The Contents of this CD:
- Prong - Another Worldly Device
- Anthrax - Nobody Knows Anything
- Ministry - N.W.O.
- White Zombie - Super-Charger Heaven
- Motorhead - Nothing Up My Sleeve
- The Wildhearts - Suckerpunch
- COC - In the Arms of God
- Queensryche - The Whisper
- The Cult - She Sells Sanctuary
- Buckcherry - Dead Again
- Skin Yard - Undertow
- Nudeswirl - F-Sharp
- Alice In Chains - We Die Young
- Pride & Glory - Troubled Wine
- Faith No More - Midlife Crisis
- Front Line Assembly - Mindphaser
- Infectious Grooves - Monster Skank
- The Katies - Noggin' Poundin'
- Cake - Satan Is My Motor
(yes, I know at least one, if not a couple of songs don't really qualify as "rock." They are good anyway. Bite me.)
One thing these songs have in common is that they all convinced me that the artist was either worth checking out, or if I already knew them, worth more than a cassette single purchase (these kids and their iTunes and band websites...they don't know how lucky they have it- but I digress...).
A brief track-by-track rundown:
1) "Another Worldly Device" is one of the best opening tracks in the history of hard rock, period. This would be an awesome entrance theme for a wrestler or something. I use it as such in a wrestling game, actually. Now if we can only get a rasslin' game for the 360 that is neither horribly incomplete (Rumble Roses XX), cancelled indefinitely and not released outside of Japan (Wrestle Kingdom), nor a gimmick-laden PS2 game with better graphics and a stripped-down create-a-wrestler mode (Smackdown vs. Raw 2007)...
2) This is a track from Anthrax's 2004 release We've Come For You All. The drums are insane here. This album is proof that the band still has plenty of fuel in the tank. (And fuck anyone who says otherwise. Maybe John Bush does make them sound more like Armored Saint, but you could do a lot worse than that.)
3) Ahh, Ministry....industrial for metalheads. If not for this track, I would not have checked them out much. They did do "Every Day Is Halloween," after all (which has a spot waiting in my 80's collection, but that's another story). (Industrial purists who say Ministry sucks can also fuck off, by the way. I am not into Skinny Puppy- deal with it.)
4) Rob Zombie has a knack for writing bad-ass car songs. This is his best, edging out "Black Sunshine" by a nose because this one makes me want to drive faster. An evil grin creeps across my face and I grip the wheel a little bit tighter when I hear this one starting up. (I will agree with anyone who prefers White Zombie to Rob's solo work. C'mon, Rob, even if you don't do any more new material, would it kill you to do one reunion tour? Just one? Oh, and Sean Yseult can make me her bitch anytime.)
5) I think anyone who likes it loud should at least be familiar with a couple of Motorhead songs. They play raw, barely-polished rock that goes back and forth from proto-thrash to just plain bawdy rawk 'n' roll. I don't tend to trust anyone who says they are "metal" that doesn't know at least like ("like?" What the fuck, am I 12 years old again?) one Motorhead song. (If you don't even know "Ace of Spades," then you aren't metal for sure. If you don't know any other songs, then there's still a good chance you are a poseur.)
6) The Wildhearts are one of the most criminally overlooked groups in recent history. A fistful of punk attitude, tempered by bubblegum-y, pop anthem group vocals, catchy choruses, and wailing guitar solos. A fan on Amazon described them as "the Beatles meet the Sex Pistols." I heartily agree. These guys were doing pop-metal-punk fusion before it was cool....plus they are better than Green Day. (Even the most upbeat, poppy Wildhearts tune kicks more ass than what passes for "punk" on the radio these days, if not all current punk period.)
7) Corrosion of Conformity lost a chunk of fans when they ditched their somewhat unoriginal thrash sound for a sludgy, stomp-rock-from-the-pits-of-hell approach. Sucks to be them. This one is off their 2005 release of the same name. If you like loud, politically charged, gloom and doom- ah forget it. Just check the CD out. If you don't like it at least a little, then you probably don't like Sabbath, either. And if you don't like Sabbath, then you probably aren't metal. (What can I say? COC is badass. There's a new Down album coming out soon, too- if you don't know them, they are like a sludge metal all-star band, featuring Pepper Keenan of COC, Phil Anselmo of Pantera aka the only man in music that might be angrier than Glenn Danzig, and, of course, the Dude from Crowbar. I know his name is Kirk or something, but I like to think "Dude from Crowbar" sounds more iconic.)
8) Shifting gears to prog rock. Stop laughing- Queensryche is still damn good, even with the cheese-keys. They actually manage to not abuse them (a feat only rarely duplicated, like with Van Halen's 1984). The twin guitars that open this are amazing live. (I regret missing the Mindcrime/Mindcrime II back-to-back tour, because it will likely never happen again. Mindcrime II is not the classic that the first one was, but it is a damn fine album anyway.)
9) And now we get to a band that goths and I might have in common....if they don't suck. The Cult is not just "Fire Woman." They are ever shifting back and forth between the melancholy of the Cure and the raucousness of Bon Scott-era AC/DC, never quite crossing over either line. (Where the hell are these guys when we need them? Can someone please teach these emo and screamo brats that you can be moody and still rock?)
10) Buckcherry is fronted by a guy named Josh Todd, whom Sleazegrinder.com bills as "Axl Rose's Understudy." Imagine a band with the raw passion of Guns & Roses, but without Axl's bitchy attitude and a tighter sense of camaraderie. This is one of my favorites from the first album, which is a lost treasure. (I missed these guys with Black Stone Cherry recently. One band I have been wanting to see for 8 years, and the other is one of the few new bands to interest me in a long time.)
11) I know this band from the singer's next project, Gruntruck. Oddly enough, I discovered them thanks to Beavis and Butt-Head (and access to the record libe for my radio show in college). They are considered contemporaries of Soundgarden and Green River, which means they are on the more kick-ass side of grunge. People dog on grunge too much. There's still plenty of good stuff among the floor-watching junk. (There are plenty of hard rock and metal bands that donned oversize sweaters and stocking caps and passed themselves off as grunge. Lucky for us, because there was a lot of alternative from that era that sucked.)
12) ...which brings us to Nudeswirl. Released one album, about half of the songs are decent, and the other half are great. "F-Sharp" is proof that stoner rock can be experimental without being slow or boring. (These dudes have reunited a couple of times in recent years, but they never leave Boston or wherever the hell they are from.)
13) Most people over the age of about 16 or so know who Alice in Chains is. They were a stealth metal band. Listen to this song and tell me they belong with the mopey "alt-rock" cavalcade of the 90's. I dare ya. (The only grunge connection is the heroin references, which were a bit prophetic since an overdose killed Layne Staley.)
14) Pride and Glory was Zakk Wylde's first side project. He wanted to do something a bit different, something that paid homage to his influences that also kept his distinct guitar style. The band only lasted one album, and Zakk says he has no plans to record with the other two guys again because Black Label Society keeps him plenty busy. It's a shame, but they did leave us one good album (and there's plenty of P&G influence in BLS). Good foot-stompin', blues-tinged swamp rock. (If you are a Zakk Wylde fan- even if you just like the Ozzy albums he's been on, track this down already, damn it.)
15) Another abrupt gear change. Faith No More were the not-so-merry pranksters of the hard rock world. This was the song that proved to me they were more than just "Epic." Angel Dust is a better album than The Real Thing, too. Amazing how grim sounding bass, keys, and vocals can be. (I admit, I am an idiot for not checking out Mr. Bungle more, especially since I am a big fan of Mike Patton's vocals.)
16) And again, changing up. Front Line Assembly started as a purist industrial group. No real instruments- everything was synthed/sampled. The nerd in me thought that was kinda cool, so I borrowed an album from a hacker friend. This song is the one that sold me on them. This is a good group if you need to stay sinister but need a break from in-your-face metal. (A college buddy of mine hated the fact that they added guitars later on- I didn't think it was bad, and he did. Of course, he is an industrial purist and I am not, so there ya go.)
17) The Infectious Grooves were the Funkadelic to Suicidal Tendencies' Parliament. The Grooves were more rock-tinged funk, and Suicidal was funk-tinged post-punk. I knew who the hell Robert Trujillo was long before he joined Metallica. (As long as he is playing for Metallica, we probably won't see any new stuff from either the Grooves or Suicidal. It is sad to know that some kids out there playing Guitar Hero II still don't get the sarcasm in the song "Institutionalized." Stupid-ass kids...)
18) I have a soft spot for power pop....sometimes. Matthew Sweet, the Wildhearts' more mellow tunes, and these cats from Murfreesboro (about half an hour from Nashville). The Katies were a damn institution in the mid-90's, and they are back together now. Considering how a lot of bubblegum-y schlock bands are making big bucks, it's criminal that their one major label release didn't do much. (But hey, people are stupid. Proof of this is in the fact that people are buying this wanna-be teenybopper pop schlock Gwen Stefani's putting out. Kids, I'm almost 31 and she is at least 3 years older than me. She ain't no kid. I hate this new sell-out-my-band Gwen Stefani. What the hell happened to the pink-haired, angsty, just-about-to-get-really-pissed Gwen from the Return of Saturn days? I actually kinda liked where they went with that. Even the sappy ballad "Simple Kind of Life" had something real behind it. Then she decided to regress into early teenhood, but I digress. My dream Nashville 1991 rock card would be bill of The Katies, Valentine Saloon, and Royal Court of China. Power pop and sleaze rock, Nashville style. Fuck yeah. If you like power pop, you owe yourself this album.)
19) OK, this isn't metal, it's not hard rock, it's not even power pop. The guitar and bass have zero crunch and distortion on them. And the vocalist meanders like he's doing jazz improv on every song. But it does have "Satan" in the title, right? Cake is one of the few bands those perpetually ball-capped frat boy pricks (who are somehow luckier with the girls despite being total dumbasses) and I have in common. Jerry Garcia died years ago, Phish was never worth the time, Widespread Panic bores me...what the hell is with all the damned sucktastic hippie music anyway? At least the Dead were at the forefront of the thing and not borrowing from someone else. Sometimes I get in a very, very silly mood, but not so much that I want to listen to super-cheese from the 80's. Cake fills that gap nicely. Fun, distinct, and chicks seem to dig it at parties. (Cake are rock pranksters to be sure. Not as wink-wink-nudge-nudge as the Barenaked Ladies, and not as "wait, are they actually joking or not?" as that new Finger Eleven single. I love 'em. They make their songs the way they want, and you can tell they are having a good time playing them. They manage to capture a sense of "live" even in their studio work. Everyone needs to mellow out every once in a while.)
I hope you enjoy the disc. Don't forget to form the Ward of the Evil Eye (better known as "devil horns") while listening.
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"I am sorry, but all questions must be submitted in writing."
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