I personally would not call it a "perfect" album, due to yet again several tunes losing their great riffs halfway through, but this is unquestionably one of the most solid modern-day hard rock albums that you're likely to find. The songwriting and performances are absolutely astonishing, with the tunes switching from 5/4 to 7/4 to 8/4 without the listener even noticing because the melodies are so darned creative and well developed! Sexcellent production too - heavy as hell throughout ... read more

It's always a pleasure to review a classic album. When you consider that most albums are made by chimpanzees, it's always a treat to run across one that successfully channels an evocative mood through cerebral time signatures, strange made-up guitar chords, sympathetic instrumental interplay and innovative, harrowing melodies. I'm thinking specifically of The Eagles' Greatest Hits '71-'75, but many feel it would be inappropriate to devote the better half of this Slint review page to yet more ... read more

This is without exception the finest speed metal album I've ever heard. And by "finest," I mean "most interesting, threatening, hooky, speedy, intense, and exciting of them all". All the songs are pretty similar, but the discriminating ear will quickly take note of the minor rifferences.
And good giggly wiggly, does it kick ass! Tom's voice is lower and meaner, and the music is topspeed at almost every moment, slowing down only for minor variation of theme (like the middle ... read more

Cabaret Voltaire, Kraftwerk and Front 242 can all go sit on a duck because not only did electronic music pioneers Silver Apples sound completely unlike any other band in 1968: they sound completely unlike any band SINCE. Basically, they were so ahead of their time, it hurts. I mean it literally feels like little nubs are jabbing into my eyeballs! Little nubs with letters on them! OW! OW!!! JESUSS UVFUFF

I bet you a dollar that even UFOs from Outer Space (Mars) couldn't come up with such a ... read more

What a nice album! Where their debut concentrated on pushing you away and saying, "Don't come any closer or I'll kill you with my clunky wooden blocks in this eerie forest," this one smiles and says, "Hi! We're Sigur Ros! Come in and let us show you what we can do, musically-wise!" And then it proceeds to do so. And it's beautiful. Gorgeous! SLOW!

How many dadblasted singers does this band have though? In the first (real) song it sounds like a Daniel Johnson/Guy In Mercury ... read more

Fucking kill him.
Fucking kill him.
Kill him already, kill him.
Fucking kill him, fucking kill him,
Kill him already, kill him,
Just fucking kill him!
Fucking kill him! Fucking kill him!
Kill him already! Kill him!
AH FUCKING KILL HIM! FUCKING KILL HIM!
KILL HIM ALREADY! KILL HIM!
KILL HIM ALREADY!!
KILL HIM ALREADY!!
KILL HIM ALREADY!!
KILL HIM!
Amen.
Congratulations! You have just experienced the first reason why this CD is 400 times better than the one before it. Oh sure, it may just seem ... read more

Until about two months ago, I hadn't actually sat down and listened to this record for several years. And why? 'Cuz it's so darn slow!!!! When I'm in the mood for "punk rock," I pull out something fast that kicks butt, like your Minor Threat or your Misfits or your early D.R.I., which I guess are actually more like "hardcore" than traditional "punk rock," but darn it, "hardcore," to me, is what "punk rock" is all about - speed, fury, excitement, ... read more

Those who have been in a rock roll band know how difficult it can be to keep one band from ripping each others' guts out, let alone SIX bands! Luckily nobody is foolish enough to be in six different bands at the same time. Until now, that is!

The concept of Book Of Horizons is that six different Middle Eastern bands have gathered together to release a compilation. But there's just one catch - every last one of these bands has to put up with Trey Spruance's bullshit! And that's just what ... read more

My favorite Sebadoh experience. Lines are being drawn in the sand, though, so it's kinda weird going. Noise doesn't permeate. It just pops up every time Eric comes around. The rest of the album is a pleasant exchange of bubbly heartbreak pop songs between Lou and Jason. They're good, sure, but this would be an awfully Carpenters-esque lil' record without Eric's wonderfully bizarre semi-free/structured jazz/goof/rock/minimalism/experimental doohickies. In fax, Gaffney's daffneys are my personal ... read more

What do you get when you combine three great records onto one lengthy compact disc? A GREAT COMPACT DISC! Kind of like the way I combined three of Mark Prindle's cameras and got a baggie of crack!

On disc three - actually discs 4 and 5, as both disc 2 and disc 3 (or rather, discs 2 & 3 and discs 4 & 5, but packaged as discs 2 and discs 3) are double-discs - Tom and Jon take an interesting shift towards focusing on the naivete of the arrogant (a ClearChannel alternative band leader not realizing he's being taken advantage of, an untalented loser thinking his horrible original song is going to be a hit, an audiophile calling Tom "ape-eared" without realizing how foolish ... read more

Samhain done right! This go-round, Glenn "Mandel" Danzig has four band members (including bassist Eerie Von who followed him to his self-named outfit!) and has bothered putting effort into the songwriting!!!! This is NOT echoey noise or slowed-down punk. The songs run through a variety of dark textures and moods, with really neat stylistic guitar noises, light keyboard and church bell tones and the bass player hardly ever playing the same thing the guitarist is playing, which makes a ... read more

Say, while we're on the subject of Rudimentary Peni and my puppy dog, don't you think it was RUDe of his PENIs to fill our apartMENT with gross yellow dick mucus, ARI? (There's a guy at my work named Ari. I was directing that statement towards him. I'd list his last name here, but then he'd do a Yahoo search for himself, this site would come up and all hell would break loose. And I'd send my MurderGram to all these moshing kids. And it would come right back to me, signed in their parents' ... read more

Best funkin' Van Halen album since 1984. Rocks harder, catchier, louder, diverser, and just as complexly as 5150 or anything since. Dave has pulled together a group of players with more skill (though admittedly less ingenuity) than Eddie and his poons -- including Steve Vai, who got started in the business by transcribing a bunch of Frank Zappa's ridiculously complicated guitar solos and playing them back for the man. He was NOT an Eddie wannabe - he was just a guy who could play any goddamned ... read more

BULLSEYE!!! Barely beats out Human Butt as the most entertaining and thought-provoking Rollins spoken word CD ever. He kicks ass all over this one. Really intelligent and humorous without trailing off into stupid jokes and self-pity. Keep on goin', Bob Hank!

This may seem an odd choice for the best album of Rollins' solo career, but something about it really appeals to me. And what's that "something"? Everything! The music is bluesy but punky, hypnotic but depressing, psychotic but loud!!!! And Henry sounds like he's gone completely over the edge, shredding his lungs to bits every step of the way before completing the album with a blast of wounded animal shrieking that makes G.G. Allin look like Mariah Carey, and Iggy Pop look like the ... read more

More gritty American rock by Britain's then-greatest rock band. Like Let It Bleed, but a step further - more mature and full-sounding, with a couple of hard-core woman-hating good-time rockers ("Brown Sugar," which celebrates slave rape, and "Bitch," which actually isn't misogynistic at all - it's just about humpin'), a couple of magnificent, gorgeous ballads that it's almost impossible to believe were written by the same band that recorded "Brown Sugar" on the ... read more

The great lost Ministry album. Even at the band's hardest and heaviest, they were still the "dance" side project of Ministry. They could pump up the drums until they disintegrated into crackly sludge, pile on the screams, samples & clanging noises until your nose bleeds, and even tear it up with some distorted electric axe, but NEVER at the expense of a dancehall danceable rhythm. That is the key to this album's success. It's noisy and it rocks, but it's clearly intended to be ... read more

I'm a little too close to this album to give it the straightforward, purely objective review that you're used to seeing on my site, but I will, as always, give it the old college tie. This was the first album that I truly, achingly adored with all of my heart. I guess I was about four years old when I started listening to my Dad's copy all the time and fantasizing that I was Mark Lindsay. Age hasn't made it suck though! Kind of like what a Monkees album might sound like if it was ALL the Micky ... read more

This was the first Residents album I ever heard, and resulted in me spending the next decade buying up every Residents album I could find and subsequently wondering why nothing else they've produced in their entire career comes anywhere near this level of brilliance.

The "concept" is that rock and roll is brainwashing our youth. But forget the concept. The real treat here is the product: The Residents have created two twenty-minute suites that completely TERRORIZE the greatest garage ... read more