Encore was an album so bad that people theorize Eminem made it bad on purpose to deliberately sabotage his own career due to becoming so jaded with his rap persona, e’en tho I haven’t seen any quote from Eminem backing this up. ( Mo’ likely ’twas a mix o’ being on drugs; rushing out songs to replace songs that were leaked… because for some reason he couldn’t just release the album with leaked songs, for no reason given; & just wanting to get this album out, & thus lacking the ambitious care that went into his earlier albums when he was trying to make it, now that he had already made it ). After 3 classic albums & only 2 years after what many consider possibly his best song e’er, “Lose Yourself”, his devolution here is striking.

As a kid who didn’t have the most discerning tastes, I didn’t notice quite as much, tho as I went down my older sister’s collection o’ albums in chronological order, I did lose interest round albums 3 & 4. In particular, I mistook the goofiest songs on this album for the usual wackiness he exhibited back on The Slim Shady LP, where he would have songs involving him rapping ’bout raping a fat woman o’er Italian soap opera music & ’nother where he rapped ’bout beating up Foghorn Leghorn with an acorn. Tho those songs were considered the worst on this album, those were actually the ones that stuck with me the most; & since this is a series that revels in fascinating disasters, they will surely be the songs we fixate on the most today.

1. Curtains Up

Like all Eminem albums, this is full o’ kinda pointless skits. This a’least opens the album’s o’erarching story where he walks onstage to cheering crowds with a gun hid ’hind his back ( which you wouldn’t know unless you looked @ the insert o’ the CD ) & continues the theme introduced in its earlier twin, The Eminem Show, o’ the irony o’ people hero-worshipping someone as fucked up as Eminem.

Grade: A

2. Evil Deeds

Eminem: “¿What if I repeated the last phrase o’ each line multiple times to pad out the 1st verse?”.

“& also, ¿what if I randomly interpolated a remix o’ ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’? Also, ¿have I mentioned that my dad was a deadbeat yet?”.

predominantly, predominantly,
everything’s always predominantly
predominantly white, predominantly black
well, ¿what about me?
¿where does that leave me?
well, I guess that I’m between predominantly both of ’em

it turns out Logic is not the 1st “biracial” rapper, after all.

We also get such gems as, “it’s such bullshit, it’s tuch mull bish” — no, I didn’t mistype that last part: he just says a bunch o’ gibberish for no reason — & him interpolating “Ring Around the Rosie” for no reason. What we don’t really get is much o’ the multiple internal rhymes that is kind o’ why people like Eminem so much. This whole song sounds halfassed, from the rambling lyrics, basic chorus, & generic bump-clap beat. Hell, it’s so halfassed that the last verse ends with Eminem talking ’bout passing the baton to 50 Cent, only for the song to end. ¿Did somebody leave 50’s verse out or was Eminem just, like, “¡psyche! ¡fuck you, 50, if you think you’re featuring on my album!”.

Grade: F

3. Never Enough ( feat. 50 Cent & Nate Dogg )

O, here’s 50 Cent.

In contrast to “Evil Deeds”, which was a hilarious trainwreck, this song is just… fine. It’s got a dramatic beat, Em’s typical catchy “miracle spherical lyrical” rapping, & an e’en catchier chorus with Nate Dogg’s smooth voice. Granted, Em’s voice sounds weirdly strained in the chorus, but whate’er. I could put it in the background & enjoy it perfectly fine.

Howe’er, none o’ the lines are memorable for being good, & the lines memorable for being weird aren’t as funny as the kind o’ trainwrecks we’ll see later. Eminem whines ’bout how people don’t respect him ’nough, as he does all too oft, despite being 1 o’ the most respected rappers out there; 50 Cent says some generic gangster shit, with 1 particular line standing out to me: “i go ballistic as hieroglyphic”. Genius tells me it’s a reference to the phrase, “to go up the wall”, & I believe them, since it makes mo’ sense than anything I could theorize; but I was already familiar with the phrase & somehow putting together the riddle o’ “¿what do ballistic & hieroglyphic have in common?” didn’t lead me to that phrase. It doesn’t help that it awkwardly uses an adjective as a simile: would’ve made mo’ sense to say “i go ballistic as hieroglyphs”. Whate’er: I’d take a weird-ass line like that o’er forgettable lines like, “you gon’ say the wrong shit & get your whole face split”.

The other line that stood out to me was in the middle o’ Nate Dogg’s smooth chorus o’ normal, serious lines, where he suddenly bursts out, “no matter how many magazines on my nuts”. I can’t tell if this is bragging ’bout magazines loving them or mentioning Eminem’s long beef with the owner o’ the hiphop magazing The Source, Benzino — yes, Eminem beefed with a magazine owner, & that wasn’t e’en the goofiest beef he was in round the time. All I imagine is somebody holding up a large stack o’ magazines on their cock… which, now that I think ’bout it, would mean having a strong, presumably large cock, so… I guess it actually works great as a brag.

Grade: C

4. Yellow Brick Road

Well, it’s certainly not Breaking Benjamin’s “Home”, that’s for sure.

I’d already heard that this was the song Eminem made to respond to the excavation of ol’ racist raps he made in response to a black girl dumping him. What I didn’t know till I relistened to this song is that he “addresses” it by rambling for 3 verses ’bout irrelevant shit ’bout his past like Grampa Simpson before finally coming up the story o’ the girl who dumped him & being all, “Yeah, it was racist, sorry ( ¡tho some people thought my rapping was so good! )”. I love how he claims he was only dating this black girl to piss off his on-again / off-again girlfriend, Kim, which makes it sound worse: it’s easier to empathize with someone who was racist due to having their mind clouded by emotional pain than someone who was just annoyed their scheme didn’t work.

Also, lol that X Clan was “racist” ’cause ’twas Afrocentric. I don’t e’en know where this idea that white rappers were out in the early 90s: the Beastie Boys still had plenty o’ hits in the early 90s, like “Pass the Mic”, “So What’cha Want”, & “Sure Shot”, toured with respected rap acts like Cypress Hill as early as 1992, & collaborated with respected rappers like Biz Markie & Q-Tip. Em could’ve just learned to play the guitar & drums & became a rock-rapper: problem solved.

Also, this song sounds like ass: I hate the click drums & the weird mouth sounds Eminem makes in the background thruout & the goofy squeaky notes, as well as the country-bumpkin chorus. Tho “Evil Deeds” is, from a critical level, mo’ half-assed, I would actually rather listen to that than this song, which isn’t funny, just boring & annoying.

Grade: F

5. Like Toy Soldiers

I think fans generally like this song. I am not 1 o’ them, howe’er: I ne’er liked Eminem’s super serious songs. I’m sorry, but you can’t go from rapping ’bout wrapping a rope round your penis & jumping from a tree or raping your own mother to making this kind o’ mawkish ballad comparing yourself to a solider ’cause you beat a rap beef with the owner o’ a fucking hiphop magazine or Ja Rule, who is so unimportant people only remember him from losing a beef to Eminem. Famous bitch boy Drake wasn’t this whiny ’bout his beef with Kendrick — & Eminem won this beef.

Also, the lyrics are lame & uninspired, with the 1st 2 lines rhyming “solider” with “never blows his composure” with “i hold the weight of the whole world on my shoulders”. Usually when Eminem has wack lyrics they’re a’least memorably goofy, like “that’s an awfully hot coffee pot” or “you bring the buns, i’ll bring the asperger’s”: this song’s mostly shit any rapper could write.

Grade: D

Music Video

The music video adds extra bathos to the melodrama by trying to depict 1 o’ Eminem’s homeys dying in the hospital with all o’ the acting props o’ a 12-year-ol’ school play & plenty o’ poorly-hidden green-screening. My favorite part is when Eminem suddenly tosses a food cart o’er while in the hospital waiting room, presumably with rage, but he has the dullest o’ expressions on his face.

Grade: D

6. Mosh

I think Eminem fans also genuinely like this song, which shows how easy they are to impress, given that there were many, many better antiwar songs by rock bands like System of a Down. The beat & rap meter are so stock, the political commentary is rudimentary, the 1st verse goes into a weird tangent ’bout Eminem’s achievements for some reason, &, worst o’ all, it tries to make this cringe comparison ’tween moshing — a type o’ dancing — & protesting. & it’s not like Eminem couldn’t do good political songs: “White America” is a great mockery o’ the hypocrisy o’ conservatives criticizing him, dripping with the thickest o’ irony. But the problem is that this song is 100% serious & genuine, & I can’t take seriously the idea that The Real Slim Shady is going to lead his listeners into dancing the bad politics ’way. People call stuff like American Idiot or Muse’s weird cyberpunk album or e’en some people consider Rage Against the Machine cringe, but none o’ them e’er made songs ’bout revolutionary dancing. All I can say is, for someone notorious for his very, very naughty homophobic language, Eminem sure made the gayest political song e’er, & it’s not e’en ’bout gay rights. ¿Where was the outrage @ that injustice?

Grade: F

Music Video

Congrats to the 15-year-ol’ Newgrounds animator for their great work on the animated parts. Honestly, I kinda like how weird this music video looks with its tacky blend o’ different animation styles & live action, e’en with the cliché conspiracy theory stuff ’bout Bin Laden being fake or the weirdly irrelevant tangent that isn’t in the song @ all ’bout racist police.

Grade: 🕺

7. Puke

All right, now here’s the kind o’ stuff I want to listen to: a goofy-ass song that starts with the sound o’ puking where Eminem drunkenly wails ’bout his bitch ex, with plenty o’ elongated line-ending syllables & off-key falsetto. I think my favorite line is the 1 where he ends a line early with “instead of a letter that you’d probably just shred up”, & then fills in the remaining space by just going, “yead-dah”. Genius claims he’s saying “yeah”, but that’s complete bullshit: he’s saying, “yead-dah”.

Honestly, tho, some o’ these lines are kinda metal, like the part where he just goes off on his ex, calling her a “fucking cokehead slut” & saying he hopes she goes to hell & that “Satan sticks a needle in your eye”. If only the average post-grunge “my ex is a bitch” song from the likes o’ Theory of a Dead Man or Puddle of Mudd had this much spiteful energy, they’d… well, they’d still suck, but a li’l less. E’en funnier, Eminem follows these hateful lines with, “but please don’t get me wrong, I’m not bitter or mad”. Whether Eminem is in on the joke or not, I don’t care.

E’en the stomp-clap beat with the heavy bass is pretty catchy.

What I’m saying is, I actually kind o’ like this song, tho I’m not sure I could e’en decide on a real critical grade for it, so we get the obvious grade:

Grade: 🤮

8. My 1st Single

This song is a shitpost: the chorus is Eminem basically saying, “lol, I made a shitty song”, while burping in the background while the most horrendous clickity-clack beat plays on endlessly while in the verses Eminem sputters absolutely nonsense — e’en by his standards. ¿E’er wanted to hear the riveting story ’bout Eric waking from swallowing generic-brand sleeping pills to find that he had gay sex with his best friend, Derrick? ¿Who’s Eric & Derrick? Fuck if I know. ¿Want to hear ’bout a fictional sex tape o’ underage Britney Spears & Justin Timberlake while they were Mouseketeers in the Mickey Mouse Club? ¿No? Well, fuck you, that’s what you get. I guess you could say the verses’s lyrics are somewhat imaginative. But there are much better shitposts on this album, already. This is nearer to “Evil Deeds” in terms o’ lack o’ effort.

Grade: F

9. Paul (Skit)

O’ all the skits revolving round Eminem’s manager, Paul Rosenberg, this is 1 o’ the least inspired. Yes, Eminem, you’re really edgy & dangerous for making the same jokes ’bout Michael Jackson that e’eryone else was doing @ the time.

Grade: D

10. Rain Man

Here’s a much better shitpost, especially with the weirdly catchy chorus, “’cause I ain’t got no leeeegs / or no braaaaain / niice to meet you / hiii, my name is… / i forgot my naaaaame”, only to pause after trying to say his new name & to say in a very quiet, monotone voice, “Rain Man”. In this case the song is less ’bout Eminem intentionally making a bad song & mo’ implying that Eminem’s too mentally retarded to make a good song, which, given the effects the drugs were having on his brain @ this point, was probably somewhat true. I find the line, “i just did a whole song & i didn’t say shit” ironic, as he says mo’ in this song than “Evil Deeds” or “My 1st Single”: we get to learn that Eminem was the 1 who killed Superman by putting him next to Darth Vader & we get to learn the complex intricacies o’ what is & is not gay sex on the 2nd verse from him & his friend, Dr. Dre.

Grade: 🌧️👱‍♂️

11. Big Weenie

¡Here we go! ¡The best song on the album! This song is essentially a parody o’ what all diss tracks are: claiming one’s “weenie” is bigger than their opponent, with the ’bout the same essential maturity o’ this song’s chorus:

you’re just jealous of me ’cause you, you just can’t do what i do
so instead of just admitting it you walk around & say
all kinds of really mean things about me
’cause you’re a meanie, a meanie
but it’s only ’cause you’re just really jealous of me
’cause i’m what you want to be, so you just look like an idiot
when you say these mean things, ’cause it’s too easy to see
you’re really just a big weenie, a big weenie

Interspersed ’tween these choruses are absurdist verses wherein the protagonist tries to investigate why the addressee is being so “mean” to the protagonist. This includes putting sunglasses on a frog & asking the addressee what they have in common. The answer to this brilliant riddle is that they’re both “green with envy & look like idiots with sunglasses on ’em”, which ’course made the sunglasses completely irrelevant. Squeezed into this song’s short 3 verses are further gems o’ brilliance: for instance, we get the deep philosophical musing: “¿now why did they make Yoo-hoo?”, only for Eminem to reveal the absurdity o’ such an assumption that there is a why to anything with the following nonsequitor, “pippity-kaka poo-poo”: food exists purely to come back out as feces. Such is the frivolous cycle o’ existence in which we find ourselves trapped. & we can’t forget the profound moral @ the end o’ this song: “that if you say mean things, the weenie will shrink”.

We also get a poetic description o’ just how much bigger Eminem’s weenie is than our unnamed addressee’s: “mine is like sticking a banana between 2 oranges”, somehow rhyming the infamously rhymeless “oranges” with “yours is”, “doing this”, & “pointless”, thanks to Eminem’s weird accent. ( We get similar bizarre rhymes in verse 2 with “booth all day”, “truth, OK”, & “tooth decay” as Em smoothly transitions from bragging ’bout his rapping prowess to pointing out his rap opponents bad dental hygiene ).

People like to portray this song as an attempted ( & failed ) diss track gainst Benzino, but given how self-deprecating this song is, I doubt it. @ the beginning o’ the 2nd verse Em flubs in the middle o’ the 1st line, only to stutter out in the tone o’ someone clearly bullshitting that, “that’s just what you wanted to hear is that i fucked up, ¿ain’t it? that i can’t bust 1 take without looking @ no paper”. & in the middle o’ verse 3 we get the line, “you look like i sound like singing ’bout weenies”.

’Hind this whole song is an absurdly dramatic & repetitive pounding beat & chord. But as a garnish @ the end, after the final chorus Eminem mutters, “fuck off my dick”, followed by some weird monster voice sounding like it’s crying. Truly this is art.

Grade: S

12. Em Calls Paul (Skit)

This is just the previous Paul skit, but from Eminem’s point o’ view, & with the weird voice effect Em uses when he’s playing as “Christopher Reeves”, for some reason.

13. Just Lose It

This song’s mo’ annoying than funny, & is the most dated on this album, revolving round the same jokes ’bout Michael Jackson that e’eryone’s already made by now, as well as some other pop culture references — many o’ which were already dated back then, like the random references to Pee-Wee Herman — & some randomly thrown in potty humor, none o’ which has any connection to any part o’ the song like in Em’s magnum opus “Big Weenie”, for flavor.

I think what’s most absurd & dated ’bout this song, that strangely nobody seems to mention, is in the chorus, where Eminem makes a joke ’bout saying, “yeah, boy, shake that ass — oops, I mean girl”, & then in the music video it shows a li’l boy being replaced by a li’l girl shaking her ass. Only in the early 2000s could someone imply that paedophilia is only bad when gay without becoming a source o’ ridicule.

Also, the juicy synth beats are gross to listen to.

Grade: F

Music Video

If you ignore the terrible music, the music video is actually pretty good. It actually goes into greater depth on the Michael Jackson mockery, making fun o’ him getting his hair set on fire, as well as all the flashy costumes he & other artists like MC Hammer had. I think this would’ve worked better if the references were just left as visuals & the song, I dunno, focused more on the absurdity o’ Eminem’s fame in comparison.

Grade: A

14. Ass Like That

& then we get the tragic tale o’ a racist Indian stereotype possessed by a dog puppet being hassled by the police just ’cause he popped a boner in the movie theater while watching some movie stars he finds attractive, some o’ which are underage. ’Twas brave o’ Eminem to use his platform to speak out on this lesser-known example o’ police brutality gainst minorities. While ridiculously racist, I have to admit the fake Indian sitar music with the deep bass is catchy, as well as the ridiculously childish, “¡da-doing doing doooing!” @ the end o’ each line o’ the chorus.

Genius calls this “what many consider to be a low point in Eminem’s career”, but I refuse to believe this song is worse than “Just Lose It”: “Just Lose It” is a song anyone could make in a few seconds; its jokes are all stock, & it’s somehow e’en mo’ paedophilic. While this song may not be good or well-written or e’en funny, it’s the kind o’ bizarre concept that nobody else could come up with, & I have to give it credit for that.

Grade: Da-Doing Doing Doing

Music Video

You can’t say the music video wasn’t well-made, given the source material, especially with the opening scene where Eminem fights with a dog puppet ’cause it insulted him, that explains how this all happened. I particularly want to highlight the use o’ puppets for when Eminem is possessed by the dog & the goofy way it parodies ass anthems o’ the time with all the women in the background shaking their ass whole Eminem’s in front playing with a slinky.

Grade: A

15. Spend Some Time (feat. Obie Trice, Stat Quo, 50 Cent)

I love how after a string o’ intentionally absurd songs, we get this song that tries to be serious, but is e’en mo’ absurd because o’ that. After some terrible, off-key singing from Em, trying to speak from the heart ’bout heartbreak, only to kill any chances o’ me taking this song seriously with the 1st line, “if there’s any bitches in this room”. His guest features don’t help: Obie Trice starts his verse with the Shakespearean lines, “I never woulda thought that I’d see you outta control / even though my penis was deep down in your hole”. This is immediately followed by Obie Trice being so desperate to find a rhyme with the poetic word, “hoes”, that he mangles the term “soulmates” into the awkward, “mates of soul”.

His verse is then followed with somehow e’en worse singing from Eminem, with his voice twisting highly in a particularly annoying way on the rhymes “mine” & “right”, but this time Em is accompanied by a woman with the most hilariously high-pitched voice in the world, as if this woman sucked a whole balloon o’ helium.

& then, in stark contrast to Em trying too hard to sing, we get Em barely e’en trying to rap, with many lines seeming to not e’en rhyme, which is kinda what he’s s’posed to be good @: the 1st 4 lines end with “before”, “truly are”, “daughters”, & “drawers” — &, no, e’en Em’s weird accent can’t contort those into rhymes.

I love how the 2nd chorus with its tragic singing is interrupted by Stat Quo laughing out, “ha ha, yeah right, bitch / spend some time on my dick”.

& the last verse has 50 Cent being terrible @ flirting with women, with such suave lines as “you have very nice lips”, but somehow getting the woman anyway.

Forget “Ass Like That”, “Big Weenie”, or “Rain Man”: o’ all the songs on this album, that this song exists is the most baffling — which is probably why nobody remembers or talks ’bout it. Eminem is the kind o’ rapper where him singing a serious song ’bout heartbreak is mo’ baffling than him singing a song ’bout jerkin’ it in a movie theater.

Grade: F

16. Mockingbird

This song is just as lazy as the rest, but because it’s ’bout his daughter fans eat it up. Eminem is less rapping than mumbling thruout the song, barely rhyming, — which, again, is kinda what he’s s’posed to be good @ — & the main beat is the most cliché nursery rhyme music. On the plus side, Em’s singing on the chorus is pretty all right, as opposed to the rest o’ this album. The final chorus with the intensity @ the end is high & above the best part o’ the song & the only time Eminem does something serious well on this whole album.

If anything, this song is the biggest wasted potential on this album &, really, the biggest casualty o’ Em’s drug-induced state: as far as I’m concerned, any song worth remembering on this album up to this point is only worth remembering ’cause it’s a drug-induced fever dream; this is the 1st song that would’ve benefited from being made by a sober mind & polished into a real song. Whereas most o’ the other songs are just random bullshit, this song’s lyrics are saying something, but are basically just typed out prose that needed to be revised into an actual song structure. O well. I guess @ the same time you could say this attempt @ serious self-reflection while under the grips o’ drugs is interesting in itself.

Grade: D

Music Video

The decision to use home videos certainly fits this song. Honestly, the footage is mo’ interesting than the song itself. Hope none o’ the people in this footage — if it’s real footage & not staged with actors — are too embarrassed by it now.

Grade: B

17. Crazy in Love

I feel like it’s blasphemy for Eminem to blend the music & chorus from 1 o’ the biggest hits from 1 o’ the greatest women-led rock bands, Heart, with more o’ his mumbling misogynist rants ’bout his bitch ex who he, ne’ertheless, is still in love with. Let’s face it: this is a fucking Theory of a Dead Man song, but rapped — it’s “divorced dad rap”. I don’t want to hear Eminem clumsily compare his toxic relationship with someone else — where he sweetly croons, “you let me beat the shit out of you before you beat the shit out of me” — with… ¿his relationship with Dre? ¿Are they gay lovers? ¿Eminem’s daughter, Alaina’s, relationship with Hailey, her ( nonbiological, yes ) sister? OK, I don’t e’en want to continue with this line o’ thought. People complain ’bout the goofy, dumb songs on this album, which were clearly muddled by the drugs, but I would say those were mo’ harmless & less embarrassing than when Em tries to talk ’bout his serious life problems & it gets muddled by the drugs. It’s like the difference ’tween being round a zany drunk who spews goofy conspiracy theories or just says whacked-out shit & being round a morose drunk who mumbles ’bout some tragedy that befell them in muddled nonsense: the latter isn’t funny; it’s just awkward & depressing. I don’t e’en feel like I should have the right to listen to this song — like I’ve stolen Eminem’s personal diary.

In any case, I’d much rather just listen to “Crazy on You” by just Heart themselves.

Grade: F

18. One Shot 2 Shot

¿Why is the “1” spelled out, but not the “2”? You know, people blame Eminem for being whacked out, ¿but where was the quality control from all the producers round him, who were presumably mo’ sober? ¿You’re telling me Paul Rosenberg complained ’bout outraging Michael Jackson, but didn’t notice this obvious blunder?

Anyway, this song is the riveting story o’ Eminem’s rap group, D12, being caught in the middle o’ a shootout narrated in the least interesting way possible, with repeatedly exclamations o’ the general variety o’, “¡Holy shit! ¡This is crazy!”, mixed with needless details o’ what street so & so is on. We ne’er e’en find out why this shootout happens & it ends anticlimactically on the very last line with Proof just shooting someone in the knee — ¡which wouldn’t e’en be fatal!

The beat on this song, while repetitive & bland, is actually 1 o’ the better 1s on this generally musically sterile album; but the chorus is just annoying & goofy. Eminem sounds like he’s in a Dr. Seuss book the way he childishly counts off the gunshots, as well as with goofy euphemistic lines like, “this is where the fun stops”, which is hurt further by the sing-songy bouncy music. This is like the least gangster song ’bout a shootout e’er.

Grade: D

19. Final Thought (Skit)

A nice climactic build-up. Honestly, the o’erarching story o’ Eminem going on stage with a gun hidden ’hind his back & ending his show by blowing his brains out is the most interesting part o’ this album.

Grade: A

20. Encore / Curtains Down

This is a fun song, & a good swan song to this album & to what we might call an entire era o’ Eminem’s music. It’s hands-down the best unironic song on this album; & yet it’s nowhere near the greatness o’ the surrealist lyricism o’ classics like “Role Model” or the force o’ the bitter sarcasm o’ gems like “Marshall Mathers” — or any song off The Marshall Mathers LP, for that matter. I will almost certainly forget e’ery generic gangster rap line on this song. ¿Wasn’t Eminem liked specifically ’cause he was an alternative from the generic gangster rappers who flooded the 2000s?

Grade: C

Conclusion

This album is a mess, with 1 thing consistent thruout: sloppiness & just throwing shit @ the wall & seeing what sticks. I will go to my grave insisting that the “worst” parts o’ the album — the goofiest — are the best in that they are a’least fascinatingly bad, while the rest is all forgettable & mediocre.

FInal Grade: D

Yes, this is a real album. It is, in fact, their 1st e’er album, an EP released 6 whole years before their big LP debut, Infest. Whereas that album was clearly inspired by Rage Against the Machine, this album sounds like it’s aping, o’ all bands, Primus, with that twangy slap bass. As a young fan who for some reason loved Papa Roach so much that I sought out any record I could, I was baffled when I listened to this & heard not the angsty, dark metal to which I was accustomed, but a band plucking a guitar & babbling ’bout aborting babies. Having widened my rock palate & with my greater understanding o’ the early 90s funk metal scene with surreal bands like Mr. Bugle, Red Hot Chili Peppers, & the aforementioned Primus, — as well as early Incubus, which as I mentioned in an earlier review, also surprised me by how different it was from their later softer sound — such surprise has evaporated.

But while my younger self was confused, my present self is pleased, for such an absurd album makes a perfect candidate for Nostalgic Novelty Noughties 90s Nu-Metal.

1. Coffee Thoughts

For some reason this is misspelled “Cofee Thoughts” on YouTube Music; but it’s spelled correctly on the album cover & e’erywhere else I looked, so I’m not blaming this on Papa Roach themselves for making this mistake, but their label — & the capitalist system o’ production — for presumably hiring an intern paid with “exposure“, who thus is not paid nearly well ’nough to care ’bout properly spelling the name o’ an ol’ obscure Papa Roach song that nobody else but me is listening to when dumping it onto YouTube for a few extra ad $s.

Anyway, this album, fittingly, starts with a song ’bout coffee, which is always the best part o’ waking up. I like how this song starts with ominous clanking riffs that almost sound like an alarm going off, only for the band to give up on that & start plucking their guitars wildly. This album is fascinating in that it demonstrates a band so young they haven’t learned the bare basics o’ song composition, with these “songs” sounding less like actual songs with melodies, rhythm, or themes, & mo’ just screwing round with instruments & babbling silly nonsense o’er it. I compared this to Primus, but actually paying closer attention makes me better appreciate how despite how crazy & seemingly random Primus are, they still actually composed songs with structure & melodies.

& yet I kinda prefer this song’s lyricism to Papa Roach’s usual fare. If anything, it’s mo’ baffling that a band that early on could start a song with lines like, “my coffee stain is turned down / i sit & watch it burn no longer”, which is a perfect balance o’ being surreal ’nough to not be clear what it means, but give ’nough information & imagery to inspire some kind o’ metaphor, only to later on write bland angst like, “I AM ON A BINGE / I WISH THINGS WOULD CHANGE / WISH THEY’D REARRANGE / I’M ON A BIIIINGE”. I mean, ¿where else can you hear someone describe the Folgers founder as “a roasting soldier” or have a chorus that starts with, “¡Here comes the coffee man!”.

My 1 complaint is that according to the lyrics on Genius.com, the end o’ the chorus says “It’ll clean out your ears”, when I always ( faintly, thru the production that is just as seeping with mud as the coffee they describe ) heard “it’ll clean out your innards”, which I think is a better line. In fact, I still think I’m the 1 who’s right: 1, I still hear “innards”; 2, “clean out your ears” makes no sense: coffee accelerates digestion; it doesn’t go anywhere near your ears, unless you’re drinking it wrong. @ the risk o’ creating a violent schism, I must proclaim Genius.com to be wrong.

Honestly, despite this song’s obvious lack o’ technical quality, it’s still a fun song with fun lyrics & fun funky slap bass.

Grade: ☕

2. Mama’s Dress

This song is ’bout a young man struggling gainst their deepest transvestite desires, with the chorus, where Coby Dick — Mr. Dick, if you’re nasty, you’ll recall — frantically shouts, “¡I WOULDN’T WEAR! ¿WHO WOULDN’T WEAR? ¡SHE DIDN’T WEAR… MAMA’S DRESS!”, which, like Hemingway, says so much in so li’l: note how ’mong the 1st 2 sentences the protagonist goes back & forth from proclaiming that he would ne’er wear a mother’s dress to asking why one wouldn’t want to wear a mother’s dress: ¿why in our modern age do men still enslave themselves to the gendered rituals o’ segregated clothing decades after women had already freed themselves to wear trousers & T-shirts? & as a proud transvestite myself, I resonate with this song — ’cept I wear cute plaid skirts, not lame-ass mothers gowns from the 50s, which is maybe the real reason the protagonist wouldn’t wear it.

But then in the 3rd sentence we stealthily see the male protagonist become a “she”, hinting that what seems to be a mere interest in women’s apparel may be a full-fledged questioning o’ the protagonist’s gender. Thank you all for listening to my LGBTQ+ feminist analysis o’ Papa Roach.

Also, “tampax cheese-whiz” is a crazy phrase I’d ne’er expect in a Papa Roach song.

Grade: 🏳️‍⚧️

3. Lenny’s

This is a fun song with a catchy chorus, but it’s surprisingly e’en less coherent than the previous songs — tho I do like how this song continues from the last song, with the protagonist shouting for “the gown”, which is presumably the mama’s dress. Outside o’ that, this song seems to bounce ’tween 2 different perspectives thruout: the protagonist — who apparently goes by the name “wants the combo”, if the line “me llamo wants the combo” is any indication — complaining ’bout the prices & threatening to go to this mysterious place only known as Lenny’s — ¿or is is Denny’s? — &… no, wait, I just realized it’s the person ordering telling the person they’re ordering from, “I’m gonna have to ask you to leave”, followed closely after with, “& yes I’d like to order”, e’en tho that’s backward. Ne’er mind: it’s just 1 person, just 1 crazy ’nough to reverse roles with the staff for an instant.

As any work o’ sublime art, the composer ne’er tells us what this “Lenny’s” place is or take place there; contrariwise, the place the protagonist is actually in is ne’er named. The listener is left to imagine it for themselves, for it is not a literal place, but a representation o’ heaven, o’ paradise, an escape from the burden o’ a reality where we are stuck in restaurants with o’erpriced food. Now that fast food places like McDonald’s are steeply raising their prices, this song is only mo’ relevant.

But while Lenny’s may be a protest gainst this unjust reality, the protagonist ne’er goes there, only dreaming o’ it. @ the end o’ the chorus, a voice asks, “¿why do trees have green leaves?”, 1 o’ the few to question the seemingly iron laws o’ reality. But that voice apparently realized how dangerous this kind o’ rebellion is, for immediately after, they say, “i don’t know why, but i’ll eat my peas, yeah”, sitting back down & acquiescing to the reality outside o’ this mystical Lenny’s they feel powerless to fight.

Grade: ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

4. Lulu Espidachi

I love how Jacoby Shaddix’s — or “Jacoby Shaddox”, as it is weirdly misspelled on the album cover — singing is so incoherent that e’en Genius.com gave up trying to transcribe it @ a few parts, just leaving question marks — leaving us “findin’ nothin’ but questions & devils”, as Coby had proclaimed in “Last Resort”. Looking up “Espidachi” only shows results revolving round this obscure song, so I’m assuming it’s a surname Papa Roach made up. I believe this song is ’bout an ol’ woman knocking on the protagonist’s door & pestering him asking if he’d like to buy some bananas, which irritates the protagonist & leads him to wonder if “it’s time to buy that sign” — presumably a “no solicitors” sign, a wry social commentary on how door-to-door salesmen only seem to succeed @ encouraging the sales of other wares from somewhere else to deal with them.

But if we mistake this song as a simple relatable story ’bout the travails o’ the e’eryman dealing with annoying solicitors, we would miss a vital piece o’ the puzzle o’ this album’s arc: for subtly slipped into the middle o’ this song is the reveal that the protagonist’s anxiety comes not from having to deal with a salesperson, but being reminded o’ her gender dysphoria by having these phallic bananas shoved into her face, leading her to ask the seemingly out-o’-nowhere question, “¿what do i look like? ¿a freakin’ hermaphrodite?”. Hidden within this mask o’ a silly tale ’bout annoying solicitors is the real story o’ a trans woman’s gender dysphoria leading to social alienation.

Grade: 🪧

5. Cheez-Z-Fux

& yet our protagonist forces herself into the public & tries to drown out her anxieties with red hot capitalist consumption by going to the club. Here we see that our lesbian trans woman’s gender dysphoria has grown to an outright disgust with all things male, with her view o’ the feminine “butterfly colors” seemingly ruined when she next sees what is mo’ an absurd caricature o’ a man:

he’s got gold chains & hair chest
he’s making me sick in his saturday night best

Instead, she turns her attention to a woman she calls “sweetcakes”, on whom she tries corny, cliché pickup lines, like asking her her sign & telling her she was “made in heaven”. Near the end, as if parallel to the beginning description o’ the man who made her sick, we see a much different description o’ this woman:

then he saw the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen:
that wide-brimmed hat, that fake pink fur coat,
& those fishnet stockings

& then @ the end the protagonist’s feeling o’ being alone are evaporated when it is revealed to her that this woman is a pimp just like her, making her realize that her newfound womanhood would not interfere with her career.

Grade:

6. I Love Babies

This is the song I mainly remember: an edgy song whose chorus goes, “a-bort-a a-bort-a a-bort-a a-bort-a, NO MORE BABIES”, the “abort” part sung with all the eloquence o’ a braying goat. I won’t e’en pretend to know what the rest o’ this song is ’bout, specially the line, “call me a little jew, me & you, a cup or 2”. Since the protagonist is talking ’bout masturbating, my best guess is it’s a riff on circumcision. What I do know is that the line, “gotta like your dick, gotta like your dick, gotta like your dick”, is the protagonist struggling with her gender mo’.

Wait, no… No, this song isn’t an edgy song ’bout aborting all babies: it’s just ’bout masturbation, with the “spilled seed”, to speak Biblically, being like aborted babies. Not gonna lie: the edgy song ’bout abortion just being a lame metaphor for jerking off is very disappointing, like discovering that someone you once looked up to wasn’t as great as you thought they were. I guess that’s not unlike my general experience o’ growing out o’ Papa Roach & sharpening my palate on mo’ artistic, cerebral music outside the mainstream, like Swans or Breaking Benjamin.

Grade: 😔

7. Dendrilopis

I think this is s’posed to be a parody o’ early Beastie Boys, with 3 boy voices rap-shouting o’er each other o’er cheap beats — very different from the rest o’ this album. I have no idea why this is here — but then I could say that ’bout e’erything on this album. Searching “dendrilopis” just gives results for this song, so it’s ’nother word Papa Roach made up. I’m guessing it’s a mishmash o’ dendrite, which take in senses to nerves; tendril, a plant appendage; & metropolis. So it’s ’bout aroused wood cock, just like the lyrics, talking ’bout woodpeckers. Truly Mr. Coby Dick has lived up to his rap name on this album. Perhaps by this point our protagonist has learned to love her womanhood & having a penis — a “gock”, as the hip kids now say. Truly this album was ahead o’ its time — well, ’cept for the weak parody to 80s Beastie Boys: that’s aged ’bout as well as that time 1 o’ the Ramones tried to rap.

Grade: 🪵

Conclusion

This is 1 o’ those albums where taking a closer examination was a bad idea. Yes, I am still bummed out ’bout “I Love Babies”. Some music was meant to just be a vibe, as the hip kids now say, & not be delved into too deeply for risk o’ learning o’ things that may sour the experience; & the band who wrote such lyrics as, “¿what’s the deal, girl? / tearing up each other’s world / we should be in harmony, boy & girl”, is a prime example. O well: a’least we got to experience a beautiful tale ’bout a trans woman’s journey thru gender dyphoria that I didn’t completely make up in a desperate attempt to make sense o’ nonsense gibberish lyrics. Also, “Coffee Thoughts” & “Lenny’s” are legit bops.

Final Grade: 🥔🎄

¿Would you believe me if I said that St. Anger was the 1st Metallica album I’d e’er listened to. I liked it @ the time, — & still do — but I do remember thinking to myself while listening to it, { ¿This is the legendary Metallica? }. It wouldn’t be till I heard “Fade to Black” on the radio that I understood why this band was respected. Still, while obviously not as good as classics like Ride the Lightning, Master of Puppets, or their self-titled “Black Album”, St. Anger had potential, especially as the 1st album wherein they returned to metal — albeit, a nu-metal-like sound — after their weird hard rock detour in the 90s; & I would still say it’s better than Reload, e’en if “Fuel” & “The Memory Remains” ( a’least the latter’s music video, where James Hetfield keeps trying to chew the screen off, he’s mugging so much ) are themselves cheesy classics.

St. Anger had a punk, grungy, low-fi, garage rock sound, amplified by those “trash can lid” drums, that could have worked if they didn’t make these songs have the same lengths as their mo’ prog-metal predecessors from the 80s. Prog metal can have songs 8 minutes long ’cause they have many compositional variations; St. Anger doesn’t &, in tune with most nu-metal, lacked guitar solos, so its songs sounded repetitive. There’s a reason punk bands usually have short songs; & there’s a reason why fan remixes that try to improve this album usually shorten the songs.

Still, e’en with these flaws there’s 1 thing St. Anger has that no other Metallica album has to the same degree: its sheer level o’ silly cheese; & that is what we look for in Nostalgic Novelty Noughties Nu-Metal.

1. Frantic

This is 1 o’ the few songs the band still plays @ live shows & is still proud o’; luckily, that doesn’t mean it loses any cheesy charm, with that classic introduction to Lars Ulrich’s iconic trash can lid drums & then James Hetfield singing in the monotone voice o’ a gruff robot, “IF I COULD HAVE MY WASTED DAYS BACK… WOULD I USE THEM… TO… GET BACK… ON… TRACK”, followed by a refrain where he repeats in a goblin voice, “MY LIFESTYLE… DETERMINES MY DEATHSTYLE”, & then later, “FRANTIC TICK, TICK, TICK, TICK, TICK, ¡TOCK!”, all so hammily sung.

Despite how cheesy this song is, I do have to note that the chorus, where Hetfield sings in a much smoother voice, while jazzy guitar riffs play, does sound genuinely nice; & it’s not as if the silly parts o’ this song don’t fit the desperate, insane vibe this song’s going for, representing the sentiments o’ a man who thinks his end is coming @ any moment.

Grade: S

Music Video

¿Could one ask for anything mo’ from this music video? It’s a bunch o’ flashing images o’ someone crashing their car into shit in some suburban wasteland; the band jamming in front o’ scraggly, leafless boughs on what looks like a gray day in late autumn / winter ( perfect for the time I’m publishing this review ); some bearded guy drinking many shots o’ alcohol, & a close up o’ an analog clock ticking down the tick-tocks Hetfield keeps shouting ’bout to remind you that, yes, this is a song ’bout time.

Grade: ⏱️

2. St. Anger

Another classic, with such repeatable cheesy lines as the opening, “St. Anger round my neck / He never gets respect” & “I’M MADLY IN ANGER WITH YOU”. Tho, I think the funniest are the following:

I feel my world shake
like an earthquake

Those are literally synonyms: yes, your world shaking feels like the earth quaking ’cause your world is earth & shaking is quaking. That’s like singing the line, “I feel cold / like sensing something chilly”.

As iconic as this song is with its memorable lines & riffs, it is a victim o’ the problem I mentioned in the intro o’ being too long & repetitive. Also, you have outright boring parts, like the bridge, with boring basic playing & lines that feel rhythmless, repetitive, off-key, & unmemorable.

Grade: B

Music Video

This music video shows Metallica being such badasses as to play before a prison e’en after the security warns them that they ain’t doin’ shit if the inmates grab 1 o’ them & tries using them as a hostage, while also showing mo’ ’bout the lives o’ 4 inmates, which I guess is meant to humanize them — tho these scenes are so brief, it feels very vague. It’s a cool idea & I guess it fits with the theme o’ the inmates having anger managements issues that led them to prison.

Grade: B

3. Some Kind of Monster

This song starts with another iconic riff, 1st starting muffled & low, then breaking out in full with drums, & then adding jazzy variations on top.

Unfortunately, the lyrics aren’t nearly as memorable: the verses are just a stream o’ “This is the [noun] that [verb] you [modifier]”, while the noun asks, “¿Are we the people… SOME KIND OF MONSTEEEERRRR”. See, it’s saying something ’bout human nature, or something. I do kind o’ like the different ways Hetfield sings speaks the verse lines, but not so much the chorus, where he sometimes says “weeee the peopleeeee” with voice cracks. The song does end with some daemonic chant o’, “OMINOUS, I’M IN US”, which is pretty fun.

Then, if we the listeners, weren’t laughing yet, right @ the end the music suddenly breaks down to some goofy, squeaky riff while Ulrich just randomly bangs his drums. I have no idea why.

Grade: B

Music Video

This song’s music video is basically a trailer for their documentary named after this very song. It seems to reframe the song as being ’bout Metallica’s legacy & how they struggle to maintain it… which only makes the “¿Are we the people…?” bit all the mo’ jarring & ill-fitting. O well: the scenes o’ the band silently berating Ulrich’s experimental drumming is funny if you saw the scene in the movie.

Grade: B

4. Dirty Window

An underrated gem. ’Bove a stanky downtuned riff ( ¿have I mentioned how much I love downtuned guitars? ) the 1st verse ends with the amazing line in falsetto, “¡This house is cleeean, babe; this house is cleeean!”; & then above tribal thumping Hetfield slowly grunts out, “I. LOOK. OUT. MY. WINDOW. &. SEE. WHAT’S. GONE. WRONG… COURT. IS. IN. SESSION. &. I… SLAM… MY… GA-VEL… DOWN…”; then we get this jazzy riff with some clickity drum petals while Hetfield croons out & the smarmiest way, “I’m judgin’, I’m jury, & I’m executioner too”, just before the thumping drums come back & Hetfield just starts shouting out random words that end with “or”… ’Cept he apparently couldn’t think o’ too many words, since he had to repeat a few multiple times:

PROJECTOR. PROTECTOR.
REJECTOR. INFECTOR.
PROJECTOR. REJECTOR.
INFECTOR, INJECTOR, DEFECTOR, REJECTOR…

Then the song ends with clones o’ Hetfield chanting in tandem, “I… I…” while Hetfield, his voice cracking again, talks ’bout drinking from the “cup of denial” & “judging the world from my throne”.

This song is clearly ’bout judgmental hypocrites who put themselves ’bove others, but with much mo’, um, colorful way o’ expressing this common idea, most notable the metaphor on which this song is titled, “this window clean inside, dirty on the out” ( Hetfield’s performance for that line is genuinely great ). But according to Genius, this song is ’bout Hetfield’s alcoholism &… either how he thinks he’s healthy now that he’s sober, but people can still see him as scarred by his alcoholism, or that he’s deluded ’bout being sober @ all, still drinking from that “cup of denial”. That’s certainly a different way o’ thinking ’bout the common problem o’ alcoholism — so much so that I ne’er considered this song might be ’bout alcoholism, e’en tho I knew Hetfield’s angst o’er his struggle to get clean before & during the making o’ this album heavily inspired this album’s production for years. I’m going to admit, unless Hetfield himself said this song was ’bout his struggles with alcoholism, I’m skeptical & think this might be fans assuming the context they know the most was ’hind this album is ’hind e’ery song, like how people assume e’ery Linkin Park song is ’bout suicide after Chester Benington’s suicide. I don’t remember him saying so in the documentary, where they talked ’bout the writing o’ various songs ( I don’t remember them talking ’bout the writing o’ this song @ all, actually ).

Grade: A

5. Invisible Kid

Most people seem to think this is the worst song on this album, & possibly Metallica’s worst song e’er, & I can see why: it is hilariously inane, starting with these amazing lines, sung with complete hammitude:

INVISIBLE KID, NEVER SEEN WHAT HE DID
GOT STUCK WHERE HE HID, FALLING THRU THE GRID

Then, after 2 full verses o’ these grunted lines, Hetfield sings in a soulful voice, “i hide inside, i hurt inside, i hide inside, but i’ll show you…”, then in a ghostly voice, sings the chorus, saying the opposite, repeatedly saying he’s OK… & then the part just after has Hetfield grunt out, “OPEN YOUR HEART, I’M BEATING RIGHT HERE / OPEN YOUR MIND, I’M BEING RIGHT HERE”, followed by an e’en deeper voice grunting, “RIGHT NOW”. ’Hind all o’ these mood swings are the same repetitive drum clanging & chugging riffs.

Then we get to the bridge, where Hetfield, singing in he campiest way I think he’s e’er sung in his life, goes, “¡Oooooo! ¡What a goo-ood boy you are!”, & mo’, with each “¡Oooooo!” somehow getting e’en hammier. It is amazing. If you can’t get enjoyment from this, you have no soul.

It’s e’en funnier when you realize this song is just a laughably bad version o’ “The Unforgiven”, both having the same theme o’ a misunderstood child.

Grade: 👻🧒

6. My World

This song starts with 40 seconds o’ generic riffing before Hetfield out o’ nowhere cries out, “THE MOTHAFUCKAS GOT IN MY HEEAAAD”. After 1 mo’ line, we already get the prechorus, where Hetfield & his clones keep insisting, “It’s my wooorld… now”. If you’re being possessed by “motherfuckers” who are trying to make [you] someone else instead”, ¿is it really your world?

If that wasn’t silly, just listen to the bridge. Hetfield says in a comically deep, quiet voice, while o’erannunciating & pausing after nearly e’ery word, “not… ONly… do I NOT… know… the… answer…”, then starts shouting out, “¡I… DON’T… EVEN KNOW… WHAT… THE… QUESTION IS!”. Then, before the listener has time to adjust to whate’er the hell that was, Hetfield suddenly starts singing a different song, crying out in a high-pitched voice, “Gaaaaawd, it feels… like it only rains on meeee…”, repeated multiple times, sounding increasingly desperate each time & joined by his clones in the background… & then he goes back to the “not… ONly… do I NOT… know… the… answer…” part, only to end with a “¡Sucka!”, before chanting repeatedly, “Out of my head”, & then, “enough’s enough’s enough’s…” in an increasingly frantic voice.

I have a feeling “it’s my world now” is s’posed to be ironic &, in fact, the protagonist’s mental world is not in his control whatsoe’er & he is only trying desperately to insist it is.

Genius doesn’t e’en try to explain this song beyond saying that it hasn’t been played live e’er — presumably ’cause they’d bring on the straitjackets if they saw Hetfield singing these lines in person.

While this song has some o’ Metallica’s least-inspired music so far, I do like the way the riffs drone out, leaving the deep drumbeats & bass to shine thru, during the middle section’s chorus o’ Hetfield saying, “It’s my world, you can’t have it”.

Grade: fucking insane

7. Shoot Me Again

We have a verse where Hetfield wails spectrally, “I… won’t go away…”, followed by him in a deep voice shouting, “¡WITH A BULLET IN MAH BACK!” & a prechorus where he says in a deep but quiet cowboy voice, “SHOOT ME AGAIN, I AIN’T DEAD YET”. Later on he keeps repeating his demand to “SHOOT ME AGAIN” in an increasingly frantic tone. Then in the bridge he starts sputtering out nonsense:

WAKE THE SLEEPING GIANT, WAKE THE BEAST
WAKE THE SLEEPING DOG, NO, LET HIM SLEEP

If this were any other album, this would be its most deranged song; but this song had the misfortune o’ coming after “My World”. I do think this song sounds a bit better, with the deeper bass & drums & he haunting droning high riffs during the verses. Honestly, I think the guitar work on this album is a bit underrated: Kirk Hammett seems to be compensating for not being allowed to compose solos, like he would on classic albums, by experimenting with different tones.

Normally I would refuse to take seriously Genius’s claim that this song is ’bout Metallica’s angst @ the fucking Napster situation o’ all things. The lyrics make no hint to that subject & are just vague expressions o’ self-loathing. I would believe this song to be ’bout Hetfield’s alcoholism before that. Howe’er, if you watch the Some Kind of Monster documentary, it heavily implies this song is in fact inspired by Lars Ulrich’s angst o’er the backlash to the situation & how he for some reason thought edgy kids making exquisite flash animations making fun o’ them might nullify e’erything they’d done.

Also, this is not related to this song, but I want to also note that said documentary also has, I shit you not, a very dramatic scene where Ulrich feels torn o’er what was clearly his wife’s idea to sell his modern art paintings for millions, with him acting as if he was responsible for these paintings by… admiring them, not artists like Basquiat. That’s not e’en 1st-world problems: that’s 1% problems.

Grade: B

8. Sweet Amber

This 1 seems to be a fan favorite, & for good reason: those jazzy guitar twinkles @ the beginning followed by he grungy riffs, twanging bass notes, & thumping trash can drums are excellent, followed by Hetfield’s catchy sarcastic crooning ’bout the corruption o’ the music industry, making them do promos for radio stations to get their songs played, & Hetfield’s addiction to “sweet amber” — alcohol, to which he serenades in the chorus, saying li’l mo’ than, “Ooo, Sweet Amber… ¿how sweet are you?”.

This song’s much better composed: “Wash your back so you won’t stab mine / get in bed with your own kind” are legitimately good lyrics, — memorable but make perfect sense — as are, “she holds my hand… & I lie to get a smile” & the ironic childlike lyrics in the 2nd verse, using creative imagery o’ catching rabbits & fetching sticks to represent drug addiction, with “rolls me over until I’m sick” relating to both a playful dog & a hangover. I’m honestly kind o’ glad we got to a legitimately good song @ this point, as I was fearful after “Shoot Me Again” that we’d get too many similarly insane songs back to back & it would lose its luster.

Grade: A

9. The Unnamed Feeling

OK, but this is actually the legitimately best song on this album, with that opening noisy riff followed by such dark basslines. After work from my 1st job as a “liquor pusher” for an airplane catering company, a nightshift job where I would end my shift from 12 to 4 AM, when I would walk home thru a gray tunnel — the same tunnel I used to have as this website’s hero image, but changed, since ’twas a low-quality photo from my grandma’s ol’ cheap camera — I would love playing this song, as it perfectly fit the mood o’ an oily, dark sewerlike tunnel.

The singing is also great. Whereas the flaws in Hetfield’s attempts to sing beyond the limits to which he kept himself in earlier records generally led to great bathos in earlier songs, here his voice creaking from singing too high & the lack o’ rhythm in the verses gives a genuinely unnerving tone, especially o’er the noisy, chaotic riffs, especially followed by the desperate whispers repeating, “it comes alive, it comes alive… it comes alive & I die a little more…”, only to be followed by singing in a calm, tired tone ’bout “the unnamed feeling” that names this song while soft but low & dark notes play, only to then abruptly jump into a miserable-sounding shout as he sings the last line, “takes me away…”. E’en the bridge, where he awkwardly sings, “Get the FUCK out of here… I just wanna get the FUCK away from me”, which looks like it should be goofy, but sounds so miserable that it can’t help but sound harrowing, especially followed by just ranting ’bout the negative ways he feels — “I rage, I glaze [ OK, that sounds kinda goofy nowadays, given how we now use the word “glaze” ], I hurt, I hate”, followed by the guitarist & drummer going apeshit.

Tho there are many classic Metallica songs with much mo’ interesting & memorable musical compositions than this, I’d go far ’nough to say that this song might have Hetfield’s best work as a singer ( tho “Welcome Home ( Sanitarium )” & their best song o’erall, “Fade to Black”, are admittedly strong competition ).

Grade: S

Music Video

Unfortunately, I would say the music video is the weakest for this album, with the band jamming in a dingy ol’ room like so many 2000s rock bands & a bunch o’ scattered clips o’ people expressing anxiety in very generic, cartoonish ways while psychologic terms in ol’ fashioned fonts fade in & out. It’s not exaggerated ’nough to be funny & obviously not genuinely well done & undermines the much mo’ specific & genuinely harrowing song.

Grade: D

10. Purify

In contrast to the previous song, which was genuinely good, & all the earlier awesomely bad songs, this song is just bad in an annoying way, especially the horrendous chorus where Hetfield repeats in an ear-piercing voice, “¡PUUUURIIIIFYYYYYYYY!”. & the music just sounds like an inferior bootleg o’ the main riff ’hind “Dirty Window”.

The lyrics are just as genuinely bad, falling into the generic, vague language o’ pain that I criticized mediocre nu-metal bands like Drowning Pool o’ employing before, & which this album had been thankfully bereft o’ till now. The closest I could find is the line, “I ain’t dancing with your skeletons”, which isn’t that funny, & is sang in a bland way.

So, in short, this song is only e’er boring or annoying & definitely doesn’t feel like it received the same effort as any other song on this album. The best I can say ’bout it is that I can see the metaphor o’ “tearing down” & “acid wash” — a painful, destructive form o’ cleaning — working well for the pain o’ cleaning oneself up o’ alcoholism, but this song as it is doesn’t have the lyrics, the music, or the singing to do it justice.

Grade: D

11. All Within My Hands

I don’t know if this was the last song recorded or not, but e’en mo’ than all the other songs on this album, this sounds like the band gave up on making a coherent song & the musicians just played riffs & beats while Hetfield ranted & sang completely different songs 1 after the other, not really concerned with being catchy or enjoyable or writing anything deep, just letting out his anger by just saying “hate”, & “die”, & “kill” a lot. This especially applies to the end, where Hammett is just playing basic doom strokes, Ulrich is just bashing his drums, & Hetfield is literally shouting “kill” repeatedly, followed by random feedback & noise. This album could not have a mo’ fitting conclusion.

Grade: ?

Conclusion

I think the biggest injustice this album has received is not so much that people don’t think it’s great in any traditional sense o’ appreciating music, but that tho people acknowledge that this album was necessary for Metallica’s members to let out their frustrations so they could go on to make traditionally good albums like Death Magnetic later on, they don’t acknowledge the curious affect those frustrations have on this album’s sound itself. It is 1 o’ those honest artistic messes that in some ways is mo’ interesting than some o’ the cleaned up albums where the band put mo’ stock into what compositions the audience might find interesting than just letting out their frustrations on the canvas. Death Magnetic is certainly better on a technical level: ¿but do I remember as much ’bout it? I can repeat a few catchy choruses, like “Cyanide, fucking genocide…” or hum the catchier riffs from songs like “All Nightmare Long” ( also, the weird pirate song, “The Unforgiven III”, is underrated ); but nothing clings to me like the raw noise o’ “The Unnamed Feeling” or the surreal lyrics o’ “Dirty Window” or “My World”. “THE MOTHAFUCKAS GOT IN MY HEEAAAD”, indeed.

Final Grade: It is what it is

If I had to describe Disturbed’s 4th studio album, Indestructible, in a short sentence, I would call it, “A mo’ mainstream-friendly The Sickness that aged better”: we still have the spoopy sound & subject matter & theatrics, but with mo’ professional musicianship & production, fewer awkward elements like the infamous parental abuse crashout during the bridge o’ “Down with the Sickness”, & fewer cringe nu-metal elements that haven’t aged well. Unfortunately, that makes it less interesting & weird than The Sickness; but it is mo’ consistent.

It is also a better representation o’ Disturbed’s actual sound: while they would switch up sounds a bit thru their 1st 4 albums, the albums following Indestructible would mostly stick to its mainstream theatrical spoopy sound, with mo’ shitty electronic o’erproduction — they called it the “Imagine Dragons Effect” — & sappier melodies later on, especially after the abomination that was their cover o’ “The Sound of Silence”, to diminishing returns, unfortunately.

1. Indestructible

This album starts with some fine cheese with this song that is either trying to compare the band’s success to indestructible masters of war or trying to butter up military folk, a big demographic o’ theirs, so I hear. Either way, the way they describe war sounds mo’ like a video game for preteens rather than the actual horrors o’ war. & yet this song’s lyrics are so infectious, the way Draiman scat-sings, “INDESTRUCTIBLE / DETERMINATION THAT IS INCORRUPTIBLE”.

Grade: A

Music Video

I don’t e’en know what’s going on in this music video: it starts with Draiman’s bald head covering half the screen greenscreened o’er an explosion in the corner followed by the band greenscreened o’er a wasteland from a movie set while random scenes o’ cave men, tribes men, samurai, & modern soldiers in camouflage run around & shout, but don’t do anything else. I guess this is meant to show how humanity has been involved in wars since their beginning. That’s deep bro. Also deep is comparing a line from this song to a famous quote from Julius Caesar @ the beginning.

Grade: C

2. Inside the Fire

OK, but this song is e’en better than “Indestructible”, with its verses scat-sung so quickly that most people have no idea what Draiman is saying. Joke’s on them: e’en if they could hear what he was saying, they’d be scratching their heads @ such lines as, “Devon, 1 of 11”. ¿Who are the other 10? We’ll ne’er know. ¿Why does this character have a weird name like Devon? So Draiman could rhyme it in the line, “Devon won’t go to heaven”. See, this song is ’bout how the protagonist’s girlfriend has committed suicide & how the protagonist needs to make a deal with the devil & give his soul to Satan, too, so he can join her in hell. A perfect Halloween spooky song for a Halloween spooky band like Disturbed, made e’en better by the cheesy laugh @ the end. E’en mo’ than “Indestructible”, this song’s chorus is unbearably catchy, especially with its opening line, “Give your soul to me for eternity”, as are, ’course, the equally corny verses.

Weirdly, despite how silly this song is, it’s apparently inspired by someone Draiman actually knew who committed suicide after he broke up with her. I always thought ’twas weird that Draiman would want to rejoin someone he broke up with, but according to Genius.com, who ne’er lie, he only broke up with her ’cause she was threatening him ’cause she was a junky & he thought the devil was actually talking to him. That reminds me o’ when my dad told me as a kid that he thought the devil possessed him when he woke up in the morn, causing him to bonk his head gainst the top o’ his bed. Also, I’m amused by the implications that his parents wouldn’t approve o’ his relationship, — whether ’cause she’s a junky or a dirty gentile, we’ll ne’er know — but would be less aghast @ him shooting heroin.

Fun fact: near after this single joined the radiowaves round 2007, an afternoon show that played on Seattle’s main buttrock station, the cleverly named “99.9 The Rock” — said afternoon show, I shit you not, was named “The Men’s Room” & had the kind o’ boomer bro comedy you’d expect with that name, & I think is still on in this year of our Luigi 2025 — made a parody o’ this song where they changed the lyrics to be ’bout 7-11 stores & apparently played that song for all the band members sans David Draiman during an interview to their amusement. Tragically, I could not find any capture o’ this anywhere online, so it will have to remain a figment o’ my teenaged memory.

Grade: S

Music Video

Sigh. Man, the fact that a real-world suicide was ’hind this song really puts a bummer on how hilarious this music video is. When Draiman sees his girlfriend hanging from the ceiling, he shouts, “¡NO!”, like in a Looney Tunes cartoon. ¿How am I not s’posed to laugh @ that? If that’s the devil’s temptation, he’s good @ his job & I am not strong ’nough to avoid the flames o’ damnation.

The rest o’ the music video doesn’t help: after laughing… for some reason… he hugs his dead girlfriends legs for, like, half a minute while making exaggerated facial expressions & then cuts her down, puts her in a bath, & starts washing her. In addition to the nice suicide warning @ the beginning o’ the music video, maybe we should have a warning not to tamper with the body & to call 911 immediately afterward to avoid getting in trouble with the law & looking suspicious. Afterward, our protagonist finds a convenient machine gun just hanging on the wall — another useful warning for the audience: don’t leave guns, especially big-ass machine guns, just hanging on the wall; lock that shit up — as a blood-smeared version o’ his girlfriend tempts him to just do it. He ends up putting the gun in his mouth, but then we jump to him screaming while wrapped up in a straitjacket in a white padded room. Yes, that’s what this music video will do to you.

Grade: 😈

3. Deceiver

I really like the melodies in this song, especially the chorus, but always found the final line o’ the chorus, “you’ve mastered the art o’ deceiving me now”, really corny & awkward. Like, yeah, someone who lied to you did in fact do a great job o’ deceiving you: that’s the definition o’ “deceiving”. I could say something similar ’bout the bridge: I like the goblin voice Draiman puts on, ¿but what is this ’bout a “little puppet” you keep asking to not die? Those lines sound like they came straight from a different song.

Grade: B

4. The Night

This song is different from most Disturbed songs in that, if anything, it’s the music, particularly the opening guitar riffs, that are nice, while this song doesn’t have Draiman’s best vocals, which sound strained & screechy. This is a song that would really benefit from smoother, smokier vocals, like the kind Adam Gontier from Three Days Grace had. Just imagine this song sung by him — ¡dare tell me I’m not cooking with this recipe! Also with lyrics like these —

¿are you gonna deny the savior
in front of your eyes?
stare into the night

— this sounds like yet another nu-metal ✝-rock band, like Skillet. Tell me those don’t sound like lyrics Skillet would write — ¡dare tell me I’m not cooking with this recipe! I, for 1, am not feeling particularly disturbed by this song.

Grade: C

Music Video

Also, the music video sucks — apparently so much that Disturbed doesn’t have it on their official channel, for some reason. It’s just the band playing in a garage while Draiman sits in front o’ a car & makes funny faces. Since we ne’er see outside, we don’t e’en know if it’s night time.

5. Perfect Insanity

¡Hell yeah! ¡Now here’s a Disturbed song! Those opening distorted drums; the “¡AH AH AH AH AH OW!”; & the cartoonishly sinister verses; the growling, pleading pre-chorus repeating, “please let me out…”; & the batshit chorus where Draiman switches erratically from shouting & singing melodically, singing slowly & methodically & quicking scatting ( no, not the poop kind ). & then we have the breakdown @ the bridge where Draiman monologues insane ramblings from the back o’ his throat. If this isn’t a spoopy Muertoween song, I don’t know what is.

Apparently this song was originally written before The Sickness, & there exists an earlier 1998 demo version on YouTube when Draiman still had hair. It’s crazy to hear Disturbed sounding mo’ like an early 90s metal band — it has a Megadeth-like sound that is strikingly lacking from their 2000s work. Honestly, I think I might prefer this earlier version — I certainly appreciate the mo’ prominent bassline, bass being the most common casualty o’ o’erproduction.

Grade: 🎃

6. Haunted

Another great spoopy song, with its opening sounds o’ thunder & rain, the bell tolls, whate’er that weird beeping is @ the beginning, & the slowly building drums & riffs, followed by Draiman raspily ranting @ how vaguely mean the world is like the Joker, while singing in a mo’ melancholy & melodic lament during the chorus how “haunted” he is by said world, till the bridge, where the music slows down again & Draiman rants in a deep, throaty voice. Like pulp horror fiction, this song is full o’ imagery-laden spoopy language, talking ’bout “subhuman parasites thrown into a feeding frenzy with the smell of fresh blood”. It’s not particularly original, but neither is pulp horror fiction.

Grade: 🦇

7. Enough

¿What is this sappy shit? The last thing I want to hear from growly monster David Draiman is him in falsetto crying, “when your soul is frozen, ¿is that enough?”. I mean, I am feeling disturbed by this song, but not for the reasons I should. I guess I kinda like the bridge where he puts on this weird imp voice & shouts, “¿HAVEN’T THEY SUFFERED ENOUGH?”, but it’s not good ’nough to make up for the whiny chorus.

“Enough” is written to be a message to the world leaders who partake in war. Showing them all the pain they’ve caused and asking them; “Isn’t death alone a good enough reason to stop all of this conflict?”

Genius

I don’t know what to laugh @ mo’: the idea o’ pretending that the world leaders are going to take advice from a nu-metal band o’ all people or the irony o’ this coming from the guy who would later infamously sign missiles attacking Gaza.

Grade: D

8. The Curse

That’s better. This has a pretty fun opening theme, a pretty fun guitar solo, & has pretty catchy verses — tho I feel the chorus is just kinda average. It’s pretty OK for a deep cut.

Grade: B

9. Torn

In contrast, this song has average verses, but I really like the dragged-out dour melody o’ the chorus. The music might be some o’ the least interesting on this album so far: e’en the guitar solo just sounds like squeaky noodling rather than any kind o’ coherent composition.

Grade: B

10. Criminal

I can remember that these last few tracks are when I would start to lose attention as a teen, as I remember these tracks far less.

& yet, this is possibly the weirdest song on this album, musically & lyrically: this song constantly drops its title, “criminal”, but the “criminal” in question is… ¿the suffering the protagonist feels? & this song is mo’ a generic nu-metal “I want to commit suicide” song. Man, the people who made fun o’ Linkin Park’s “Crawling” — which, mind you, was ’bout drug addiction, not suicidal ideation; but that’s irrelevant — must’ve ne’er listened to other nu-metal songs, ’cause that song’s lyrics seem good in comparison. It seems like the protagonist is implying that it’s criminal that such a mean world imprisons him in keeping him alive, which, granted, isn’t an unheard o’ thought from suicidal people, but despite the word “criminal” just thrown in many times, the lyrics don’t do much to make the connection themselves.

Also, the clinical way the protagonist calls committing suicide, “quickening my end”, is also weird, not unlike the monotone way Jacoby Shaddix described the protagonist’s suicidal ideation in “Last Resort”, another poorly written nu-metal suicide song.

& then you get these goofy-ass lyrics repeated many times in the bridge:

¿you wanna know?
¿you want a name?
¿you want to call me motherfucker?

Like, ¿what does that e’en mean? ¿Why would anyone want to call you “motherfucker”? — Well, other than the aforementioned signing your name on missiles; but that came years after, & I’m hoping Draiman wasn’t planning on doing that for o’er a decade, thinking to himself when he saw the footage on October 7, { Now is finally the time I fulfill what I planned on that deepcut 15 years ago… }.

The music is also odd, starting with a peculiar lethargy for such subject matter, sounding mo’ like it’s going to introduce a spooky game show. ( I should also add that Draiman barks, “¡GET IT! ¡HUH! ¡HUH!”, @ the beginning, which doesn’t help ). & then @ the beginning o’ the 1st verse there’s a breakdown where, I shit you not, it sounds like there’s electronic beatboxing. Sadly, the rest o’ the song’s music is just generic riffs & drum beats that I have already forgotten, despite hearing this song probably dozens o’ times since my youth.

Having said that, I do find the sound o’ the chorus quite catchy, with its speeding & slowing rhythm.

“Criminal” is a song about the vicious and tormenting baggage a person can carry, and must live with it forever.
How a bad relationship can bring out the worst of you, making you do things you shouldn’t. Yet you can’t free yourself from this person, but rather contemplate ending your own life to be rid of him/her.

Genius

I think some o’ these editors are just making shit up & projecting their own romantic angst. Nowhere in this song’s lyrics is there any mention o’ a bad relationship; if anything, the protagonist seems to blame the vague world on his angst.

Grade: C

11. Divide

( Laughs ). Holy shit, I vaguely remember finding this song kinda catchy since I was young, but only now ’pon closer inspection have I realized how goofy this song is. It’s comparable to their underrated magnum opus, “Droppin’ Plates”, in how Draiman scat-sings in a way that sort o’ sounds like rapping & is trying so hard to sound tough, while sounding corny as hell. Just look @ these lyrics:

don’t wanna be another playa losin’ in this game
i’m trying to impress upon you we’re not the same
my own individuality is so unique
i’m 1 impressive motherfucka, now, ¿wouldn’t you say?

This whole song is Draiman bragging ’bout what a tough individual he is & how he’s not like all the other boys & bragging ’bout how “provocative” he is. I mean, maybe to the tiny minority o’ weird fundies who don’t let their kids listen to any music with a parental advisory sticker or listen to any radio but Radio Disney. I feel like metal fans who have probably heard bands like Cannibal Corpse or Aborted Fetus have much higher standards for “provocation”. Hell, e’en a band as mainstream as Marilyn Manson was considered way mo’ provocative. This song is like a prototypical Ronnie Radke song, except it doesn’t sound like complete ass.

My favorite part is when he philosophically asks, “¿so can you tell me what exactly does “freedom” mean if I’m not free to be as twisted as I wanna be”, with him putting on this particularly impish voice @ that last part. To be fair, he is right: there is a reason the founding fathers o’ the US put the right to be as twisted as one wants to be in the Bill of Rights.

I also love how just before the bridge, Draiman sings, “I hear the sirens, but they’re ne’er gonna take me”, & then just after you hear stock sirens o’ police sirens.

This song apparently goes back e’en further than 1998, back when the band was named Brawl & before Draiman joined &, damn, does this not sound like it’s trying to be We Have Pantera @ Home:

This song’s lyrics are technically better than what we have now: but I think I’ll take my ludicrous cheese o’er Pantera backwash, especially when I could just listen to Pantera proper.

They also remade this song & planned to put it on The Sickness, but didn’t. It’s not surprising that this song was planned for The Sickness, given the cheesy vibes that fit with songs like the aforementioned “Droppin’ Plates” & how edgy it tries to be. All I’ll say ’bout this demo version is that I wish they kept the stock cartoon laugh sound effect after the “twisted as I wanna be” line.

Grade: 🚨

12. Façade

Automatic S grade for putting the cedilla on the “C”.

Being serious, while I kinda like the vocal melody on the chorus, this song is sappy like “Enough”, & I’m not fond o’ the way this song treats its subject matter, discussing the issue o’ domestic abuse by interrogating the victim & asking her why she stays with her abusive partner & hides her misery. Uh, I dunno, ¿maybe ’cause she’s afraid o’ being killed if she doesn’t? It says something when I feel like Papa Roach’s bizarre treatment o’ this issue in whate’er the fuck their “Revenge” song was was better. ¡Fuckin’ Nickelback treated this subject better with their “Never Again”! ( That song is also straight-up funner to listen to ). It’s weird: if anything, you would expect Nickelback to make a weepy, out-o’-touch song like “Façade” & a band named Disturbed to make the song ranting @ what a cowardly bitch abusive men are & cheering on the woman for finally shooting his ass, like “Never Again”. ( Granted, the line “She’s just a wooomaaaan” is out o’ touch, but… I mean, it is Nickelback… ). Hell, a nu-metal ✝-rock band like Red Jumpsuit Apparatus was able to do half that ( without the shooting her abuser part ) in their only hit song ( probably ’cause a band with the name “Red Jumpsuit Apparatus” was doomed to failure ). ¿Wouldn’t it make mo’ sense for a band called Disturbed to make a song that emphasizes the disturbing aspects o’ domestic abuse ( you know, without seeming to be from the point o’ view o’ the abuser, like their song, “The Game” ) & possibly have the woman get her violent revenge? I’m not e’en saying that’s the “moral” way to deal with domestic abuse; but maybe I don’t expect life lessons from a band called Disturbed who wrote the “OH-WAH-AH-AH-AH” “Down with the Sickness” song — but apparently Disturbed felt we needed 2 o’ those songs on this album.

Grade: D

Conclusion

Still a fun album to listen to in the background round Halloween, with a few skips, specially near the end.

Final Grade: B

Nu-metal has many “1-hit wonders” who had way mo’ than 1 hit, but now the normies only know 1 particularly memeworthy song from them: Disturbed with “Down with the Sickness”; Papa Roach with “Last Resort”; System of a Down with “Chop Suey” ( despite System of a Down having many, many surreal songs that would merit being memeworthy ); Trapt with “Headstrong”; &, ’course, Drowning Pool, whose only song it seems anyone on the internet knows is “Bodies”. But like those other bands & mo’, I’d hear plenty of other songs by Drowning Pool on the radio thruout my middle school & early high school days in the mid noughties, like “Enemy”, as well as “Tear Away” from the album we’re going to be looking @ today, their 2001 studio debut ( they technically had some EPs before this 1, but nobody gives a shit ’bout them ), Sinner. Granted, nothing much stuck with me beyond this album’s singles from when I listened to it as a kid, & that doesn’t bode well when the person who remembers obscure bands like Rehab can’t remember much o’ your albums; but I couldn’t remember most o’ that Rehab album, either, & I had interesting things to say ’bout it. Maybe there’s some ( memetic ) gold in this album.

1. Sinner

The title track & probably the least-remembered single, & for good reason. While the music has some fun stanky wrooah riffs & bass, the verses & chorus are just… bland. No cheese @ all. It’s an antireligion song, which… man, ¿do you know how much competition there is for cheesy “sinner” music @ that time when you had Marilyn Manson up on stage wiping his ass with a Bible in a gimp suit?

It’s not e’en good religious criticism: the main criticism is that all judgy religious people abstractly sin sometimes, so it’s “hypocritical” for them to criticize people for abstractly sinning when “we are all sinners”; but this is just a conflation o’ magnitude that leads to nihilism & could be used to justify “sins” that any sane person would be opposed to. As an atheist, I don’t feel any mo’ hypocritical for criticizing people for, say, murdering random civilians, as any sane Christian would, e’en when I sometimes commit the sin of only paying the medium tip on Door Dash. I’m pretty certain most judgy religious people don’t commit murder. No, the real problem with judgy religious people is that what they consider to be “sin” — or a’least the controversial elements — are stupid & frivolous, like laws against eating shellfish or a man sticking his dick in another man’s ass. I feel much less bad ’bout sticking my dick in another man’s ass — damn proud o’ it, actually — than I do paying a smaller-than-maximum tip, & that has nothing to do with how much I’ve done bad things.

Grade: C

Music Video

I do find the music video mo’ inspired, tho, with the band & their fans breaking into a skatepark to play music @ night ( I’m pretty sure they don’t lock those up, so I’m not sure why they needed to break a lock to get in ) contrasted with the 3 carnal sins: whoredom, gluttony, & tanning. I particularly like the part where the glutton gets so engorged that he just spits up his food, followed by it starting to rain in the skatepark, implying that the glutton’s chip spittle is falling all o’er the band & fans while they’re singing & partying.

Grade: A

2. Bodies

Ah, here we go: the ultimate nu-metal machisimo song, with its chorus repeating the shouted slogan, “LET THE BODIES HIT THE FLOOR”, with “floor” sounding like “flow”, only to growl the ending “floor” as just “RRRRRRRRR” & the pre-chorus, with different slogans repeated after counting — “1, nothing wrong with me; 2, nothing wrong with me…” — as if coming from a madman. This song is a certified suburb classic.

Grade: S

Music Video

The music video, with the lead singer shouting @ an insane asylum patient just gazing forward, only mouthing the lines, “nothing wrong with me” in response to the lead singer’s counting, is similarly iconic, tho it gets repetitive by the end. I do like the visual o’ the band jamming in a tiny white room, as if they’re patients as well.

Grade: B

3. Tear Away

We looked @ this song when we looked @ that bad divorced dad rock album a couple months ago, but let’s go o’er it in mo’ detail here. As I said in that article, I love this song’s cooly-crooned chorus o’ “I… don’t care ’bout anyone else but me…”, especially the ending o’ the chorus just before the bridge with the mumbled, “God damn I love me”. This song also has some fun musical flourishes, like the guitar solo during the bridge; the muffled, crunchy opening riffs; & the weird muffled notes that they only play during a weird drop after the 2nd verse. If this song isn’t a certified suburb classic, well it damn well should be.

Grade: S

Music Video

The visual o’ the band jamming inside a bunch o’ cracked mirrors works well with this song’s theme. I’m not so sure ’bout the lead singer singing to a bunch o’ hanging pictures o’ parts o’ his face in an ol’ manor with tacky floral wallpaper. 2000s bands loved dusty ol’ manors, for some reason; Papa Roach recorded an entirely album in 1.

Grade: B

4. All Over Me

This song has interesting opening notes, & then e’erything afterward is stale nu-metal backwash, from the stiffly-sung verses, the whisper-shouted bridge lines like a store-brand Papa Roach, &, dear god, the repetitive chorus that is just shouting, “ALL OVER ME”. Snore.

Hell, it says something bad when the “meaning” officially bequeathed ’pon this song by the gods o’ Genius.com is mo’ interesting than this entire song: just the enigmatic line, “There’s something changing and growing in him”, with no period @ the end. I have no idea why this poetic masterpiece has a -1 rating.

Grade: D

5. Reminded

God damn it, this is the same as the last song: we start with e’en mo’ interesting muffled guitar twanging & some stanky, funky bass picks thruout the verses, but then we get mo’ stiff generic verses & shouting the same line repeatedly for the chorus. This 1 has mo’ interesting music than “All Over Me”, but not ’nough to bump it up much.

Grade: D

6. Pity

OK, this is a bit better, with its goofy opening lines o’ the singer crooning, “My life… served on a plate…”, & then shouting, “FOR ALL OF YOU TO EAT”. That’s funny & I like the sound o’ the contrast. E’en the chorus, which is still repetitive, a’least has a rhythm & flow & isn’t just stilted shouting. I also like the gnarly held note that pops up during the verses & refuses to leave for a while. That being said, there aren’t any mo’ funny or interesting lines & I still begin to lose interest halfway thru — I feel like I get the gist already & the rest is just more o’ the same.

Grade: B

7. Mute

¿Would it kill this band to have a chorus that isn’t shouting the same line repeatedly? It’s impressive when a band is so lazy @ lyricism that they make “Disturbed in the House We’re Droppin’ Plates” look like Leonard Cohen in comparison. This 1 e’en has a pre-chorus where the singer shouts a different line repeatedly. It’s especially absurd when the line in question is “there’s nothing left here to talk about”. I guess that must be true, since you ain’t sayin’ nothing else. E’en the opening weird notes are just a less interesting version o’ what “Reminded” starts with. The closest thing I could find that could be called interesting in this song is, like, 1 stanky note during the bridge, & it just sounds like a worse version o’ a note you can hear in the bridge in Disturbed’s “Want” — & that’s 1 o’ the weaker songs off that album, mind you.

I also have to bring up this amazing “meaning” from Genius:

Mute is about staying quite from everything around because of how much you’ve changed.

Ignoring the “quite” typo, ¿what does that e’en mean? ¿Could “everything around” be any mo’ vague? ¿Why would changing a lot make you mo’ likely to be quiet? I’m pretty certain this is just your typical antiromance song ’bout how the singer’s relationship with some partner is doomed ’cause o’ the “demons” inside, or whate’er. Then again, this “meaning” is as vague as Drowning Pool’s general lyrics, so it fits, a’least.

Grade: D

8. I Am

You have no idea how refreshing it is to hear a song start with drum beats instead o’ another batch o’ weird, distorted notes that sound like the start o’ another song off this album. Clearly, they were proud o’ this opening, as it goes on for nearly a half hour. In fact, this song is stretched agonizingly slow, with long pauses ’tween e’ery line in the verses, as well as an extra pause before the last word o’ the last line for extra measure. &, yes, the chorus is just shouting the same lines repeatedly — ’cept this time we get the slightest o’ twists halfway thru the chorus when “I” is changed to “you”. ¡Oooo! These lines are contradictory, too, claiming “I could’ve been”, implying that he’s not, but also “I am” @ the same time; but this song is ’bout unironically making up excuses for being a fuck up & how “that’s just the way we are”, — not a sentiment I can get behind, having some shred o’ the capability o’ self-improvement — so I think it’s an intention contradiction ’tween this lofty idea o’ what one could be & the s’posedly unchangeable fact o’ what one is. That would be kind o’ clever if it weren’t wrong.

What isn’t clever are these lines, which I think must’ve been cribbed from somebody still in a crib for their preschool “words class”:

¿does it make you feel good?
¿does it make you sick
that you knew that i would
be the one to trip?

Again, we get this sentiment o’, “Ugh, it’s society’s fault that I’m a fuckup; it’s literally impossible for me to learn how to walk without tripping”.

Grade: D

9. Follow

It only took till track 9 for Drowning Pool to have a chorus that isn’t just repeating the same line o’er & o’er. Too bad both the chorus & verses are slow, stilted, & boring. The only interesting parts o’ this song are the guitar solo &, mo’ importantly, the weird goatlike effect the singer does to his voice when singing the 1st & 3rd lines o’ the bridge.

Grade: C

10. Told You So

& now we’re back to the repetitious choruses — & with the generic “shut up”, too. In contrast, I have no idea what kind o’ rhythm & melody the verses & pre-chorus are s’posed to have, nor what “a penny for your thoughts would make me sick”. I’m guessing he means that knowing what the antagonistic “you” is thinking would make him sick, but the implication is that the price o’ knowing what they think would make him sick, which is just absurd. I’m mixed on whether to rank this a C or D considering the absurdity o’ this song’s singing & lyrics make it a bit mo’ memorable than most o’ the other songs, but I already forgot how this song actually sounds musically after having just heard it. Luckily, I found out there’s a coin emoji, which is close ’nough to a penny emoji, so I’ll just go with that.

Grade: 🪙

11. Sermon

Thank God this album is only 11 songs — & thank God for how hilarious this song is. Musically, there’s nothing to talk ’bout, but lyrically this is the goofiest shit on this album. I don’t e’en know where to start:

The verses have this inane pattern o’ “where was [blank]” on e’ery odd line while the e’en lines have whate’er goofy ideas they thought o’ 1st to rhyme — the kind o’ nursery school rhymes I would do with my melodramatic poetry to be funny, like “You were wrong since the beginning o’ the bomb”. For instance, the 1st verse has the pattern o’ e’ery odd line being “¿where was God?”:

¿where was God
when i needed a friend?
¿where was God
when i came to an end?
¿where was God
when i lost my mind?
¿where was God
when i couldn’t find?

¿Couldn’t find what? ¿A better line that ended with a word that rhymes with “mind”? ¿Where was God when he let you write this song?

Meanwhile, the 2nd verse starts with this pattern:

¿where was love
when i felt like hate?
¿where was hate
when i felt like love?

I could understand wanting love when you “feel like hate”, whate’er that means; ¿but why would you want hate when you feel like love? & then this same verse ends with the lines, “¿Where was the fear / when i said i was scared?”. I dunno — you were the one apparently claiming you were scared when apparently there was no fear where you could find it. ¿Why would you want fear, especially from a god who’s known for being good @ making people fear his s’posed wrath? ¿Isn’t the Abrahamic God usually criticized for inspiring fear, not failing to inspire fear well ’nough? “¿How am I s’posed to worship you if you fail to inspire in me the fear o’ spending an eternity in hell?”.

Then we have the prechorus, which repeats the line, “I don’t wanna be up or down”. See, it’s like heaven & hell, but much stupider. ¿Are heaven & hell e’er described as “up” & “down” in the Bible? ¿Aren’t they in completely different dimensions that can’t be accessed thru any 3D directions? I’m pretty certain the only thing “down” is the earth’s solid core & the only think “up” is outer space.

The chorus, believe it or not, is not just 1 line repeated o’er & o’er again, but it does end with these amazing lines:

i don’t know who to trust;
my heart is filled with disgust

Hint: don’t trust whoe’er fills you heart with disgust.

As if this song couldn’t get any goofier, just before the bridge the singer tries to just sing this song’s title repeatedly, for whate’er reason, but his doglike panting smothers it. Then he randomly shouts, “¡whoa!”. All right, ’nough o’ this dour moping ’bout existential thoughts o’ “what to believe” & how my heart is full o’ disgust: ¡it’s time to party!

& then in the bridge, we get this amazingly acted sermon:

ladies & gentlemen…
¿may i have your attention?
¿are you ready for the joke?

Well, I received the joke in the form o’ “Sermon”, whether I was ready or not. By the way, that last line was followed by an impish laugh in the background to really sell you on this joke.

& then while background voices chant, “tell me what to believe”, the foreground singer shouts, “¡God!”, & then, “¡whoa!”, & then some random murmuring.

& then, when you thought the song was o’er & there would be no mo’ randomness, you get some backmasked version o’ “ladies & gentlemen: tell me what you believe”, which is… so important it needs to be backmasked, I guess.

Grade: S

Conclusion

This album was surprisingly & disappointingly boring. It turns out there’s a reason this band is mainly known as the “Bodies band”: other than “Tear Away” & the unexpected closer, “Sermon”, hardly any o’ the rest o’ the album is e’en funny bad; it’s mostly just repetitive & generic nu-metal that sounds like too many other nu-metal bands with much mo’ personality. O well, we still have 1 mo’ album to look @ on Muertoween proper, & you know it’s going to be from a band that knows how to bring the cheese.

Final Grade: C

Since I was young child I have been playing the Super Nintendo SimCity off & on, e’ery time trying to reach 500,000 population & reaching the coveted “Megatropolis” city level, & then 600,000 to get the coveted Mario statue building gift, & e’ery time filling up my city long before being able to e’en get close to 500,000.

That is until recently.

Read the rest o’ this article @ LevelRankings.com

When most people, including myself before finding this album, think o’ the band Incubus, they think o’ the soft rock band with early-2000s serene songs like “Drive” & “Wish You Were Here”, a strange contrast to the origin o’ their namesake, a fairy tale daemon that tries to rape women in their sleep. So I was surprised when I found this album in 1 o’ my mom’s boyfriend’s many CD cases, tried it out, & heard something heavier & crazier, sounding much mo’ like Linkin Park if thy were jazzier & mo’ experimental with instrumentation — ’cept predating their fame-defining Hybrid Theory by 3 years ( & Incubus’s 1st album, Fungus Amongus, predating the band Linkin Park e’en in its earliest form, uh… well, Hybrid Theory ). In hindsight, I came to learn that this album & Incubus’s earliest incarnation was heavily inspired by Faith No More & Mr. Bugle — much like pretty much e’ery nu-metal band; but I would still defend this album’s thematic focus on sci-fi & mo’ consistent music style in contrast to Faith No More’s hodgepodge o’ styles as, while not being as good, having its own identity & appeal.

1. Redefine

The best song on the album, & a great general look @ this album’s style, with its deep but noisy opening ( which was apparently done with a didgeridoo played by lead singer Brandon Boyd himself ) building with Boyd’s calm but speedy & scattered poetic ramblings, culminating in a rise in tone during the chorus, which sounds like the wails o’ a madman, & then finally @ the end where the end o’ the 2nd verse is repeated, but shouted. I love all the li’l variations in Boyd’s tone thruout the verses & the imagist & specific lyrics, with such oddities as, “it’s in your nature, you can paint whatever picture you like / no matter what ted koppel says on channel 4 tonight”.

Grade: S

2. Vitamin

A slower, mo’ brooding track with mo’ physical, biological lyrics than the previous’s abstract vibes, as well as a mo’ pessimistic tone: whereas the previous song rambled ’bout the possibilities o’ the future & criticized the limitations o’ the present, this song’s ravings o’ some possibly symbolic “vitamin” that induces sleep & complacency ­— “whatever helps you swallow truth more easily” — depicts future science as limiting humanity. It feels much less original — medicine dulling the human spirit is a cliché sci-fi trope — than the previous song’s depiction o’ the future as like a painting.

As for the sound, while the breakdown after the 2nd chorus is fun, it doesn’t fit in with the song’s tone; & while I do like the brooding basslines, the chorus doesn’t have a very compelling melody, & in general this song lacks the frenetic energy of other songs on this album.

Grade: B

3. New Skin

This song does the physical, biological feel much better with its tribal drums mixed with riffs that sound like they’re coming from some mysterious medical machine; & the sample o’ Buckminster Fuller’s strange monologue whose voice warps faster & higher pitched & slower & deeper as it goes is much mo’ memorable.

Grade: A

4. Idiot Box

This is an anti-TV song, which is cliché, — e’en ironically outdated in the future Incubus apparently couldn’t see in the near 21st century where TV would be supplanted by social media — but is saved a bit for me with its weird, vague way o’ expressing that sentiment & the weird way the singer sings the lyrics. Also, I just really like the main driving riff & all the disk scratches @ the end.

Grade: B

5. Glass

Oh man, that contrast o’ the jazzy bass with the distorted voice going, “¿why?”, & the calm, smoothly-sung verses gainst the abrupt shouting in the choruses. I also love how this is basically an antilove song bitching ’bout an asshole ex, but with a weird sci-fi style.

Grade: A

6. Magic Medicine

This is less a song & mo’ a weird sound experiment sampling what sounds like parts o’ some childrens’ education shows ’bove menacing deep beats. It won’t be the last. & then it ends with a sample o’ the educational-type voice giving a title drop, implying this is all a drug trip.

But the best part o’ this “song” is how it calls back to the previous track, “Glass”: that “¿why?” constantly in the background turns out to have come from this clip o’ the voice saying, “On this page you see a little girl giggling @ a hippopotamus. I wonder why…”.

Grade: S

7. A Certain Shade of Green

Like “Idiot Box”, this is a song with a cliché self-help message — don’t wait for someone else to tell you what to do to do something before having the confidence to do something — but told thru a strange metaphor o’ someone waiting for some nebulous street light turning green.

Sonically, this song has fun riffs, but seems to lack the precise identity & thematic ties that other songs have, making it feel like the most normal o’ songs on this album.

Grade: B

8. Favorite Things

This is basically a contrarian’s anthem. Honestly, Incubus really hammers in the “be yourself, be an individual” messages — not just on this album, but in their general discography going forward. I mean the album after this — the 1 with their hit “Drive” — is literally called Be Yourself.

& while I do like the driving riff & the the weird noises thru the verses, I feel other songs do these better — for instance, “Idiot Box” has a better similar driving riff.

Grade: B

9. Summer Romance (Anti-Gravity Love Song)

Now is the best time to take a break from the loud, electronic songs for a smooth, jazzy lougelike song ’bout love so strong it can fly past gravity, with nice, cheesy retrofuture lyrics ’bout “tin-can phones” & classy lines ’bout having a “rendezvous a quarter-to”. A quarter to what, we shall ne’er know. Perhaps it is none o’ our business.

Grade: S

10. Nebula

& then we get a song with a a barely-audible muffled child’s voice saying, “it smells like cheese”, followed by what sounds like a car alarm blaring on & on. & then we get pre-choruses & choruses where the singer goes apeshit, with the chorus literally following each line with goofy sound effects, & then the bridge has some ol’ documentary voice talking ’bout the “crab nebula”.

¿& you know the best part? ’Pon actually reading the lyrics, I’ve come to realize that this is a song ’bout nasty sex. Yes, the nebula is a woman’s vagina, which the singer also describes as “your nectarine of multiplicity” & “your tangerine of electricity […] ripe & on a vine” & how it “cums like orgasmatron”, which I can only imagine is a lot o’ cum, since I sure hope someone named “orgasmatron” is good @ orgasming. The singer himself “[…] let it pulse & boil within [his] limbs”, “lay [his] pencil to the porous page”, & “let [his] lunatic indulge itself”. Amazing.

Grade: 🦀

11. Deep Inside

This is like a mix o’ “Summer Romance” & a lot o’ the other songs, with smooth loungelike verses followed by shouted choruses. While I like the weird vocal inflections Boyd makes during the bridge, the rest o’ this song, while not bad, seems less interesting than similar songs on this album. Same goes for the whole vague “I don’t know where I am” theme.

Grade: B

12. Calgone

On an album full o’ songs where Brandon Boyd crashes out & goes apeshit, the last song may be 1 o’ the craziest, with the singer shouting ’bout how crazy his day was, only to mo’ calmly sing that he must’ve woke up on the wrong side o’ the bed. Said crazy day was the protagonist getting abducted by aliens & anal probed because he had to walk home after his car ran out o’ gas ’cause he wasted gas waiting while the police pulled him o’er. As you do.

Grade: 👽

13. Segue 1

I don’t know why this is called “Segue 1”, ’cause there is no tracks afterward.

This track is honestly the biggest reason I wanted to review this album: I’m going to declare this track the greatest hidden track o’ all time ( note: in the original release o’ this album, this is hidden @ the end o’ track 12, while streaming services don’t bother with that charade ). What this track is is 10 minutes o’ weird sound experiments, including:

• Some nasally doctor seeming to list off someone’s patient history while vocalizing e’ery punctuation while beats start building
• Vile laughter o’er heavy noise
• Some weird string noises I can’t e’en describe just before someone in a cheesy leprechaun voice threatens to “lick your sucking balls off”
• What sounds like a triangle being banged before a cartoon character shouts, “¡SOUGHT!”, followed by the sound o’ an explosion
• Some dope whiteboy rippity raps that, indeed, can’t get “fresher than this”, followed by a blaxploitation voice saying, “I know it’s not PC, but sometimes you gotta put the smackdown on a ho” o’er funk music
• What sounds like an attempt to emulate Michigan J. Frog from Looney Tunes
• The absolute best: sounds o’ someone playing Space Invaders with the sound panning from left to right & right to left in the earphones like the aliens do in Space Invaders
• Some weird reenactment o’ The Karate Kid
• Some weasel-voiced kid saying, “8 fuckin’ tracks, you can make a lot o’ shit”
• Some weird alien singing that sounds like it belongs in a Wario Ware game
• & then this all ends with the sounds o’ a phone beeping, someone panting heavily into the phone, & then someone saying, “Hello”

To add to the surrealism, apparently the Michigan J. Frog & The Karate Kid shit came from a song called “Show Me Your Titz” by Hoobastank o’ all people, from an apparently infamously bizarre early album from them called “Muffins” — before they also turned to soft rock — that I kinda wanna try out sometime, too.

Grade: S

Conclusion

It says something that e’en tho I already liked this album a lot, I have come to appreciate it better on review, especially the songs I previously took for granted, like “Nebula”. I think nu-metal would have been appreciated a lot mo’ if more o’ it was this weird experimental shit & less unironic tough-guy or whiny shit.

Final Grade: A

This is a band that seemed to suddenly pop up during the tailend o’ the era o’ nu-metal in 2008 with their song “Bump” & later their only single “Bartender ( Sittin’ At a Bar )” playing on my local rock station a few times… & then they disappeared. I mean, they continued to release records during the 2010s, — albeit, losing their big record label after their album after this 1 & with a short breakup in the middle — but I don’t know o’ anyone who listened to them. I certainly ne’er listened to them, & I’m probably the only 1 ’mong you readers who have listened to this album. It is precisely because o’ this obscurity & my own history copying songs from this album onto my mix CDs — as well as just how weird some o’ the songs on this album are — that I’ve decided to bring attention to this forgotten relic.

Arguably this isn’t really nu-metal, but I’ve already established long ago how inclusive this series is. It’s mo’ like country rap-rock, which, ironically, makes it less an outdated-when-it-came-out nu-metal holdo’er & mo’ a before-its-time prescience o’ bro country. In fact, I was struck by how many times this band’s lead singer, Danny “Boone” Alexander sounds like that nasally guy from Florida Georgia Line. They certainly took mo’ influence from their fellow Georgian Atlantic rappers than most nu-metal bands. Unfortunately, I can’t stand bro country, so that endears my heart to this album less than it had when I was a teenager & blissfully ignorant o’ such symphonies as “Knockin’ Boots”.

This album actually has 2 versions: the original 2005 & the later release under a big label with Bartender ( Sittin’ At a Bar )” thrown in in 2008. Since the latter is the version I listened to as a teen, it’ll be the 1 I’ll review, but because I’m particularly nice I’ll also review the 2005 tracks left off the 2008 version as a bonus @ the end.

1. Let’em Know ( feat. Steaknife & D. Jones )

So, I didn’t remember this song till now — but unlike most o’ the songs in which I say that, I’m surprised I don’t remember this goofy-ass song. Featuring D. Jones & “Steaknife” straight outta Appalachia, this song is all ’bout how cool these rock rappers are with badass lines like these:

kiss my acrobat & my soda crack my B-U-T-T butty whack
yo ma’ yo pa’ yo gritty granny with her hose in a panty
& a big behind like Frankenstein rock the beat down Sesame Street

Most bad rap lines are rappers clearly trying to force a line, but here I don’t think Sesame Street rhymes with anything, so the only explanation is that the main rapper here really wanted you to know that they rock the beat down Sesame Street. “Butty whack”, whate’er that is, doesn’t really rhyme with “panty”, either. Also, maybe I didn’t read it carefully ’nough, but I don’t remember Mary Shelly describing Dr. Frankenstein as having all that much girth in his loins, same for the creature he spawned.

& yet those may not be the worst lines in this song:

had the class & the teacher bouncing in kindergarten
then i slapped her on her ass & she said, <I beg your pardon>

Call me prudish, but I don’t particularly get stimulated by the image o’ young children being traumatized by watching their teacher be sexually assaulted. E’en if consensual, wait till the kids go out to recess to do that shit.

It doesn’t help that the song starts with this:

all the children went to heaven
won’t be back til 10 after 11

As for the sound, — ¡’cause the beat could totally save these lyrics! — it’s generic 2000s ringtone beats.

Grade: F

2. Bump

This song is the only reason I e’er listened to this album in the 1st place, being my introduction to it on the radio. Tho this song is goofy with its prechorus sang by a robot & its ultimate whiteboy lyrics trying to sound cool while using faux-Eminem “the illest, the killest, the skill of the willest” speedyboy rappin’ — with lines like “all day smokin’ herb, a tad bit disturbed, yes sir, absurd, don’t know when the curse occurred”, made funnier with the heavy Southern accent really strengthening those ending “uuurrs” — & using the word “bump” while rapping ’bout smoking weed, which is also the ultimate in counterintuitive, not the least o’ which ’cause weed is the opposite o’ a drug that makes you bump, I still like this song, mainly due to its, well, bumping beat & electronic riffs. Also, while most o’ the lyrics are corny, I do like the chorus, starting with the imagist line, “black tree silhouetted against an orange sky”, being myself a pothead who likes to gaze @ nature.

Fun trivia fact: I actually heard this live back in 2008 in 1 o’ the few times I saw what could be called a live concert when my mom took me to the local hemp fest & they happened to be playing there.

Grade: B

3. Chest Pain

While this song ne’er stuck in my mind as much as “Bump”, — & as far as I know, was ne’er a single — this song was apparently good ’nough for my teenaged self to add to 1 o’ the mix discs I made when I ripped these songs off the CD I downloaded from the library; & listening to it again after probably a’least a few years o’ it languishing ’mong the 10s o’ thousands o’ MP3s, OGGs, & FLACs languishing in my music folder & paying mo’ attention to its lyrics, I can’t help noticing that the lyrics are much better written & the music lacks the cringier elements that “Bump” has. The chorus’s fast-paced sputtering works with this song’s theme o’ being drugged out o’ one’s mind. E’en the 3rd verse, the goofiest verse, with its blathering ’bout Nostradamus & there being “more religions than park pigeons”, makes sense in context, since it’s the conspiratorial ravings o’ someone high. There’s also mo’ variation in terms o’ flow, with the singer/rapper smoothly wavering within the gray area ’tween singing & rapping.

The problem with this song is that the instrumentation sounds stock, which really drags down the song. Listening to this song feels like sitting in a cheap, white trash house while drinking Walmart beer to stave off boredom, which is both perfectly fitting for this song, & also makes me not love listening to it that much. It’s perfectly tolerable, ’course — nothing compared to the Puddle of Mudd & Saliva trash I listened to in previous months. & the praise I gave was mo’ in comparison to the songs we’ve heard earlier: situational “comedy” ’bout some cracker on drugs raving ’bout nonsense & being a loser college dropout isn’t a fresh concept; & making a song ’bout doing drugs having a crazy chorus & going all o’er the place is textbook song writing. The (həd)^p.e. album we looked @ back in March did the same many times, & those songs had far mo’ excitement to them & went harder.

Grade: B

4. Graffiti The World

While the metaphor o’ pollution being graffiti on the world & mocking anti-graffiti authorities for being hypocrites for attacking graffiti while filling the ocean with countless plastics are good, creative points, unfortunately the composer couldn’t stay on topic & meanders into lame boomer complaints like whining ’bout taking prayer out o’ schools & how the youth are ( purportedly ) becoming mo’ suicidal, & then devolves e’en mo’ into mo’ stupidity, like complaining ’bout the existence online port… — ridiculously hypocritical from a band that makes a bunch o’ sex party anthems — the fact that freedom o’ speech exists & makes people less responsible, which is certainly a take, & somehow e’en dumber, the fact that there are a bunch o’ things with 3-letter acronyms, like the dreaded MP3… Ooooo… I mean, yeah, OGGs are better — but still. &, bitch, ¿why are you complaining ’bout the BBC? You’re American: that’s none o’ our business.

E’en the lyrics ’bout pollution aren’t good: the song starts by complaining ’bout how mother Earth’s “pukin’ up lava” & how “her nerves tremble along fault lines ready to drop”. Um, yeah, that’s how volcanoes & tectonic shifts work — except humanity has nothing to do with that: earth has been doing that since long before humans have e’en existed. ¿You couldn’t say anything ’bout the earth becoming feverish from climate change or drowning in the ocean levels rising from the melted icecaps?

As for how this song sounds, it sounds shitty in the same way all lame protest or charity songs suck, with generic twinkling slow guitar notes, spoken-word verses, & chanting choruses.

Grade: F

5. Bartender Song ( Sittin’ At A Bar )

While “Bump” was the 1st song I heard on the radio, “Bartender Song” was the 1 that became their biggest hit & probably the song most people who do know this band know — so much so that ’twas added to the 2008 version o’ this album, having been originally released on a previous album that I’d ne’er heard ’bout till recently, “Southern Comfort” as just “Sittin’ At a Bar”. In fact, from what Wikipedia tells me, this song is the only reason they got signed to a big label @ all.

I don’t really get why this was the song that got them as big as they got, as it’s kind o’ just a generic, hokey country rock song with a stale ditty melody for both the verses & choruses ’bout some white trash drama ’bout a domestic dispute leading the drunken protagonist to steal his girlfriend’s car, crash it, & then wait in a bar for the police to arrest him. ¿Relatable?

The 1st version I heard on the radio & apparently the original version o’ the song from “Southern Comfort” had a different third verse with rapped lyrics & some generic hiphop beats along with the generic guitar notes, while the version on the 2008 version o’ “Graffiti the World” is the “Alt/Rock Mix” with the same rap verse half-sung, half-rapped & the hiphop beats removed — presumably a desperate attempt to scrape the scary black parts from the song so as not to scare the white hoes who didn’t listen to that “rap crap”, as was weirdly common ’mong singles with rap features released on rock stations. I remember a’least 1 local rock station — don’t remember which 1 — that excised a rap verse from a rapper as illustrious as Rakim from a Linkin Park song, which is particularly stupid, because Linkin Park is a rap rock band. I’m trying to imagine these same crackers removing Mike Shinoda’s rapped verses from fucking “Crawling”.

Grade: D

6. Last Tattoo

You’re standard dad rock “my ex is a bitch” song. This 1 does have a’least have a story ’bout the singer having to get 1 last tattoo to cover the name o’ his ex. Granted, Eminem had the same idea earlier in the middle o’ the song “Puke” from his magnum opus, Encore, & that song was funnier ’bout it, with Eminem joking that “my next girlfriend, now her name’s gotta be Kim ( sh-i-i-i-i-it )”. This song’s lyrics, meanwhile, are weirdly generic for such a high concept, with the singer just constantly talking ’bout how he feels numb, seeming to jumble together as many clichés like “cut me to the core” & “how could I be so blind”, when not engaging in some o’ the most contrived lyrical-spherical-miracle shit, like, “I know she’s with Brock Scott that jock with blond locks that blocks shots guess I’m just not that hot mailbox for cocks”. What “mailbox for cocks” means, I’m not entirely sure: I’m guessing it’s his poetic way o’ calling her a slut. & the few details the singer does share don’t make the protagonist sound sympathetic: after whining ’bout his ex not trusting his “rap career” — I mean, you’re a cracker: ¿is she wrong to have skepticism? — he talks ’bout stealing the money she left in their joint account. With this & “Graffiti the World”, it seems this band is good @ coming up with song concepts, but not @ actually fleshing them out on the lyrical level, which is honestly mo’ disappointing than the typical nu-metal bands who matched trite song ideas with generic lyrics.

Despite all that, this was 1 o’ the songs that made the cut on my mix CD, probably ’cause teenaged me was a sucker for any song with a catchy chorus, & this song does have a catchy — if albeit whiny-sounding — chorus. In fact, the singer also seems to put in much mo’ variety in his inflections when sing-rapping the verses, too, specially with the inebriated way he says, “give me the pain I’ll grit my teeth in”. Also, this song has distorted record scratch sounds after the choruses. They don’t fit in with the song whatso’er, but they’re there.

Fun fact: when I was a teenager I showed my mom this as a song I thought she’d like. She was not flattered.

Grade: C

7. 1980 ( feat. Steaknife )

¡Ey! ¡Steaknife’s back! ¡& this song’s ass!

This is the kind o’ lame-ass song your 45-year-ol’ parents would sing to each other after having too many sherries, with lame cracker rap verses that sound like a middle-aged evangelist preacher trying to seduce someone — with lines like “‘Danny just a crook’. I definitely done some things I shouldn’t be proud of, but we can do it by the book” — & a chorus with annoying electronic woo-woo-woo-woos in the background & hokey lines that rhyme “lady” & “1980”.

There are other skeevy parts ’bout this song, too. For instance, he talks ’bout how he & the woman have “known each other since 9th grade”. Maybe I’m being puritan, but hearing a grown man gooning o’er a woman when she was in high school is weird — not as weird as gooning o’er someone who is currently in high school, but still weird. I also hate the line “she ain’t no ho — she got class”, which reminds me too much ’bout that painful slam poem that the guy who wrote Ready Player One wrote. Honestly, I think bragging ’bout only gooning o’er pure, chaste women to be mo’ sexist than the rappers who drool o’er women’s asses & tits: a’least the latter aren’t pretending like there’s morality involved & a’least admit that hoes have some value.

Beyond that, this song’s lyrics are stilted, both in sing-rap performance & in how the verses abruptly jump subjects ’tween couplets, like how the weird line ’bout them knowing each other since 9th grade comes just after 1 line where he fantasizes ’bout them having a daughter named Maggie — random beyond a conspicuous rhyming word — just after telling the woman he’s after to stop being a tease.

This song was not included on my mix CD, since e’en my teenaged self could probably discern that this song is shit.

Also, apparently this song, which was not on the original 2005 release, was originally a song from a band o’ Steaknife’s called White Noize. That version is much better, as its rap lyrics & flow are much better, but has the same crappy chorus & bland beat & has the production o’ a tin can. Why anyone thought that song was strong ’nough to throw onto the rerelease, I have no idea.

Grade: F

8. Bottles & Cans

This song’s OK — OK ’nough to be included on my mix CD. I mean, I don’t think I’ll go back & listen to it again after this review, but I didn’t cringe inwardly as I listened to it. It’s your standard low song ’bout the singer being depressed ’bout being a broke drunk pothead, stuffed with mo’ clichés like “got a man down, mayday, mayday”, “telling myself it’ll be OK”, “caught between tomorrow & yesterday”, “feels like nothin’ e’er went my way”, etc. The only line that stands out to me is “I think we’ve gotten a little too open-minded”. Um, ¿why? ¿& what does that have to do with you being a depressed pothead? ¿Don’t potheads usually like being open-minded? ¿Whate’er happened to the “black tree silhouetted against an orange sky” from “Bump”? ¿Is this an attempt @ a poetic way to say you think you’ve smoked too much & all you’ve ended up with is feeling lethargic?

The chorus is mildly catchy, but also kind o’ cliché, with the repetitive dun-dun-dun, dun-dun-dun rhythm. Good ’nough for my teenaged self with just a small stack o’ mix CDs, but not for someone who has millions o’ songs @ his fingertips.

Grade: C

9. Lawn Chair High ( feat. Steaknife )

It’s very fitting that this song starts with the line, “It’s just another lawn-chair high”, ’cause this song is just ’nother song ’bout sitting round being stoned after the previous 1, except this 1 has lamer plucked guitar strings & a mo’ annoying high-pitched chorus. Meanwhile, the mountain o’ clichés in the previous song are replaced by lyrical-spherical-miracle rhymes ’bout bunch o’ random bullshit ’bout drugs, with 1 stray gainst gangster rap & their “guns, loot, & cars”. Yeah, ¿who wants to listen to Biggie Smalls tell a Godfather-like tragedy ’bout him murdering people to make a living, just an inch ’way from death, when I could hear 2 crackers rap ’bout lying on lawn chairs staring @ cars driving by & yelling @ a kid to pass him ’nother beer — that’s clearly much mo’ enthralling.

This song was not on the 2005 version, but an earlier version o’ this song was on the previous album, Cuz We Can, with its beautiful album cover o’ 2 dogs licking their crotches. The lyrical differences ’tween these versions are minute & don’t affect the quality much: it’s still stoned yapping. I’m pretty certain the music is better on the original, tho, which makes this rerelease 0 / 3 on rerelease song quality vs. their originals, which is counterintuitive. ¿Did some executives with bad taste insist on these changes? I mean, they insisted on including “1980” & this gem o’ a song, so clearly bad taste was the deciding factor. Meanwhile, a song that apparently featured motherfucking Cee-Lo Green & Big Gipp apparently wasn’t good ’nough to include on this rerelease, e’en tho that song, predictably, sounds much better.

Grade: D

10. This Town

¿What the fuck is this preprogrammed-ass riff & beat with synthetic hand claps & these clown-ass church choir choruses ’bout how “this town is my hooooome, deep in my soooooul / that’s why I’m @ hooooome, e’en when I’m on the roooooad”? Then we get jumpscared by rapping where Danny boy goes much deeper into the Southern twang than usual that just sounds like he’s trying to play a cartoon character. This whole song is cartoonish. I don’t need to tell you how cringe the verse lyrics are. There are, honest to God, lyrics that go, “skippin’ church the 1st time I heard ‘Planet Rock’ come out a boom box / that may be the day God saved my soul”. Clearly God didn’t save you when you listened to that record, as listening to Afrika Bambaataa should’ve made you develop mo’ eclectic taste in music to put out this stale Budd Lite o’ a song.

Grade: F

11. Red Water

I actually always liked this song, & I would now go far ’nough to say it’s, by a wide margin, the best song on this album, & I would bet money probably this band’s best song e’er. It’s certainly the most interesting: it tells a story ’bout the protagonist as a child envying the next door neighbor with a nice home & car & beautiful wife that the child protagonist precociously crushes on, only for the twist to be that 1 day while the protagonist was playing with the neighbors’ son after he & the wife came home from the mall, the wife stepped into the bathroom to find the husband “laying in an overflowing bathtub of red water” with his wrists presumably slit — “the 1st & the last time he ever relaxed”.

Unlike the other songs on this album that had good concepts but bad lyrical execution, I would go far ’nough to say that this song’s lyrics are actually well-written, with plenty o’ specific details, such as the protagonist waxing nostalgically ’bout eating his mother’s rice crispy treats & watching Tom & Jerry & describing what he particularly liked ’bout his neighbor’s house, such as its “big red door” & shrubs “trimmed so perfectly”. The lyrics all use elementary school verbiage with simple sentences, but that actually works to this song’s favor, as it is written from a 12-year-ol’s innocent perspective. Tied to this, the father’s suicide is ne’er called that: the kid just o’erhears that the father was lying in a bathtub of red water, likely not fully understanding the meaning till later.

Musically, the song is simple, but that fits this song well, too, so as not to distract from the story. & yet the vocals are Danny “Boone”’s best work on this album, with the verses, despite being spoken, having just the right changes in tone & speed, while the chorus is catchy & memorable with its elongated highs @ “& he was layiiiiiiing” & lows @ “he ever relaaaaaaaxed”.

Grade: S

12. Walk Away

Ugh, now we’re back to lame boomer shit. This song is a morality play ’bout the evils o’ people who cheat on their spouses, & how they should “just walk away” & not give into temptation. Honestly, the lyrics are better than most o’ the songs on this album: it’s a weird mix o’ the detail-oriented storytelling prowess showed on “Red Water” & the lame hokey “boomer talking ’bout sex” lines found on “1980”. For instance, the song starts with the description o’ a woman a guy finds in a club having “2 silicon weapons of mass distraction / nipples like screw-in cleats, damn near blastin””. Those are the kind o’ lame rhymes found throughout this song.

I’m particularly mixed ’bout the last verse, which is interesting in how perplexing it is: a husband who’s let off early from work finds hints that his wife is cheating & grabs a gun off the rack & bursts into his bedroom. That’s a cliché story that you’d expect to end with him blasting them both or maybe just blowing his own brains out in front o’ them to guilt-trip them. No, instead, he aims the gun @ them & forces his wife to call her parents & the cuckartist his wife & kids to tell them what they did ( I mean, they were going to find out during the inevitable divorces, anyway )… & then made them call the preacher who married them ’cause “you want God involved”… & then, e’en mo’ bafflingly, laid the gun on the bed & told them, “I’m leavin’ — feel free to shoot me in the back”: whether this was him being suicidal or having faith in God to protect him from these adulterers, I’ll ne’er know.

Unfortunately, this song doesn’t sound good: the beat is cliché, the chorus is as annoying as the chorus to a bad kid’s song, & the verses have that awkward whiteboy rapper flow.

Grade: D

13. We Live

God, please save me from these annoying sing-songy morality songs. This 1 sounds just like the last, but with “Graffiti the World”… No, this song’s lyrics are worse: that song a’least had the concept o’ pollution being like graffiti on the world; this song’s ’bout someone having an existential crisis ’cause he experienced a bit o’ road rage in traffic, while still yapping ’bout cliché boomer morality ’bout technology making us lose our souls or some shit.

Grade: F

Bonus 1: Wht Do U Wnt Frm Me

I wish I could say I’m done, but I promised I’d do the songs from the 2005 version, too, so let’s hurry thru these. This is, if you can believe it, an e’en more obnoxious version o’ “We Live”, with an absolutely retched hoedown melody thru the choruses while the singer yaps some mo’ ’bout boomer rants. Look, he follows the line “skies are full of poison air” with “family photo, comb your hair”. That’s ’bout the hypocrisy o’ Middle America or something. & the chorus is just boring & whiny. ¡Next!

Grade: F

Bonus 2: This I Know ( feat. Demun Jones )

This song is so bad it wraps round to being hilarious. The verses are mo’ moroseboy miracle-spherical yapping ’bout the ills o’ modern society, while the chorus is, as God as my witness, the Christian ditty, “Jesus loves me, yes I know / for the Bible tells me so”, but with the most pitiful o’ “oh oh”s in the background. It’s kind o’ amazing. You know, I didn’t realize we’d be jumpscared by a ✝-rock album, but here we are.

Also, we get this amazing bar:

feelin’ wack as a whip on the back of a slave on a ship

“Hmm… I can’t see anything wrong with me as a Southern white guy comparing my mundane problems to the infamously inhumane way my ancestors treated people”. I can’t wait for the lines, “I just want some franks / starvin’ so much you could call me Anne Frank”.

Grade: ✞❤️📖💬

Bonus 3: Running Out of Time

¡& thank God for that! Mo’ boomer rant yapping, but this time we get this ridiculous beat with heavy stock guitar riffs o’er squeaky electronic beeps while Danny “Boone” raps in a fast mumble like he’s running out o’ time from the 5 minutes he paid for in the sound booth to record his vocals.

Grade: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Conclusion

This is a weird album, with a few good or decent songs smothered in the same whack-ass morality ballads. It is only due to “Red Water” & “Bump” that this final score isn’t lower. & unlike most o’ the other albums I’ve eviscerated in this series, where I had a general idea o’ how bad they were or what made them bad, I memory-holed this album’s worst parts & mainly just remembered the better songs.

Final Grade: D