This CD is just really bad. PM5K should not have put it out. It’s worse than anything they did before, and one of those things was apparently so bad the singer refused to release it. So last we heard, they had put out Transform, which was sorta interesting, and now they’re trying out a new style and identity.
They jumped on the retro-punk bandwagon with both feet this time. “Enemies” and “Walking Disaster” are loaded with Sex Pistols riffs and other assorted musical cliches. The slick industrial riffs are gone completely. And Spider’s vocals don’t exactly clash, but they don’t sound right either, and he compensates by piling on retarded grunts and other gimmicky tricks. Get ready to hear “huh” and “yeah” and “riiight” frequently.
While in most albums you remember the highlights, in this album you remember the lowlights, because everything’s pretty bad but it’s the especially bad ones that stick out. “Wild World” is the most offensive the non-joke songs. Just an Avril Lavigne song with a male singer. The title track can be thought of as bad music that is competently performed. All the musicians have their shit together. None of them are overdosing on coke or smearing feces across the recording studio walls. But they’re obviously not trying. There’s a vibe here of “let’s listen to the new Drowning Pool CD and write something that sort of sounds the same.”
Most of the songs here is like that. “Return to the City of the Dead” brings some of the trademark PM5K energy, everything else sounds like a tired band, bored to tears by the music they’re writing, thinking they can remain edgy and hip by playing punk. There’s no inspiration to speak of, this is just a phase they were trying out, and for all I know they chose their new style using a roulette wheel.
Lurking near the end of the CD is the hellish crapstorm of “Miss America”. Dude, this is not funny or cute. STOP IT. I have no patience for wacky joke songs when the serious songs are jokes in themselves.
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Slipknot is a nu metal band (although every couple of days a fan vandalises their Wikipedia page so it reads “death metal” or “thrash metal” or something) from Iowa. They achieved great fame and success in the late nineties. THAT’S HOW BAD THEY ARE.
Where to begin? Good God, is Slipknot’s first CD horrible! Random, garbled ADHD riff constructs, endless drum masturbation, a dual tough-guy/clean boyish vocal approach that makes no sense, hideous “art” songs…welcome to modern metal.
The worst part, and by a no-contest, is the drumming. Slipknot utilises three drummers, and after a quick listen, it is readily apparent why no other bands have picked up on this idea. The album is drowning under superfluous percussion noise. “Liberate” and “Surfacing” have some semblance of a beat, but “(sic)” and “Eyeless” (among others) sound like three different drummers playing to three different songs. The wall of snare fills and tom rolls never ends, and combined with the “raw” production means it borders on being painful to listen to.
“Wait and Bleed” and “Spit it Out” are obvious radio biscuits with clean vocals that sound like Linkin Park, and they stick out like a sore thumb on here. On “Spit it Out” we get rapping, just for an extra dose of gay. The rest of the album is a mishmash of crappy Korn ripoffs and hideous noise. This is one of those albums with no riffs, the guitarists just sort of chug away aimlessly. Half the time, it’s like the actual song is over within two or three minutes, and they stretch it out with one-note groove drones for another couple of minutes while the drums flail away uselessly (seriously, half the tracks on here are like that). And the rhythm tone SUCKS. It’s so weak and flat it makes Pantera sound like Judas Priest, and they mixed the bass so high it’s like the lead instrument.
This is just unbelievably terrible. Look, I’ll make this simple: if you like this CD, get your father’s shotgun, put the barrel in your mouth, and administer Old Yeller-style therapy to yourself. Pray to the God that made you that your aim isn’t as bad as your taste in music!
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After pulling the ever-popular “fire your entire lineup” trick, Powerman 5000 put out this album in an attempt to save their career. There’s a more of a straight ahead alternative-rock/punk-rock informed sound on here, although not overt enough to belong to either genre.
I miss their old sound, but this isn’t bad. The problem is that it’s TOO consistent, and doesn’t have any amazing classics like “Supernova Goes Pop” et al. In their quest to not put a foot wrong, they don’t particularly put a foot [i]right[/i] , everything stays at a designated level of inoffensive. You think “damn, just write an 11 minute guitar solo, or a song about porking a sheep. Fuck with my mind a little. This is so safe it’s boring.”
Highlights are “Free”, “Action”, “Top of the World”, and “A is for Apathy,” which all manage to be catchy and hard rocking. “The Shape of Things to Come” is weird and trippy. When I first listened to it the final couple of minutes were buried under a wall of clicks and distortion. I actually got excited, thinking I was listening to some kind of experimental sonic collage. Turns out the digital file had become corrupt.
Carbon-copy an idea enough times and it eventually degrades. This is seen here with some harmless but really boring songs like “Hey, It’s Nuthin’” or “I Knew it Was Right”…I can’t even distinguish their titles. “Stereotype” is the same, but remove the “harmless” part. It’s fucking horrible. It’s like a warmup for the all-out country song on their next album.
But basically Transform is OK and interesting. They rounded everything out and made it all sound the same, but it’s not awful. Strategically apply the skip button and it’s actually a good CD.
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This band was successful once. Modestly successful, yeah, successful for an entire year, maybe, but they were there once, and this is it.
The title seems a bit poetic when you consider how many stars must have aligned for this thing to go platinum. There was a small window in the nu metal world when it was all the rage to have wacky, tripped out lyrics, electronics/samples backed up by crushing riffs, and singers with balls but absolutely no training. Rob Zombie, Static-X, and Powerman 5000 were the three tentpoles of the genre. Powerman 5000 were the lest popular of the three, but they still hit it pretty big, mostly on the strength of the single “When Worlds Collide.”
Spider has abandoned the rapping and funk-rock riffs of their first album for a sleeker, catchier, more mainstream sound. The guitars are loaded with effects, and although Spider’s voice gets a lot of praise it’s actually the guitar work that really seals the deal for me. Countless times I thought “hey, is that a keyboard…?” only to realise I was listening to six strings. Truly amazing.
Classic songs abound. “Supernova Goes Pop” brings the party with heavy riffs and Spider’s sinewy, slithery vocals. “Are you the future…or are you the past?” The title track is incoherent, out of control, and fun. “When Worlds Collide” is the album’s best song. It’s short, it’s catchy, and it’s loaded with energy, making it suitable for all of the 5 million “XXXtreme” sports games it has appeared in.
If I can say something bad, it’s that the album does lose a bit of focus and direction later on. There’s a lot of repetition of ideas, and sometimes songs are written around hooks that simply aren’t strong enough to sustain themselves. And consider yourself advised to delete the last three tracks altogether. You just have a 2-minute throwaway song, an unnecessary Cars cover, and a dumb lounge music thing. Except for “Transform” PM5K has never ended their albums well. They either slap on some generic filler, or some weird artsy bullshit. They’re not unlike a merry-go-round. The trick is in judging the right time to hop off the ride before it starts making you sick.
But still, this album really kicks ass. There aren’t many nu metal albums that are this solid. There aren’t many albums in general that are this solid. It’s only downhill from here, though.
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A lot of their later stuff is weird and doesn’t work, so small victories, right? This band is more known for their electro/industrial releases, so their debut was an interesting find. Mega Kung Fu Radio is a rap rock CD, and boy will you have to redefine your ideas about rap rock to listen to it.
Powerman 5000 isn’t a band so much as singer/frontman Spider One writing music with whoever happens to walk through the studio door. The band has an ex-member list as long as a monkey’s arm, including White Zombie members. This revolving-door approach to music has led to some pretty radical style shifts, from rap to industrial to alternative to punk rock to industrial again. One wonders if they have any of their original fans left.
What we have here is noisy punk-inflected rap rock with a lazy delivery and a defiant lack of hooks. Spider’s lyrics are deranged mumblings about aliens and monsters and samurai, a welcome shift from Limp Bizkit’s generic tough-guy posturing. The guitar work is visceral and sloppy, very heavy on the effects, and there are even some guitar leads (“THAT’S RIGHT! WE’RE PLAYING SOLOS! TAKE THAT, MAINSTREAM!”)
The CD functions more like a sonic house of horrors than a set of cohesive songs. “Neckbone” and Organizized” are pretty fun, with Spider just drawling all over the place and then letting out throat-ripping screams when you least expect it. “Standing 8″ has vague implications of radio-friendliness, sounding like a Red Hot Chili Peppers song at times.
Production is pretty raw. It’s listenable. I could do without the overly roomy snare.
Do I like this? Maybe the only way I can answer is to say that I don’t hate it enough to turn it off. There are listenable moments, and the whole thing is just too much of an experience to easily forget. Skip the bullshit joke song at the end, though.
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This semi-rare compilation disc has 25 of Roy’s Orbison’s songs recorded while he was on the MGM label, some only previously available on movie soundtracks.
When Roy Orbison fell off the charts in the late sixties, MGM snapped him up, and the result was a series of singles that, although good, failed to restart his career. Roy’s songwriting became a bit more poppy and upbeat during this period, although there are still plenty of sad songs and ballads, and some harder rocking songs like “Twinkle Toes” and “Zig Zag”. As is the case with his earlier material, the songs are mostly vocally driven, though Roy has abandoned his whole “opera rock” thing.
“Pistolero” and “Ride Away” are the strongest cuts, but what’s surprising is the small amount of filler on this compilation. Just about every song is listenable, if not enjoyable. “Breaking Up is Breaking My Heart” is kind of shitty, though.
What we have here is a greatest hits album…even though none of them were hits! Great collector material.
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