It’s been quite a while since I’ve listened to this album…I’d forgotten how good some of these songs are.
This album gave God Lives Underwater their only “serious” hit: From Your Mouth. This song got fairly serious airplay for about a year before God Lives Underwater vanished from the public consciousness.
Part of the reson for thir disappearance may be the overall flow of this album. It starts oyt pretty energetic, but quickly starts to bog down. By the end of the album, you’re listening to a bizarre, extremely repetetive ambient techno piece.
This album’s worth picking up cheap, if only for the first handful of songs. Just be careful - it gets pretty dull before long.

Ahhhh…Good ol’ Type O. Among metal bands, only they would cover a song from Hedwig and the Angry Inch…and it’s done in Type O s Classic Gothadelic style.
I was fortunate enough to see Type O Negative in concert twice afer this album. The first time, when they had Lacuna Coil opening, the concert was awesome. I went home exhausted, deaf, and a little battered. (I keot falling into the mosh pit).
The seonc time, though - co-headlining with Cradle of Filth, with Moonspell opening, was EPIC! Not only was the entire bill awesome, Type O successfully “bazinga’d” the audience: Normally, when the house lights come down before Type O tale the stage, the audience starts chanting, “You Suck!” (it’s a tradition - I’ll tell you more about it when we get to “O”). About 2 or 3 “you sucks” into the chant, a rotating red light comes on, and the theme from “COPS” starts playing. While the audience laughed, the band took the stage, bedecked in orange jumpsuits.
Welcome to the strange world of Type O Negative.

This is definitely the weakest album that Korn has ever produced. I know that I liked it at the time (I did buy it, after all), but now…not so much.
Admittedly, I did like A.D.I.D.A.s. when I was a teenager, but it;s that kind of song. It’s the kind of thing that appeals to an adolescent. The rest of the album feels like Korn focused too much on the visceral sound, at the cost of style.

Best. Single. Ever.
This single contains 9 different versions of the song Light. None of these nine tracks is the album track. Ironically, it’s the fact that it’s the same song nine times that makes this single so great. These nine versions of Light are just different enough that you don’t ever get bored with it.
Now that’s skill.

Liquid Tension Experiment started as a side project by Dream Theater drummer Mike Portnoy. Three quarters of this band would end up being members of Dream Theater - Jordan Rudess and John Petrucci also played in LTE. Because of this, bits of LTE songs are often incorporated into Dream Theater concerts.
Interesting fact: Dimebag Darrell was invited to take part, but he was not able to due to schedule conflicts. Too bad…
This music is nearly all instrumental, which is extremely awesome. When you let a bunch of top-quality musicians rock together like this, the sky is indeed the limit.

Now THIS is a good way to start a Friday morning - the loudest band in metal.
I honestly don’t think there’s a more over-the-top band than Manowar. They are the living embodiment of Nigel Tufnel’s “these go to eleven” theory of performance. Not only do Manowar play as loudly as they are legally able (could they possibly be the progenitors of Disaster Area?), but everything that they do is done on an epic scale…even the bass solos are insane. This album’s Sting of the Bumblebee is the classic piano piece Flight of the Bumblebee, played on an electric bass. Think about that for a moment. A song that’s generally used to show a high level of skill on the piano, performed on bass.
Like I said, Epic.

Troll Gnet El - Konung Hop

There’s something extremely right about going from the epic fantasy world of Manowar to the folk metal of Troll Gnet El. It’s also right to spend part of a Friday listening to a song called Folklore-Drinking Song.
Of course, it’d be even more right if I had a nice horn of mead…
I’ve heard a number of folk metal bands, but none that sounded quite like this. Most folk metal bands incorporate elements of folk music into their heavy metal. Troll Gnet El sounds more like they’re adding some metal to their folk music - It sounds like the folk comes first. Regardless of which comes first, it’s excellent music. Of course, I have absolutely no idea what they’re saying…

Continuing in the “What the heck is he saying” vein, we have Megaherz. Megaherz is a German industrial metal band, strongly reminiscent of Rammstein.
I know next to nothing about Megaherz. I bought this album from a (now defunct) Russian music site a few years ago. I bought it specifically for their cover of Falco’s Rock Me Amadeus - I listened to the brief sample, and absolutely loved what I’d heard. The album was quite cheap, so I sprang for the whole thing.

The irony continues (korn is a type of schnapps popular in Germany).
Korn’s first album is, overall, pretty good. Songs like Blind, Clown and Shoots and Ladders are excellent listens, and the album as a whole lays down the foundation for Korn’s unique sound. There are a couple rough spots, but that’s to be expected on a debut album.

How very fitting - Korn to Mudvayne. We seem to be in the middle of a Nu-Metal block.
Mudvayne is another of the bands that I discovered during the brief era of MTVX. The video for Digg was in regular rotation at the end of MTVX, and it really caught my eye - both the visuals and the song itself. At the time, I was unaware of the complexity of Mudvayne’s music - I just knew that there was something awesome about this song.
In addition to the album, I bought the DVD single for Digg. It includes a very interesting behind-the-scenes documentary about the making of the video. It’s been a while since I last watched it, but there are a few things about it that still stand out.
I remember the genesis of the guitarist’s particularly interesting face paint. If you pay attention to the video, he appears to have little black spikes sticking out of his face. These spikes are actually Bugles corn snacks, painted black.
I remember seeing the drummer playing alone. For the scenes with the all-white background, each band member was filmed individually. One brief scene showed the drummer playing the verse… Wow. Just…wow.
I remember documentary footage of somebody slipping on a banana peel. One scene features the band outside of the building where the video was recorded. They had placed a banana peel, yellow side up, on the ground in the fence door. After a few people noticed it and tossed it in a nearby trashcan rather than step on it (the band put it back every time), one member of the band decided to “take one for the team.” apparently, those things are indeed quite slippery.

This is not where the funky groove metal beast that is White Zombie started. There were several EP’s released prior to this album, one of which (“Let them Die Slowly”) I owned a copy of way back. This was, however, their major label debut, and it was the album that launched White Zombie into popular culture.
Assisted by its appearance on “Beavis and Butthead,” the video for Thunder Kiss ‘65 established White Zombie as a band to pay attention to, with its bizarre mix of heavy metal, groove, and horror movie samples. This bizarre mix would define White Zombie’s sound for the entirety of their career.
I’ve noticed something interesting about White Zombie. Sometimes, I’ll forget about them for months at a time, then I’ll hear one of their songs and suddenly I’m seized by the desire to listen to ALL of my White Zombie.
Interesting fact: The demo that landed White Zombie their recording contract that led to this album was produced with the assistance of J. G. Thirlwell (Foetus).

Another album in the “netlabel stuff” series, Horchata’s “Isolated House” is an ambient concept album. With song titles like Yard and Kitchen, it’s not hard to see the concept.
I’m guessing that this “Isolated House” is one of those really creepy houses - the deep, thrumming drones certainly seem to say so. Also, some of the other instrumentation and effects help to create a decidedly unsettling atmosphere. Bedroom is an excellent example of this - the drone fades down slightly, only to be joined by an ill wind blowing accompanied by a slow, discordant piano arpeggio.

Well, that was quite a shift - haunting ambient to nu-metal.
Not long ago, I stated that “Follow The Leader” may very well be my favorite Korn album, but I wasn’t entirely certain. “Issues” is the other contender for that title. I’m still not sure which is my favorite (both are full of excellent music), but I can say one thing about “issues.” I believe that this was Korn’s last truly great album. All of Korn’s albums since have been comparatively dull. Both “Follow the Leader” and “Issues” are excellent, from start to finish. It’s not only the songs that made it onto the radio that are great, it’s the whole album. This isn’t so with their other releases. The singles are good (Korn always manages to pick out the crème de la crème), but the “album tracks” tend to fall off rather sharply.
Please note, I never said that the other Korn albums suck - I just said that they’re not as good as this one.

Mono Puff is (or was - I’m not sure of MP is still a going concern) a side project from John Flansburgh. John is one half of the incomparable They Might Be Giants - the guitar playing half.
This is the second album from Mono Puff, but it was the first to come to my attention. This is because (a) it’s the only Mono Puff album that I’ve actually seen in a “normal” music store and (b) I quite easily recognized John on the cover.
Musically, this album is reminiscent of the sound of early TMBG albums, but a bit more guitar-driven. Catchy melodies and playful, often whimsical lyrics make this album extremely fun to listen to; it’s great for cheering up on a bad day.
I really like Extra Krispy - all I need now is a mirror ball and a light up dance floor (and a drink or two). Disco Ron says, “Awwwwww yeaaaaaaahhhh…”

Mister Vapor - It Came From Vapor

Back to the Netlabel series, this time we’re introduced to Mister Vapor. Call me crazy, but I’m guessing that we’re gliding back into ambient territory (I’m pretty sure that all of the netlabel music that I acquired is ambient).
Yep - I was right. This album is very soft, and extremely subtle. In fact, the first track, Psychic Residue, sounds like the base drone from a better song - I honestly got nothing more from it than a soft, airy drone. The remainder of the album is better, either adding other elements to flesh out the songs or using “fuller” drones with more variation applied. Still, even the best songs here seemed to fall a bit short.

Ambienteer - It Has Its Function

Moving on, we come to the very prolific Ambienteer. I have been advised that despite (perhaps because of) Ambienteer’s voluminous output, the quality of the work tends to vary. It looks like this album is one of the good ones.
The first song, Déjà, surprised me about a minute in with the decidedly non-ambient addition of a distinct (almost danceable) rhythm track. The rest of the album follows suit, being more “up front” than what one would expect of an artist called “Ambienteer.”
This one, I like quite a bit.

Remember Fantastic Voyage? That was the song that first brought Coolio (and his bizarre coiffure) to my attention. I remember it distinctly - I had MTV on in the background as I was doing something or other (I think LEGOs were involved) when this video came on. In a time that was dominated by hardcore gangsta rap, this song was like a breath of fresh air. Rather than rapping about bustin’ caps in various asses and partaking in myriad illicit substances, Coolio was rapping about just having a good time. Apparently, I completely missed the fact that the “good time” being had was imaginary.
On this album, Coolio painted a pretty bleak picture of life in the ghetto - poverty, gang violence and drug abuse…the difference between Coolio and the other rappers of the time is that Coolio, for the most part, didn’t glorify the Ghetto life. In light of this, the escapism of Fantastic Voyage takes on a much darker meaning.

This is Godsmack’s fourth studio album (think that may have something to do with the title?). As I recall, this came out at a time when a lot of good albums were coming out, so I think I’ve only listened to it once or twice.
I’ve been missing out. While it’s not quite as good as “Faceless”, “IV” delivers the punch with a hint of grunge that you want when you put on a Godsmack album.

Ahhhh…I’ve been waiting for this one. This is my favorite Bolt Thrower album. My perception may be a bit colored by the fact that this was the first Bolt Thrower album that I bought, but there it is.
I bought this album using a technique that I was quite fond of in my youth. I call it “judging an album by its cover.” This may seem like a rather silly way to select an album, but hindsight shows that it was surprisingly effective. In no way was it a perfect technique, there are a lot o terrible albums out there hiding behind really good covers. This album, however, is a shining example of how well it can work out.
The first thing that struck me about this album was its pace. I was no stranger to death metal, but I’d never heard it done like this…slow and deliberate. This created a more threatening sound. Rather than bludgeoning your brain, this simply marches inexorably on - it cannot be stopped.

This may very well be Korn’s best album. I’m not entirely certain, though - “Issues” is a strong contender for the title. I should listen to them back-to-back so that I can declare a winner.
That’s not to say that Korn’s other albums aren’t good - they just don’t quite compare to the Follow the Leader/Issues era.
I’d nearly forgotten about All in the Family until just now. If you’re not familiar with this song, it features Jonathan Davis and Fred Durst (of Limp Bizkit) trading some rather nasty insults. Frakked up and hilarious.

Faith No More - Fool’s small Victory: B-sides and Rarities

(no link; this isn’t even an “official” album. Shhh…)
This is a fun one. This collection features non-album tracks, alternate versions etc from throughout Faith No More’s career (OK, just from the Mike Patton era). It is, therefore, a smorgasbord of rock and roll weirdness. This compilation includes Faith No More’s cover of Lionel Richie’s Easy and the particularly unusual Das Schutzenfest, as well as a handful of excellent live tracks. It’s not for everybody, but if you’re a Faith No More fan, you’ll enjoy it.

Bolt Thrower is, hands-down, my favorite death metal band. This is quite fitting, given that much of Bolt Thrower’s music is inspired by tabletop wargames, specifically Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 (In Warhammer, a “Bolt Thrower” is a ballista). Bolt Thrower speaks directly to me on a geek level.
One thing that separates Bolt Thrower from the other Death Metal bands out there is their slower pace. Rather than relying primarily on blast beat drumming, Bolt Thrower takes a slower, more measured pace. Personally, I thikn this produces a much more visceral sound. Don’t get me wrong, the blast beats are most certainly there, they’re just not the drummer’s raison d’etere. I first discovered Bolt Thrower through a near random purchase, but that’s a story for another time (when we get to the album involved).

From the darkness of Napalm Death rises visceral doom.
In other words, this was the first album from Cathedral, with former Napalm Death frontman Lee Dorian on vocals. Dark, dreary, and (mostly) very deliberate in its pace, this album would set the tone for most of Cathedral’s subsequent work. “The Ethereal Mirror” would bring the funk, but it was “Forest of Equilibrium” that brought the sludge.

“The Forgotten Tales” is a compilation of covers and alternate (acoustic/orchestral) versions of Blind Guardian songs. The covers range from the “fitting” (Queen’s Spread Your Wings) to the unexpected (The Beach Boys’ Surfin’ USA). As for the alternate versions…wow. I especially like the “Unplugged” tracks - acoustic metal doesn’t always work. Here, it does.

Speaking of metal that would not work if played acoustically…
The title alone should tell you what to expect from this album. Remember the blast beats that were “missing” from Bolt Thrower? I found ‘em! They’re not the sole drum trick - this album alternates between furiously fast and near-plodding midtempo pacing.
An interesting note: the title of this album involves three words beginning with “F,” the sixth letter of the alphabet. Mark of the beast, anybody?