Yesterday my White Spider post spawned an email from my homie Darryl Polio Legs. He sent me a response to White Spider with a video by an indivdual who calls himself Madness Reign. I honestly think this man is a hidden jewel in this vast northern land(Quebec)! Watch and see for yourself, this dude shreds the GNARRR! I don’t even know if you will able to believe it.

SYMPTÔME DE POSSESSION

SOCIAL FUCKER

LIVE CKRL 89.1FM (JUST TO SHOW YOU HE IS NOT JOKING!)

It’s not easy thinking up albums that are inherently bad yet still enjoyable. For example… I contemplated doing an Awesomely Awful Album for George Michael’s Faith, but after thinking about it some more I decided that there is nothing awful about the album whatsoever. It’s actually as perfect of a pop record as you can get next to Thriller. And while yes it’s cheesy at times now, it never tries to pretend to be something it isn’t. And that there is the quintessential criteria for choosing an Awesomely Awful Album.

Which brings me to our fourteenth entry into the canon… Weezer’s self-titled (or Green) third album. I wrote at length about Pinkerton some months ago, and in lieu of Weezer’s new album and their obvious attempt to further destroy whatever musical legacy they may have once had.

It took Weezer 5 years to follow up Pinkerton. And while Pinkerton was a huge commercial and critical flop, in those 5 years it gained a huge following and went on to influence a million shitty bands (mostly from the suburbs of NJ). I loved the Blue Album, and I loved Pinkerton even more. And while I was far from 17 year old kid I was when Pinkerton came out (immersed in a constant hunt for the most obscure and least commercial music possible), I was still pretty damn excited at the prospects of this album. Nostalgia is a pretty strong emotion, at least with me. When it finally came out and I got to listen to it, I was all at once really happy and also really disappointed with it. Since it had been 5 years I kinda had been hoping Weezer was crafting some magnum opus that would take their own brand of power-pop even further and more conceptual than they had done on Pinkerton… but instead what I got was a calculated attempt at re-doing the Blue Album.

The Green Album is so chock full of infectious hooks, riffs and choruses that its hard to be mad or even hate it because you can’t help but sing along with it. And while the execution is perfect, it however feels hollow & frivolous at it’s core, like a the musical equivalent of Laffy Taffy. It lacked any of the heartfelt emotion and self-deprecating humor that littered the previous two albums and instead simply presented silly pop songs. I knew I was setting myself up for disappointment when I realized just how much the band meant to me so long after I had thought I had outgrown them. But I don’t think it was my own high expectations, I really think Weezer rolled out a safety net as an album. Most bands are never afforded the luxury of putting out an album such as Pinkerton, having it blow up in their face only to be vindicated such a short time later. If I was River’s Cuomo and that happened to me I’d go back out into the world with the biggest chip on my shoulder and sense of artistic license. So to watch Weezer step back onto the world stage and play it safe felt & sounded like such a cop-out! A really enjoyable cop-out, but still a cop-out. I suppose having it all, losing it and then being given a second chance makes you want to play it safe… I wish it hadn’t though, because playing it safe has now become their trademark and the Green Album marked the beginning of the end for what could have been one of the US’s all time great Power Pop bands.

Or maybe, just maybe… Matt Sharp was the real heart behind the Blue Album and Pinkerton. Adding that unquantifiable x-factor to the band that left with him. He does have the great Return of the Rentals to his name to fuel some speculation… But then again he also made a pretty poor follow-up to it. Maybe the magic of Weezer rested between the tension between Rivers Cuomo & Matt Sharp and with the release of their new self-titled Red Album it’s clear the magic is long gone.

I’m sure I’m not the only one out there for whom Deck was their favorite member of the Wu. I waited years for a solo album from Deck, fully expecting that whenever it would come it would be the greatest Wu-Tang solo album of all… I was pretty wrong on that account, but not completely dissapointed.

R.E.C. Room set the stage a year earlier and gave me hopes that this would be the album I was hoping for. Classic Deck flow and lyrics over one of the True Master’s best RZA impressions.  Sadly that there is the albums biggest problem… It’s chock full of 2nd rate RZA impersonations and too little of The RZA himself. The worst part is that of the two tracks The RZA does production on, one is great while the other is ehhh at best. Movas & Shakas, the opening track is so good that all The RZA imposter production just sounds that much worse having to follow it. But sadly The RZA’s other track on here, Friction is saddled with an awful chorus a throw-away beat and some bland flow between Deck and Masta Killa. With the exception of R.E.C. Room, 4th Disciple, Allah Mathmatics & True Master do their master shame with their bland 2nd rate attempts at trying to sound like The RZA. Deck even joins in on the production for 5 tracks which he fumbles pretty badly trying to be all things at once on the majority of them. The two he does get right, Hyperdermix & Word On the Street he REALLY gets right keeping them on some simple Boom Bap which allows him to do what he does best, weave the lyrics and flow into a head nodding web you can’t help but get caught in. And other than that the only other saving grace on this album is Trouble Man, a pretty good Pete Rock beat which in the midst of this album comes through with as close to a radio friendly single as you’ll get.

Who knows what the politics were like when Deck was trying to get this album out but it’s sad The RZA didn’t think highly enough to prioritize doing beats for it. This albums biggest saving grace is Deck himself with his lyrical prowess and ability to weave a story, so it’s frustrating to imagine what could have been had The RZA simply taken a more active role. And it isn’t just that Deck had to rely so heavily on The RZA’s proteges for beats, it’s the album’s artwork as well! While it may seem weird to judge an album on it’s artwork, the Wu have put out some truly memorable album art and logos so I feel given their track record up until this point it’s totally open for criticism. I’m not sure if Deck’s logo was designed by longtime Wu designer, Mathematics or not. But whoever did it should have held off until they had a better grasp of 3D rendering besides the basics. The cover is only memorable in how humorous it is, and not in a good way!

So in conclusion 5 good Inspectah Deck solo songs are still better than none. And judging from his albums following this one, I have a feeling those are the last good songs we’ll ever get.

I love Countdown to Extinction, I’ll even go as far as aying that after decades of listening to Megadeth I truly think it’s their greatest album. Despite it’s obvious attempt to crossover, successfully doing so and subsequently then being labeled a “sell-out” album there was absolutely nothing awful  about Countdown to Extinction. It’s Megdeth’s Darkside of the Moon… Not the album you say is your favorite Floyd album if you want to raise some cool guy points, but in the larger scope of things is their greatest achievement. Asking a madman like Dave Mustaine to write a pop album is like asking Picasso to draw a Spider-Man comic, if you have an open mind it may just be the most amazing thing you’ll have ever seen/heard. Much like Metallica, Megadeth sacrificed some of their edge and bite in favor of melody and pop structure. But the difference between Megadeth and Metallica attempting to do the exact same thing is Dave Mustaine just doesn’t get how to… and I mean that in a good way. So you get something like Countdown to Extinction, an art damaged, concept driven attempt at radio-friendly Thrash Metal. In many ways it’s a lot like ESG, who thought they were just creating really awful Disco, but were in fact creating some of the best Post-Punk you’ll ever hear.

So what does any of this have anything to do with Youthanasia? Well in many ways Youthanasia is simply Countdown to Extinction part II. But the big difference this time is that Dave Mustaine is consciously trying to follow the same formula that made Countdown To Extinction so good and you just can’t do that! That’s not how the magic happens. The album starts off fucking amazing with Reckoning Day your typical “Holy fuck this album is going to blow my balls off” intro song to a metal album, much like Skin O’ My Teeth. It then goes to Symphony of Destr…err I mean Train of Consequences. And there you can start seeing my point. From then on in it just tries to recreate song for song some what was already perfectly done on Countdown To Extinction. So I’ve made clear what makes this album awful.. but what makes it so awesome? Well for one it’s Dave Mustaine and he is trying recerate a great album,  so some of these retreads are still quite enjoyable! AC/DC has basically has done the same album countless times with a majority of them being pretty fucking awesome so it can totally be done! And as I already mentioned, Reckoning Day is pretty fucking awesome! Train of Consequences is still good pop metal filler and A Tout Le Monde is well, um… amusing. Its all the songs around them that sink this album and make it hard to listen to. They’re all second rate versions of Countdown to Extinction songs that don’t offer a formula you can simply plug into and have it work well twice.

On an interesting side note: I remember seeing Megadeth on the old Jon Stewart Show when they were promoting Youthansia. In the audience that day were these two grizzled old metal heads who were so clearly wasted I have no clue how they got past securityand into the studio. At the end of Train of Consequences Megadeth started throwing out T-shirts into the crowd. These two dude started howling and begging Dave Mustaine and Marty Friedman to toss them some tees. But they were all the way in the back and you can only throw a t-shirt so far! After they were out of tees to give away these two dudes got super pissed off and got up and started screaming “Fuck you Dave, you fucking alcohlolic! You deserved to be kicked out of Metallica you asshole!” This went on for a good 5 minutes until security could get up there and usher these dudes out of the studio kicking and screaming! Megadeth then went on to preform Symphony of Destruction and I think Hangar 18 after the taping was over. This was almost as good as seeing Dave Mustaine cry to Lars Ulrich about how he felt when he got kicked out of the band in the Some Kind of Monster (seriously the only reason to watch this movie).

Had this come out when I was 12 or 13 instead of 14, things may have gone so differently for me. I could totally see the 12-23 year old me totally falling for the sugar rush of  Marilyn Manson’s off the wall  glam shock tactics. They were too weird to be grunge, not dancy enough to be Industrial and way too early to be Nü Metal. I remember the Lunchbox EP, Dope Hat and I remember it all going in one ear and out the other as background noise to adolescence. At 14 I think I was content and jaded enough to be like “whatevs, this was cool when it was called NIN” and just keep on smelling the teen spirit. I think the most off putting thing about even giving Marilyn Manson half a chance was, stop me if you’ve heard this one before… their fans! I couldn’t stand all the kids who were starting to align themselves under the Marilyn Manson flag and call it Goth. Those same kids who would eventually become The United Nation of Juggalos nation. And while I hated the fans and was indifferent to the music, I did however really like Brian Warner AKA Marilyn Manson as a person. I enjoyed whenever he was on TV or Howard Stern. He was very intelligent, well read and articulate. I liked him as person so much so that I sometimes wished I could just will myself to like his band… but alas I could not! So he would just get my respect for being the best possible frontman you could ever hope for when it came to free speech and expression.

A couple of weeks ago for whatever reason (probably something to do with Mike Jones) I got a bug in my ear to track down the first Marilyn Manson album Portrait of an American Family and give it a chance only about 15 years after the fact. I had a feeling all the time removed from it and the fans I’d be able to hear more objectively and perhaps even enjoy it. My suspicions were correct! I was kind of surprised how familiar I was with a  good chunk of the album… things really do sink in even when you don’t pay any attention to them. I can also now being so far removed from when it came totally see how tongue in cheek so much of this album was.

Now while this is no master stroke by album or even Awesomely Awful Album standards, It did quite nicely quench my thirst for some White Zombie meets NIN style Alterna-Industrial tunage. There is a shit load of filler and cring inducing moments, but the fe times things work, they really work.

You can only listen to Pretty Hate Machine, Broken & The Downward Spiral so many times before you need some variation to your aggro 90s fix! Portrait of an American Family does just that… provides a nice short term alternative high. But ultimately at it’s end you’re left with dry mascara caked on your eyes, manic panic all over your forehead and, yep you guessed it… a desire to hear Pretty Hate Machine, Broken & The Downward Spiral. But at least from this point on I can (in some sense) enjoy the music of someone whom I’ve long respected.  Dope Hat and Lunchbox will now unabashedly be welcome as some tasty guilty pleasures to get me pumped up for THE WEEKEND!

Now this is one Awesomely Awful Album that I not only love but feel bad even slapping this term on it. Despite the outcry’s from metal purists, there was nothing remotely awful about this album back then or now. But if you’ve read any of my past installments of Awesomely Awful Albums you know full well the title can be misleading.

So how do you compare this against the numerous classics in the Anthrax discography all of whom sound like they were made by a different band than who recorded this? Well you just don’t, because you just can’t. The Sound of White Noise needs to just sit alone as an anomaly outside the genre defining thrash Anthrax put forth before it and be judged on it’s own merits. So close off that sense of metal elitism and open up your ears instead.

3 years removed from their classic Persistence of Time a lot has changed. Metal’s taken a back seat to a Grunge/Alternative movement. Bands who haven’t gotten regular radio or MTV air-play suddenly are. And then there’s Joey Belladonna saying his goodbye to Anthrax. So what does Anthrax do in the face of all of this? They adapt motherfucker! In comes John Bush (Armored Saint) and they blow my teenage mind with Only! I remember habitually putting my headphones on and going totally ape shit to Only & Room For One More in my bedroom, air guitar and all! Like Pantera, Alice In Chains, Soundgarden & Helmet, Anthrax just knew how to make metal work within an Alternative radio-friendly world. But what’s most impressive is that they did so with so few fillers… Potter’s Field, Only, Room For One More, Hy Pro Glo, 1000 points of Hate & of course Black Lodge!

On an interesting side note, we at the office today were wondering if Black Lodge had been written about Twin Peaks. To our delight we found out that it not only was a reference to Twin Peaks but was co-written by Angelo Badalementi, who penned the theme for Twin Peaks! I fucking love Anthrax on so many more levels now.

I know is a legion of die-hard thrashers out there who cry sell-out to the mere mention of The Sound of White Noise, but whatevs! Listen to it for what it is and it’s pretty fucking awesome at that.