their debut Do or Die.

Sure, The Gang's All Here has Pipebomb On Landsdowne, Blood And Whiskey, Curse Of A Fallen Soul and The Fighting 69th, but Do Or Die has all the hits, the true classics. You can't argue with Caught In A Jar, Road Of The Righteous, the "pub version" of Boys On The Docks (about bassist Ken Casey's grandfather John Kelly), Faraway Coast (about singer Mike McColgan's experiences as a soldier in the first Gulf war), Skinhead On The MBTA and Barroom Hero.

This was the only album they did with McColgan who after the album left to pursue a career as a firefighter. This merry Boston bunch then recruited Al Barr from the Bruisers and haven't look back since.

The strength of Dropkick Murphys since day one has been their combination of pretty much every good form of punk there has ever been. There's the '76/'77 scene and the British ska wave of the late 70's as well as early 80's hardcore and the British skinhead Oi! scene.

Dropkick Murphy's were (and to an extent still are) a melting pot of Stiff Little Fingers, The Clash, Gang Green, The Damned, The Nips, The F.U.'s, and many others, only augmented by McColgan's snotty, hollering vocals. With the arrival of Al Barr's gruff, raspy vocals and Lars Frederickson's production the band adopted a more rockier, Rancid-like sound on The Gang's All Here which the band's has stuck to till this day. Which I love, but it's important to understand that Dropkick Murphys sounded like a quite different band in the early days.

And then of course there's the Irish influence which comes not only from several members' Celtic heritage, but also from listening to The Pogues and The Dubliners. In taking The Pogues' base idea (traditional Irish music with a punk edge) to its limits, Dropkick Murphys in essence greated something new. Aggressive, often quite fast, songs with hooligan vocals that made you realise Oi! and The Wild Rover have some very essential in common: the sing-a-long aspect.

In the liner notes of their 2002 live album Live on St. Patrick's Day From Boston, MA a critic writes "Dropkick Murphys don't give concerts - they throw parties", which really sums everything up. A Dropkick Murphys show is just about the funnest thing there is, good spirits all aroundand a complete sense of unity were the boundaries between band and audience disappear. It's impossible not to jump around like a lunatic, scream along to every line with your fist in the air and drink Guinness and whiskey til you drop with a blissful grin from ear to ear.

But more than anything I find Dropkick Murphys' music uplifting. Sounds crap, but there's no better word for it. It's positive and hopeful and has helped me lift my spirits on countless occasions.

(mp3) Dropkick Murphys - Cadence to arms/Do or die
(mp3) Dropkick Murphys - Boys on the docks (recommended!)
(mp3) Dropkick Murphys - Skinhead on the MBTA

Buy Do Or Die @ Amazon.com.

The 24th Best Album of the 90s: Foo Fighters - "S/t" (1995)

Picture this:

You're a hyperactive little pothead in Absolutely Nowhere, Virginia. You like listening to Metallica in your room, carving the Black Flag logo into your flesh with an old pen and beating the shit out of a drumkit in various local bands.

One day you get a call from some band that you've never heard of over in Seattle who need a drummer. You give it a shot and within 18 months your face is all over MTV. Things are going well, you're making money and get to travel the world.

You're not sure if the dude singing in this suddenly very successful band would be too fond of the other members contributing material, so instead you record them yourself in secret and release them on a cassette named Pocketwatch under the pseudonum Late! and distribute it via a semi-obscure label in another Absolutely Nowhere, Virginia. The few people who hear it seem to like it.

The suddenly very successful band you've found yourself in keeps touring and makes some more records, on which you contribute about half a song. And a b-side, which was a rerecording of one of the songs on that cassette you made.

Before you know it the singer of your band blows his brains out and you're a stranded. Things are a little strange, and everyone wants to interview you about just how strange things are.

So instead of wasting time on interviews, you decide to record some more songs of your own. Hey, it worked pretty well the last time. And just like the last time, you blast your way through the recordings pretty quickly, playing all the instruments yourself and you don't really bother to make things too pretty and polished. It's a demo tape after all, no biggie. As long as it sticks to the tape it's alright.

After shopping the demo around, you land a record deal and form a band with the guitarist from your old band and the rhythm section from some other band. That demo is never rerecorded professionally, and is released as is. You go on the road with this new band and everything seems good, people seem to like it. Of course everyone still wants to talk about that dude who blew his brains out and are convinced all your songs are about that dude and/or his wife. But apart from that, life is pretty sweet.

You make another record that's also damn good and you get a couple of hit singles, then things start to slip a bit. You're still the nicest dude in rock 'n' roll, and you still grind out decent music, but the edge has gone somehow. Your music now lacks danger, lacks venom, lacks balls. So you put your band on hold for a while and go back to playing drums with some dudes from the deserts of California and together you make a really fucking sweet record.

You also play with some cult comedy duo/rock group from L.A. who did a show on HBO which ran for a whopping three episode and you play a demon in one of their videos. As well as tons of other cool people, included someone who once wanted to fuck someone like an animal. You even make an album with all your favorite metal singers from the 80's. Why? No reason, just because you fucking felt like it. You seem to be back on track musically, you've regained that edge.

But once you're back with that band of yours the edge is gone again. The music you make together isn't necessarily bad it's just... bland. It doesn't say too much, doesn't really do anything, mere fodder for the F.M. listeners who don't care if they play you or Hoobastank. It's neither as groin-throbbingly spectacular as your first two records nor is it as salivatingly eyebrow-raising as the music you made playing drums with other bands. You either don't know how to fix this, don't care, or just don't realise there is even a problem. All while your band makes some more records and continues to become even blander.

But then one day, completely by accident, you stumble upon some crappy metal mp3 blog with terrible colors (brown? yellow? wtf?) and read a post (by some guy who seems a little too cocky for his own good and likes to think he knows what he's talking about) concerning your band's first album, that one you threw together in no time at all, that one you played all the instruments on. The one that was a little noisy and abrasive, a little rough around the edges and kicked people in the vagina. The one you made without even thinking, just some tracks you threw together.

And suddenly you realise that's exactly what you should be doing. Not polished, dire albums with bombastic productions better suited for U2, no!

You realise you need to step back into that garage with one drumkit, one bass, one guitar, one mic, some cracked speakers and a 4-track machine and make another record that writhes and breathes, an album with a pulse, an album that's not a daffodil but a fucking cactus, an album that grabs people by the throat and bites their nose off and shoves it up their pee hole.

And in the liner notes you will dedicate the album to the blogger who made you come to your senses and got your band back on track.

You're welcome.

(mp3) Foo Fighters - Weenie beenie
(mp3) Foo Fighters - Wattershed
(mp3) Foo Fighters - Exhausted (recommended!)

Buy @ Amazon.com.

Weenie Beenie live in 1995: