We continue our countdown of the best albums of all time - from number 15 to number 11.
15: Undertow - Tool
Their first full album, but you wouldn't guess it. Danny Carey's drumming is already awesome and the band as a whole has vastly improved it's songwriting skills since their EP Opiate. Maynard's lyrics are a lot more personal and angsty on this album, but that turns out to be a strength, some of that 'fiery passion of youth' I guess. I like this one better than Aenima for it's weird linear drug induced song structures, and it's bleak heavy mood. Music for angsty teenagers has never been this good since.
14: Too Dark Park - Skinny Puppy
When people think of 80s music they normally either think of ghastly crap in the vein of Madonna and Duran Duran, or morose post-punk bands like The Cure and The Smiths. A few former bleeding edge hipsters might think of techno and early house, and lots of people would just drone "Metallica!!!" but for those of us with taste, industrial music was the best thing to come out of the 80s (OK this album actually came out in 1990, but these guys are essentially an 80s band). Bands like Skinny Puppy and Front242 moved away from the aggressive anti-mainstream attitude of the earliest industrial bands, and while they still never got played on the radio after Madonna, the grinding chaotic noise of industrial gained a danceable beat.
Along with 'Last Rights' this is supposed to be one of Skinny Puppy's best albums. While 'Last Rights' really went off the deep end into crazy noise, this album strikes a good balance between the danceable grooves and the screaming and wailing, starting with 'Convulsion' which combines Ogre's distinctive vocals (you can't call it singing) with an erratic but catchy beat, lots of tortured grinding drilling noises, and some cool samples "He's seeing monsters... he's losing his mind and he feels it going...". The album closes with 'Reclamation' which starts out as a collection of low menacing noises and vocals, and builds to a climax of, well, loud menacing noises. A perfect example of a crazy noise song.
13: Tomahawk - Tomahawk
The first time I saw these guys live, in summer of 2001/2, I was standing behind a pair of guys who represented a very typically Kiwi archetype. It was the big good natured Maori guy and his short smart-ass Pakeha mate. You can see them nowadays in Sky's TV ad campaign. The big guy was obviously a huge fan of the band, whereas the little guy had no clue who they were. He'd been instructed well by his friend though, and was able to rattle off the standard Tomahawk speil when they took the stage - "Lets hear it for the singer from Faith No More, the drummer from Helmet, the bass player from the Melvins and the guitarist from the Jesus Lizard!". He was taking the piss, but he got it right.
Tomahawk is easily my favorite out of all Mike Patton's bands. Unlike Fantomas, where his vocals are mostly confined to his 'gibbering' style, Patton uses all sorts of styles in Tomahawk, from crazy gibbering to slow spanish love songs. The music is mostly bass driven, giving Duane Denison plenty of opportunities to go nuts with his trademark 'fucked up super crazy' guitar style. He's one of the only guys who can give Tom Morrello a run for his money with the weird guitar improvisation.
I was a little disappointed by their second album 'Mit Gas', but only because their debut set such a high standard. The tone is dark but off kilter, I've never listened to Jesus Lizard or Helmet (although I've been meaning to for 4 years) but you can hear the influence of The Melvins in the album's heavy menace, and that of Mr. Bungle in it's irreverent genre switches and Patton's gleefully manic persona.
The highlight track is 'Point and Click', where a slow moody rhythm section is topped with eerie guitar feedback and Patton's floating singing, but it's not really representative of the rest of the album, which features mainly raucous rock and metal, with a quirky twist I can only describe as 'evil country & western'.
Well that's enough about them, I could go on, but that's a post for another time. Probably a 'best live shows I've seen' post.
12: Waiting for the Sun - The Doors
Yeah, it starts with the dismal 'Hello, I Love You', but the rest of this album is filled with some beautifully sad songs, 'Yes, the River Knows', 'Love Street' and 'Summer's Almost Gone' are the best examples. It's also the big rocking hit single 'Five to One', and 'The Unknown Soldier', which may or may not have been a single, but which is popular and in the same vein. But best of all it's got 'Not to Touch the Earth', the central part of Jim's super crazy LSD trip 'The Celebration of the Lizard'. You have to listen to one of the live albums to get the whole thing, but even just this one section is pretty damn cool.
11: Silence is Sexy - Einsturzende Neubauten
Back in the old days (2000), I was a hard core noise head, if you expressed an interest in anything that didn't sound like two angry Belgians pushing a washing machine down the stairs, I'd sneer at you and call you a 'brainless mainstream drone' or something. The fact that I've included this album on this list shows how much I've mellowed in my old age.
Back in the 80s Neubauten were one of the noisiest of noise bands, but over the years they've shed most of the noise and even though they still make use of some peculiar instruments in their compositions, they tend more towards the gentle and beautiful side.
Silence is Sexy is their most poppy release (as always when talking about Industrial, a relative term), but it makes up for that shortcoming by being packed with one brilliant song after another. Blixa Bargeld's lyrics are great too, even after being translated from German to English.
[Update 26 Oct 05: Realised that I'd posted this entry incomplete for some reason and finished it off]
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