I've had surprisingly little 'home in front of the computer' time this week, so in lieu of writing a real post I'm going to participate, slightly tardily, in this meme that has been floating around in which you pick an album for every year that you've been alive. The exact criteria for the choices are left quite vague, so I'm approaching it with the idea that I'll pick the album that is most closely associated with that period of my life.
1980:
That said, for obvious reasons it's a bit hard to do so for my pre-teen years. In fact it's almost impossible to pick anything at all for the first few entries, since for most of the early Eighties it's hard to even find albums that I've even heard for some years. So my first pick is Flash Gordon by Queen. I've never heard the album, but I sure loved that title track when I was 10. “Flash! Aah ahh!”
1981:
This is the only year out of the twenty eight that I'm genuinely at total a loss to pick anything for so I'm going to go with Nick Mason's Fictitious Sports, even though I've never heard a second of it, just because I always liked that guy.
1982:
In contrast 82 is actually an easy one. Dire Strait's Love Over Gold was the first album I ever fell in love with. At the age of two I probably wasn't that fussed about it, but I really got into it once I turned five!
1983:
Pink Floyd - The Final Cut. It wasn't until fifteen years later that I actually heard it, but as covered previously here I still have a soft spot for the Pink Floyd album that everyone else hates.
1984:
This is another tricky pick due to scarcity of decent music that I'm familiar with from 1984, but I'm going with Metallica's Ride the Lightening, even if I don't think I've ever listened to it once all the way through. Eighties metal deserves to be namechecked at least once on this list.
1985:
Again I'm going to go with Dire Straits. Brothers in Arms has always felt like the quintessential Eighties album to me, which is perhaps a little strange given that it's a throwback to Seventies stadium rock in the era of new wave and synthpop, but it sure got played a lot around my house.
1986:
It would be remiss of me to leave Coil off the list! Horse Rotorvator is certainly not my favourite album of theirs, but it's far and away the best thing I could find for 86.
1987:
I'm going to reprise 1983 here and go with Pink Floyd's A Momentary Lapse of Reason. Yet another album that everyone hates, but that I grew to enjoy before I was told that I wasn't supposed to like it.
1988:
And just as it would be unjust to forget Coil, it would also be unforgivable not to mention Skinny Puppy, one of the few good things to come out of a wretched musical decade. Again, VIVIsectVI is one of my less liked albums of theirs, but it's still the best thing I could find listed for a crummy year.
1989:
The Cure's Disintegration. It would probably be more honest to pick NIN's Pretty Hate Machine, but that band is going to pop up a lot later, and Disintegration's unbelievably depressing mood made a pretty huge impression on me when I first heard it, ten years after its release.
1990:
I'll go with Skinny Puppy again. Too Dark Park actually does happen to be my favourite album of theirs.
1991:
There are albums that meant more to me that I could pick, but Nirvana's Nevermind is, to me, the quintessential Nineties album, and provided a pretty consistent soundtrack to my high school days.
1992:
Pretty much the last year that I had any trouble picking an album for. Nine Inch Nail's Broken is a great album. But not that great.
1993:
I wanted to pick Einsturzende Neubauten's Tabula Rasa, or Nirvana's In Utero for the sake of diversity, but who am I kidding? I love Tool's Undertow to pieces. Even if they far surpass it in many ways on later albums, it has a raw dirtiness that I still return to often.
1994:
This was a really fucking great year for music. Nirvana's MTV Unplugged, Jeff Buckley's Grace and Mayhem's De Mysteriius Dom Sathanas are all worthy candidates, but are all comfortably eclipsed by NIN's The Downward Spiral, an album which has all kinds of special significance to me, and which I've blathered on about in this blog many times before already.
1995:
The Smashing Pumpkin's Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness hasn't aged that well, but it was both ubiquitous and universally adored (see what I did there) for a good long time in the mid Nineties.
1996:
Nick Cave's Murder Ballads. Great album, although one I didn't come to until quite recently. I'm really only picking it so that I don't have every Tool album somewhere on this list.
1997:
Radiohead's Ok Computer. I didn't actually get this one until the next year, but its morbid paranoia made an unfortunately appropriate soundtrack to my last years of high school.
1998:
This is the point at which I can actually start doing this list properly, as it wasn't until this year that I became a real music geek. The soundtrack to this year for me was actually Ok Computer and Mellon Collie more than anything else, but Marilyn Manson's Mechanical Animals was a pretty constant companion too (honourable mention also goes to The Smashing Pumpkin's Adore and PJ Harvey's Is This Desire?). Can you tell that I was a miserable teenager that year?
1999:
A total no brainer. I must have listened to NIN's The Fragile at least three times a day for a year after it came out. I still remember skipping uni classes to go and buy it the day it came out. And hanging around in the record store for about an hour the day before because they were playing it on the PA.
2000:
A Perfect Circle - Mer de Noms. More fun memories associated with this album, such as coming home totally shitfaced from one of those fun Uni mid afternoon booze ups to find that my friend had left this album in my room for me. When I woke up the next morning I remembered nothing about what it sounded like, only that at the time I was listening to it I thought it was the most incredible thing I'd ever heard.
2001:
Tool – Lateralus. How could I pick anything else? Not just the soundtrack to that year, but to most of my life since...
2002:
I'm pretty sure we listened to Korn's Untouchables and System of a Down's Steal This Album a lot more, (and we definitely listened to Cripple Mr. Onion's album even more still, but it was a year or two old at the time) but Boards of Canada's Geogaddi always brings to mind all the times we sat in the sun chilling out and drinking Summer Ale. It felt like we did that a lot back then, even though it was barely ever sunny in Christchurch, and I was hell busy with my final year of Uni.
2003:
Massive Attack's 100th Window would probably do as well, but Radiohead's Hail to the Thief lived in our kitchen stereo for most of the year and got played probably twice a day at least (once by Barnes, once by me). It must have driven our other flatmates nuts.
2004:
There were many far better albums released this year (Nick Cave's Lyre of Orpheus, Dillinger Escape Plan's Miss Machine and Isis' Panopticon come instantly to mind), but Velvet Revolver's Contraband got a hell of a lot of playtime from me this year, and is fairly strongly associated with an old girlfriend as well. I sure wish I could pick a better album for this year, but this is the actual honest choice.
2005:
I blame Meshuggah's Catch 33 (along with Miss Machine and Panopticon, but they came out the year before) for turning me from a relatively middle of the road hard rocker into an unredeemable metal troglodyte. Damn you brutally heavy, technical music!
2006:
This was the year I moved to Australia, and Tool's 10,000 Days was the soundtrack to the three months of pissing around it took me to get here. Few albums are as strongly associated with specific times as this one is for me.
2007:
I'm a bit torn here. Musically I think of this as the year I got turned on to Nightwish, so I could list Dark Passion Play, but the truth is I like Once a hell of a lot more, and even if the music didn't do quite as much for me Nine Inch Nail's Year Zero is the obvious choice, both for the innovative way that Trent Reznor used the internet as his liner notes, and for how the album concept reflected world events of the last five years so well.
2008:
Opeth – Watershed. See my post of a few weeks back. This album still fucking rocks!
Showing posts with label Lists. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lists. Show all posts
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Saturday Lazy Music List Post
Copying slacktivist again - First to Float:
Songs containing the word fist:
Dammit that was a pretty legendary list of songs until Manson had to come and stuff it up.
- First - Coal Chamber
- The First Five Minutes After Death - Coil
- First Light - Converge
- First Phase: Moon's Milk - Coil
- First Phase: Under an Unquiet Skull - Coil
- Fish & Bird - Tom Waits
- Fist Fuck - Nine Inch Nails
- Fistful of Steel - Rage Against the Machine
- Fitter Happier - Radiohead
- Five Seconds - Peeping Tom
- Five to One - The Doors (In no less than five versions)
- Fix it so the Bruises Don't Show - Mike Patton
- Flashback - Tomahawk
- The Fletcher Memorial Home - Pink Floyd
- Flight of Luminous Insects - Download
- Flight of the Foo Birds - Count Basie
Songs containing the word fist:
- Fist Fuck - Nine Inch Nails
- Fistful of Steel - Rage Against the Machine
- Clenching the Fists of Dissent - Machine Head
- Love is a Fist - Mr. Bungle
- Levez Vos Skinny Fists Comme Antennas to Heaven; Gathering Storm - Godspeed You Black Emporer
- Stinkfist - Tool
- Use Your Fist and not Your Mouth - Marilyn Manson
Dammit that was a pretty legendary list of songs until Manson had to come and stuff it up.
Saturday, September 22, 2007
More Musical Lists
By way of Slacktivist. These make good lazy weekend posts! This week it's 'everyone to everything':
'God' - 27. 'Devil' - 9.
Edit: Was too lazy to spell people's names correctly.
- Everyone Has a Summer - Lovage
- Everyone I Went to High School With Is Dead - Mr. Bungle
- Everything's Ruined - Faith No More
- Everything Goes to Hell - Tom Waits
- Everything I've Known - Korn
- Everything in Its Right Place - Radiohead (three versions, and the first song in five weeks that's also on Fred Clark's list)
- Everything Keeps Dissolving - Coil (two versions)
- Everything Must Converge - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
- Everything You Can Think - Tom Waits
'God' - 27. 'Devil' - 9.
Edit: Was too lazy to spell people's names correctly.
Saturday, May 12, 2007
Five Possible Reasons Why Nine Inch Nails Cancelled Two Of Their Sydney Shows
- Trent fell off the wagon.
- Josh fell off a literal wagon and broke his arm.
- Government agents broke into Trent's hotel room, kidnapped him and shipped him off to a concentration camp in Guam.
- It's part of an elaborate practical joke that Trent and Thom Yorke are playing on Bex.
- The crushing disappointment of having a concert cancelled on you mere hours before the event is all just part of the Year Zero experience.
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Twelve Unjustly Maligned Albums Part 3
Part 1
Part 2
Wow it actually took me less than a week to write all of these. It's an Easter miracle. Anyway, here's the last four:
4. The Smashing Pumpkins - Adore
Adore was at least reasonably well appreciated by critics but it was a total commercial failure, coming as it did on the heels of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, one of the most successful albums of the Nineties. The reasons for this are fairly obvious; on this album Billy Corgan abandoned a more familiar heavy grunge sound in favour of subdued electronica, acoustic guitar and piano to the tune of millions of angsty teenagers hitting the 'eject' button.
It's still a great album, and even though music snobs generally seem to recognise this I'm still surprised by how many people I meet who claim to love the Smashing Pumpkins but hate this album.
Bold Statement: Adore is better than Siamese Dream.
3. Pink Floyd - The Final Cut
As with A Momentary Lapse of Reason, the drama of Roger Waters leaving Pink Floyd probably soured people on this album more than it deserved, but at least in this case there are also stylistic reasons to explain why it is so disliked as all of the electronics and ambience that found Floyd the success of Dark Side of the Moon and it's immediate successors has been stripped away and replaced by orchestral arrangements.
If you can tolerate the change in musical medium it's still a great album; similar in subject matter and style but less bloated than The Wall, and full of plenty of humour and quirks in the traditional Pink Floyd style.
I must admit however that it did take me a few listens to appreciate it. In fact if I recall it wasn't until the first time I listened to it on headphones that I thought “Wow, this is really good!”
Bold Statement: The Final Cut is better than Dark Side of the Moon
2. Skinny Puppy - The Process
It's no surprise that this album is universally hated by Skinny Puppy fans, as it has a history far more full of unpleasant details than the juvenile shenanigans of Pink Floyd breaking up. Not only were the two founding members, Ogre and cevin, barely speaking to each other while recording, but the third member, Dwayne Goettel, actually died of a heroin overdose while the album was being made. On top of this the record company (American) applied a lot of pressure to make a more commercial album and generally shafted the band so the results were (somewhat understandably) a huge disappointment to fans after the crazy noisefests of Too Dark Park and Last Rights.
It's too bad, because besides a regrettable early attempt by Ogre to sing (rather than growl or squeal) on 'Cult' this album is actually pretty good and the first four tracks are absolutely brilliant as long as they're approached as the best Nine Inch Nails songs Trent Reznor never wrote rather than genuine industrial. The standout track is 'Death'; my conception of the Platonic ideal of an industrial song. No album that contains a song that good deserves the bashing that The Process gets.
Bold Statement: 'Death' is better than anything on Last Rights.
1. Barnes – Drunken Karaoke to Radiohead
If you can look past some small difficulties with the high notes, Barnes' rendition of Radiohead's 'Let Down' after half a bottle of vodka captures the plaintive ennui at the heart of the song; that muted sadness found when the initial buzz of intoxication has worn off and you realise that you're just drunk (again). “Just let down and hanging around.” Critical response was unnecessarily harsh, leading to disparaging reviews along the lines of “Oh God Barnes and Jon are drunk and singing along to Radiohead again”, but those in the know recognised it for the understated gem it was.
Part 2
Wow it actually took me less than a week to write all of these. It's an Easter miracle. Anyway, here's the last four:
4. The Smashing Pumpkins - Adore
Adore was at least reasonably well appreciated by critics but it was a total commercial failure, coming as it did on the heels of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, one of the most successful albums of the Nineties. The reasons for this are fairly obvious; on this album Billy Corgan abandoned a more familiar heavy grunge sound in favour of subdued electronica, acoustic guitar and piano to the tune of millions of angsty teenagers hitting the 'eject' button.
It's still a great album, and even though music snobs generally seem to recognise this I'm still surprised by how many people I meet who claim to love the Smashing Pumpkins but hate this album.
Bold Statement: Adore is better than Siamese Dream.
3. Pink Floyd - The Final Cut
As with A Momentary Lapse of Reason, the drama of Roger Waters leaving Pink Floyd probably soured people on this album more than it deserved, but at least in this case there are also stylistic reasons to explain why it is so disliked as all of the electronics and ambience that found Floyd the success of Dark Side of the Moon and it's immediate successors has been stripped away and replaced by orchestral arrangements.
If you can tolerate the change in musical medium it's still a great album; similar in subject matter and style but less bloated than The Wall, and full of plenty of humour and quirks in the traditional Pink Floyd style.
I must admit however that it did take me a few listens to appreciate it. In fact if I recall it wasn't until the first time I listened to it on headphones that I thought “Wow, this is really good!”
Bold Statement: The Final Cut is better than Dark Side of the Moon
2. Skinny Puppy - The Process
It's no surprise that this album is universally hated by Skinny Puppy fans, as it has a history far more full of unpleasant details than the juvenile shenanigans of Pink Floyd breaking up. Not only were the two founding members, Ogre and cevin, barely speaking to each other while recording, but the third member, Dwayne Goettel, actually died of a heroin overdose while the album was being made. On top of this the record company (American) applied a lot of pressure to make a more commercial album and generally shafted the band so the results were (somewhat understandably) a huge disappointment to fans after the crazy noisefests of Too Dark Park and Last Rights.
It's too bad, because besides a regrettable early attempt by Ogre to sing (rather than growl or squeal) on 'Cult' this album is actually pretty good and the first four tracks are absolutely brilliant as long as they're approached as the best Nine Inch Nails songs Trent Reznor never wrote rather than genuine industrial. The standout track is 'Death'; my conception of the Platonic ideal of an industrial song. No album that contains a song that good deserves the bashing that The Process gets.
Bold Statement: 'Death' is better than anything on Last Rights.
1. Barnes – Drunken Karaoke to Radiohead
If you can look past some small difficulties with the high notes, Barnes' rendition of Radiohead's 'Let Down' after half a bottle of vodka captures the plaintive ennui at the heart of the song; that muted sadness found when the initial buzz of intoxication has worn off and you realise that you're just drunk (again). “Just let down and hanging around.” Critical response was unnecessarily harsh, leading to disparaging reviews along the lines of “Oh God Barnes and Jon are drunk and singing along to Radiohead again”, but those in the know recognised it for the understated gem it was.
Sunday, April 08, 2007
The Twelve Most Unjustly Maligned Albums List Part 2
Part 1
And we're back. Through the magic of long weekends I have actually written the second post of this series in a timely manner.
8. Deftones - Deftones
Self titled albums confuse me a bit. I can understand why a bands debut album may not have a proper title, but I'm not sure quite what inspires a band well into their career to decide to name an album after themselves. It seems to imply that it will be a completely forgettable placeholder in their discography.
That's how most people view the Deftones' self titled, but I've always felt that it deserves better. As I see it the main problem with Deftones is that they were too stoned while writing it and forgot to put in any hooks, write any lyrics that made sense or think of a proper title. If you can look past that the songwriting is actually pretty good.
Part of the reason that this album gets dissed is because the first single was the relatively mellow 'Minerva', which turned off the meathead demographic (who apparently didn't remember 'Be Quiet and Drive'), but it's hard to see how even the most noise headed munter would fail to enjoy the likes of 'Hexagram', 'When Girls Telephone Boys' and 'Bloody Cape', which all rock out something wicked.
It's a dense album that you have to give attention to in order to appreciate (i.e. a stoner album), but it's worth the effort.
Bold Statement: Deftones is better than Adrenaline.
7. Pulp - We Love Life
Pulp's last album followed the massive success of Different Class and This is Hardcore and the band were therefore ripe for a critical backlash. This is a bit of a weird album for me. If I listen to it from beginning to end I'm inclined to agree with the critics; these guys have lost the spark and are just foundering, trying to rediscover the magic they once had. On the other hand if I have my ipod on random and a track from We Love Life comes up I usually love it.
I'm at a loss to describe why this is, but maybe it's because these tracks are all breezy pop songs in format (although not in subject matter) and listening to an hour of them is a bit much. It's nowhere near as good as This Is Hardcore, but it doesn't deserve the critical bashing that it's received.
Bold Statement: Jarvis Cocker looks like a dork.
6. Marilyn Manson - Mechanical Animals
Poor old Marilyn Manson will always be remembered for a couple of catchy industrial rock songs off Antichrist Superstar followed by a subsequent slide into obscurity, but it's sad that his best album, Mechanical Animals, gets lumped in with Holy Wood and The Golden Age of Grotesque (which were at least somewhat deserving of their dismissal).
Manson lost a few fans with a conscious switch of genre from hard rock to glam, but despite the David Bowie inspired veneer of the music it still at it's heart was good catchy industrial rock, merging angst and (only slightly ironic) grooviness quite nicely, and all without the helping hand of Trent Reznor to rely on.
Bold Statement: I harbour hopes that Manson's new album (due out later this year) might be worth listening to.
5. Pink Floyd - A Momentary Lapse of Reason
I'm not quite sure why this album is so hated. It is the first release since Roger Waters left the band so that probably has something to do with it. It followed the also maligned The Final Cut which is probably relevant too. It contains the unbelievably cheesy songs 'On the Turning Away' and 'Learning to Fly' which are not points in its favour. But even despite all that, if you simply listen to the music unencumbered by the accompanying baggage, you'll find that it's a perfectly serviceable Pink Floyd album (which translates to quite a good album in absolute terms), with no true stylistic differences from their earlier albums. Well OK, it is a bit slicker and a bit more Eighties.
Although you're not likely to enjoy it if you have an aversion to long guitar solos. At least half the tracks on this album finish with a fade out to one of Gilmour's accomplished but wearisome solos. I always imagine the studio technicians slowly turning the volume knob down and slowly backing out of the room because Gilmour's been going for the past two hours and they want to get back to the wife and kids.
Bold Statement: I kind of like The Division Bell too.
And we're back. Through the magic of long weekends I have actually written the second post of this series in a timely manner.
8. Deftones - Deftones
Self titled albums confuse me a bit. I can understand why a bands debut album may not have a proper title, but I'm not sure quite what inspires a band well into their career to decide to name an album after themselves. It seems to imply that it will be a completely forgettable placeholder in their discography.
That's how most people view the Deftones' self titled, but I've always felt that it deserves better. As I see it the main problem with Deftones is that they were too stoned while writing it and forgot to put in any hooks, write any lyrics that made sense or think of a proper title. If you can look past that the songwriting is actually pretty good.
Part of the reason that this album gets dissed is because the first single was the relatively mellow 'Minerva', which turned off the meathead demographic (who apparently didn't remember 'Be Quiet and Drive'), but it's hard to see how even the most noise headed munter would fail to enjoy the likes of 'Hexagram', 'When Girls Telephone Boys' and 'Bloody Cape', which all rock out something wicked.
It's a dense album that you have to give attention to in order to appreciate (i.e. a stoner album), but it's worth the effort.
Bold Statement: Deftones is better than Adrenaline.
7. Pulp - We Love Life
Pulp's last album followed the massive success of Different Class and This is Hardcore and the band were therefore ripe for a critical backlash. This is a bit of a weird album for me. If I listen to it from beginning to end I'm inclined to agree with the critics; these guys have lost the spark and are just foundering, trying to rediscover the magic they once had. On the other hand if I have my ipod on random and a track from We Love Life comes up I usually love it.
I'm at a loss to describe why this is, but maybe it's because these tracks are all breezy pop songs in format (although not in subject matter) and listening to an hour of them is a bit much. It's nowhere near as good as This Is Hardcore, but it doesn't deserve the critical bashing that it's received.
Bold Statement: Jarvis Cocker looks like a dork.
6. Marilyn Manson - Mechanical Animals
Poor old Marilyn Manson will always be remembered for a couple of catchy industrial rock songs off Antichrist Superstar followed by a subsequent slide into obscurity, but it's sad that his best album, Mechanical Animals, gets lumped in with Holy Wood and The Golden Age of Grotesque (which were at least somewhat deserving of their dismissal).
Manson lost a few fans with a conscious switch of genre from hard rock to glam, but despite the David Bowie inspired veneer of the music it still at it's heart was good catchy industrial rock, merging angst and (only slightly ironic) grooviness quite nicely, and all without the helping hand of Trent Reznor to rely on.
Bold Statement: I harbour hopes that Manson's new album (due out later this year) might be worth listening to.
5. Pink Floyd - A Momentary Lapse of Reason
I'm not quite sure why this album is so hated. It is the first release since Roger Waters left the band so that probably has something to do with it. It followed the also maligned The Final Cut which is probably relevant too. It contains the unbelievably cheesy songs 'On the Turning Away' and 'Learning to Fly' which are not points in its favour. But even despite all that, if you simply listen to the music unencumbered by the accompanying baggage, you'll find that it's a perfectly serviceable Pink Floyd album (which translates to quite a good album in absolute terms), with no true stylistic differences from their earlier albums. Well OK, it is a bit slicker and a bit more Eighties.
Although you're not likely to enjoy it if you have an aversion to long guitar solos. At least half the tracks on this album finish with a fade out to one of Gilmour's accomplished but wearisome solos. I always imagine the studio technicians slowly turning the volume knob down and slowly backing out of the room because Gilmour's been going for the past two hours and they want to get back to the wife and kids.
Bold Statement: I kind of like The Division Bell too.
Friday, April 06, 2007
The Twelve Most Unjustly Maligned Albums List
If there's one thing musos like to do it's make lists and I am no exception. If there's one other thing musos like to do it's bag on other people's lists. In this series of posts, which shall hopefully take me no longer than four or five years to complete, I shall attempt to do both.
It is impossible for one to say with complete confidence that such and such an album is a band's best or worst, because there's always some contrarian clown who will disagree virulently. However a general critical consensus can usually be determined, and in this series I will take upon myself the role of the aforementioned clown and point out the most notable cases where everyone in the world bar myself has gotten it all completely wrong.
12. System of a Down - Steal this Album!
Most people barely remember that this album even exists, being instead content to argue the merits of the self titled, Toxicity or god forbid Hypnotize and Mezmerize. Perhaps it is because it's a b-sides album or perhaps it is because it's more melodic than their other releases but even people who are big fans of System tend to dismiss Steal this Album! as of no consequence.
However I would confidently rank it as their best album (narrowly edging out the self titled). For it's first half the disc shows off the bands heavy side with all of the humour and quirkiness that made their first album so good and only a touch of the self importance that in the end turned them to crap. The second half is more melodic and personal, and 'Highway Song', 'Roulette' and 'Streamline' are among the best things they've written.
I should also note that not only does this album belong on this list but that System of a Down themselves would be close to the top in a list of unjustly maligned bands. When your peers include Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park it's hard not to end up tainted by some of their stinky odour but at least up to and including this album they were actually a pretty good band with more in common with their predecessors such as Faith No More than the meatheaded proponents of the genre they ended up lumped in with.
Bold Statement: Toxicity is a good album too.
11. Rage Against the Machine - Evil Empire and The Battle of Los Angeles
Sure Rage's first album is pretty good, but I've never understood why it's rated so much higher than their subsequent albums. Renegades deserves dismissal but the dislike for The Battle of Los Angeles is quite mystifying. Yes these two albums both contain a bit of filler whereas the self titled is consistently good from beginning to end, but the good songs on the later albums are really, really fucking good. Any album that opens with 'People of the Sun', 'Bulls on Parade', 'Vietnow' and 'Revolver' or that contains 'Sleep Now in the Fire', 'No Shelter' and 'Maria' is already fucking awesome even before you consider the brilliance of 'Ashes in the Fall' or 'Down Rodeo'.
The weird thing is that I don't hear much different between these albums and the self-titled. If anything they're technically better in terms of production and songwriting, Zach's lyrics have improved and Tom Morello is never less than awesome. What strange cabal has decided that the first album is the only one worthy of respect?
Bold Statement: 'Ashes in the Fall' and 'Down Rodeo' are better than all of the self titled put together.
10. Korn – Untouchables
In over ten years they still haven't made an album that didn't contain at least a few embarrassingly dreadful tracks, but in Untouchables Korn come pretty close to making a genuinely decent record. One of the reasons this album gets dismissed is because despite a strong lead single in 'Here to Stay' the brain eater ensured that they followed it up with 'Thoughtless', the most dreadful of the aforementioned dreadful songs on this album and probably one of the worst things they've ever written. The third single was the ballad 'Alone I Break', which I think is decent but turned off the neanderthal munter crowd pretty quickly. The other reason this album gets bagged is because it's by Korn, who it must be admitted have truly earned their reputation as the shitty music of choice of said neanderthal munters.
Nonetheless this album is the only thing they've ever done which I consider genuinely worthy of merit and not just a guilty pleasure. In a move that's far cleverer than anything they've done before or since Korn managed to infuse their conventional stompy headbanging anthems with a good dose of sensitive balladry and what's more actually do both aspects well and make them blend harmoniously together. If that's not enough there are also the goofy but fun metal anthems 'Beat it Upright' and 'Wake Up Hate'.
Bold Statement: Pretty much anything good I say about Korn counts as a bold statement.
9. The Doors - Waiting for the Sun
Conventional wisdom holds that The Doors released two good albums, their début and L.A. Woman, which bookended a largely regrettable career. While The Soft Parade deserves almost every bit of bad press it gets and I have no strong desire to pick up Morrison Hotel, Waiting for the Sun is total brilliance from beginning to end. Sure everyone loves 'Five to One' but if you can believe it this album gets dismissed for not being as edgy as their older stuff. Compared to my normal diet of Burzum and Coil the relative edginess of The Doors' albums is a bit of a non issue so I'm free to appreciate the gentle beauty of songs like 'Yes, the River Knows' and 'Summer's Almost Gone' on their own terms. And do I need to even mention the brilliance of 'Not to Touch the Earth'?
Bold Statement: Jim Morrison wrote good lyrics.
Bonus Embarrassing Admission: I really like 'Hello I Love You'.
That's enough for now. Hopefully in a few days I'll have the next post in this series up, featuring 66% less nu-metal and 100% fewer bands with over rated self titled début albums.
It is impossible for one to say with complete confidence that such and such an album is a band's best or worst, because there's always some contrarian clown who will disagree virulently. However a general critical consensus can usually be determined, and in this series I will take upon myself the role of the aforementioned clown and point out the most notable cases where everyone in the world bar myself has gotten it all completely wrong.
12. System of a Down - Steal this Album!
Most people barely remember that this album even exists, being instead content to argue the merits of the self titled, Toxicity or god forbid Hypnotize and Mezmerize. Perhaps it is because it's a b-sides album or perhaps it is because it's more melodic than their other releases but even people who are big fans of System tend to dismiss Steal this Album! as of no consequence.
However I would confidently rank it as their best album (narrowly edging out the self titled). For it's first half the disc shows off the bands heavy side with all of the humour and quirkiness that made their first album so good and only a touch of the self importance that in the end turned them to crap. The second half is more melodic and personal, and 'Highway Song', 'Roulette' and 'Streamline' are among the best things they've written.
I should also note that not only does this album belong on this list but that System of a Down themselves would be close to the top in a list of unjustly maligned bands. When your peers include Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park it's hard not to end up tainted by some of their stinky odour but at least up to and including this album they were actually a pretty good band with more in common with their predecessors such as Faith No More than the meatheaded proponents of the genre they ended up lumped in with.
Bold Statement: Toxicity is a good album too.
11. Rage Against the Machine - Evil Empire and The Battle of Los Angeles
Sure Rage's first album is pretty good, but I've never understood why it's rated so much higher than their subsequent albums. Renegades deserves dismissal but the dislike for The Battle of Los Angeles is quite mystifying. Yes these two albums both contain a bit of filler whereas the self titled is consistently good from beginning to end, but the good songs on the later albums are really, really fucking good. Any album that opens with 'People of the Sun', 'Bulls on Parade', 'Vietnow' and 'Revolver' or that contains 'Sleep Now in the Fire', 'No Shelter' and 'Maria' is already fucking awesome even before you consider the brilliance of 'Ashes in the Fall' or 'Down Rodeo'.
The weird thing is that I don't hear much different between these albums and the self-titled. If anything they're technically better in terms of production and songwriting, Zach's lyrics have improved and Tom Morello is never less than awesome. What strange cabal has decided that the first album is the only one worthy of respect?
Bold Statement: 'Ashes in the Fall' and 'Down Rodeo' are better than all of the self titled put together.
10. Korn – Untouchables
In over ten years they still haven't made an album that didn't contain at least a few embarrassingly dreadful tracks, but in Untouchables Korn come pretty close to making a genuinely decent record. One of the reasons this album gets dismissed is because despite a strong lead single in 'Here to Stay' the brain eater ensured that they followed it up with 'Thoughtless', the most dreadful of the aforementioned dreadful songs on this album and probably one of the worst things they've ever written. The third single was the ballad 'Alone I Break', which I think is decent but turned off the neanderthal munter crowd pretty quickly. The other reason this album gets bagged is because it's by Korn, who it must be admitted have truly earned their reputation as the shitty music of choice of said neanderthal munters.
Nonetheless this album is the only thing they've ever done which I consider genuinely worthy of merit and not just a guilty pleasure. In a move that's far cleverer than anything they've done before or since Korn managed to infuse their conventional stompy headbanging anthems with a good dose of sensitive balladry and what's more actually do both aspects well and make them blend harmoniously together. If that's not enough there are also the goofy but fun metal anthems 'Beat it Upright' and 'Wake Up Hate'.
Bold Statement: Pretty much anything good I say about Korn counts as a bold statement.
9. The Doors - Waiting for the Sun
Conventional wisdom holds that The Doors released two good albums, their début and L.A. Woman, which bookended a largely regrettable career. While The Soft Parade deserves almost every bit of bad press it gets and I have no strong desire to pick up Morrison Hotel, Waiting for the Sun is total brilliance from beginning to end. Sure everyone loves 'Five to One' but if you can believe it this album gets dismissed for not being as edgy as their older stuff. Compared to my normal diet of Burzum and Coil the relative edginess of The Doors' albums is a bit of a non issue so I'm free to appreciate the gentle beauty of songs like 'Yes, the River Knows' and 'Summer's Almost Gone' on their own terms. And do I need to even mention the brilliance of 'Not to Touch the Earth'?
Bold Statement: Jim Morrison wrote good lyrics.
Bonus Embarrassing Admission: I really like 'Hello I Love You'.
That's enough for now. Hopefully in a few days I'll have the next post in this series up, featuring 66% less nu-metal and 100% fewer bands with over rated self titled début albums.
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