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

Puddle of Mudd is the difference ’tween laymen who think Nickelback is the worst rock band e’er & those o’ us who are truly deep into the grime & know that there are far worse bands. I had to write ’bout their infamously atrocious “She Hates Me” when reviewing that anthology o’ so-called divorced dad rock, & 1 might expect me to look @ their most infamous album, & the 1 that put them on the map, Come Clean, but as always, I want to dive into the more neglected artifacts o’ 2000s buttrock. So instead we will be looking @ Volume 4: Songs in the Key of Love & Hate, the album that came out @ the tailend o’ their fame — so much so that they wouldn’t release a real album again till 2019 to cash in on 2000s nostalgia. Like many o’ these relics, I have authentic memories o’ hearing this album’s lead single “Spaceship” — the main reason I wanted to look @ this album, which you will understand when I get to it — on the radio & checking out this album from the library & listening to it; & like somebody who tries to get an annoying song out o’ their head by spreading it to others like a virus, since I have this gunk stuck in my memory, I must now spread it to you all.

1. Stoned

This song was a single, which is a bad sign, as I don’t e’en remember this song. My 1st impression on seeing this title is, “I bet this song’s idea was taken from that Hinder song, ‘Get Stoned’”. I’ve ne’er particularly liked that song, but I can a’least see some glimpses o’ catchy melody to it, especially its chorus; this song, meanwhile, is the most forgettable, bland hard rock song. It’s not unlistenable, which is an accomplishment for Puddle of Mudd, but I don’t imagine I will e’er voluntarily listen to this song again, given there are millions o’ better buttrock songs.

I think the only thing I have to say is, Scatlin seems to mistake weed for a harder drug like coke when he says stuff like this:

sunshine has always been the enemy
my life a chemical insanity
sundown is bringing out the freak in me
wired getting higher

As someone who partakes in the leaf himself, I can tell you that getting “wired” & “bringing out the freak in me” are the last things I would say to describe a drug whose main properties are calming you down. Again, I think they just wrote this ’cause stoner anthems were a big thing @ the time.

Also, this music video, with the band wrecking shit in the office, made the terrible mistake o’ reminding me too much o’ the much better music video for Deftones’ magnum opus, “Back to School (Mini Maggot)”.

Grade: C

2. Spaceship

¡Now this is a music video — the band playing in a spaceship that looks like ’twas rendered for the 90s show ReBoot; alien babes with devil tails & long tongues on stripper poles; some guy doing sick tricks on a bike badly bluescreened o’er outerspace; & the video ends with a giantess jerking herself off with their spacecraft! Ed Wood would cry tears o’ joy if he could have lived to see it.

Spoiler alert: this is the best song on this album — a song where Scatlin symbolizes having sex with being on a spaceship & taking some woman on “a little riiiiiiide”, starting with the following lines sung in what I think is Scatlin trying to sing in a sexy daddy voice:

a looong time ago in a galaxy far away-ay
i’m basted c’mon yeah
i’m in the flo-ahw & i got all the flavors you tasted
with sweat drippin’ down yo’ little back

Scatlin is weirdly obsessed with the sweat dripping down this woman’s — given the emphasis on her back being “little”, I hope it’s an adult woman — back. It’s honestly very gross, but to be fair, that’s kind o’ what you’d expect from a band called Puddle of Mudd.

This is also legit the catchiest song on this album with a catchy, bouncy groove & o’erall the only reason I cared ’nough ’bout this album to review it. I will miss it deeply. Still, it’s wild in hindsight that radios just unquestioningly played this bizarre & gross song to millions o’ listeners. Lucky for them, it seems like the Men in Black mind-erased e’eryone, as I’m the only 1 who seems to remember this song e’er existed.

Grade: 🛸

3. Keep It Together

That goofy-ass song is then followed by a sad acoustic song whose 1st verse mentions being down on his knees & praying to God, when this album’s very existence is proof that a God that cares ’bout humanity’s wellbeing could not exist.

Honestly, as corny & boring as the verses are, the chorus’s melody is pretty catchy. Unfortunately, Scatlin doesn’t exactly have the best voice for melodic pop singing.

Grade: C

4. Out Of My Way

This song starts by jumpscaring the listener with Scatlin angrily singing @ the listener with a particularly nasally voice, as if he’s holding in a loogie thruout the whole song. & yes, it goes thruout the whole song, including thru the chorus, where he screeches out “i’ll go out of my waaaaaaaay” in a particularly heinous way.

The lyrics are some o’ the most creative I’ve seen from Puddle of Mudd, with almost-poetic sounding lines like, “she paints the desert with her wicked green eyes”, but unfortunately all this lovely imagery & the depiction o’ this woman as being an “angel” completely contradicts the hoarse, bitter sound o’ Scatlin’s voice, which is why I initially thought this was ’bout some “crazy bitch on her period” or something, like so many meatbrained post-grunge songs. I guess the chorus does imply that the protagonist is failing to meet this woman’s standards, so maybe that’s the irony o’ the song: ¿she presents herself as an angel? Honestly, the lines are so poetic to the point o’ incoherence. I still have no idea what this song is really about. Then again, it’s a Puddle of Mudd song, so I don’t really care, either.

Grade: D

5. Blood On The Table

I swear the riff ’hind the verses & the 1st 2 lines o’ the verses are from a Nickelback song — I’m thinking “Another Hole in the Head”. God, it’s so embarrassing that I have a fucking Nickeback deep cut so lodged in my memory from my youth that I can recall it so well. But e’en mo’ embarrassing is that the Nickelback song is much better than this song. It certainly has a better chorus than, “you lied, you cried / the blood’s on the table”. This song’s composer didn’t seem to have much faith in any o’ this song’s melodies, as it stuffs like 3 o’ them into the verses, making this whole song feel like a jumble o’ hard rock guitar chugging rather than a coherent song, not helped by the repetitive, thrown-together lyrics that also keep repeating the words, “lied”, “cried”, & “blood on the table”. This song sure tried to stretch, “Bitch was mean to me & now pretends she’s sorry, but I’m still mad”, into a whole 3-minute song.

Grade: D

6. The Only Reason

This song’s annoyingly catchy carousel up & down melodies does nothing for me but remind me o’ their less annoying version o’ this from Life on Display, “Spin You Around”. ( Yes, I know, I am probably the only person who has that song burned into my memory. This is what happens when you let mainstream rock radio dictate your music tastes as a child in the 2000s ). I guess I don’t mind the breezy melodies before each verse. It doesn’t really fit the rest o’ the song tho.

Grade: D

7. Pitchin’ a Fit

O, good, we get more o’ Scatlin’s loogie voice.

This song is so repetitive I don’t e’en think it deserves a review. I counted 34 instances o’ Scatlin’s nostrils groaning, “she’s pitchin’ a”, & the verses are no less repetitive & generic: the song literally starts with, “it makes me sick, it makes me sick / it makes me sick when you’re in my face”. & the music is just generic riffs. There’s no way they spent mo’ than a couple hours making this whole song.

Grade: F

8. Uno Mas

O, ¿is it 5 de mayo again? Look, these crackers added the slightest bit o’ flavor: the chorus repeats “1 more time”, but the song is titled the Spanish translation — well, except the Spanish word for “more” is “más” with an accent o’er the “a”; without an accent “mas” means “but” or “however”, so this song’s title is actually, “1 but” or “1 however”… which I guess is interesting in its own right, but almost certainly not intentional.

This song is similarly repetitive as “Pitchin’ a Fit”, constantly repeating, “nothing’s really over” & “oh yeah, here we go again”, & has riffs & drumbeats that might as well not e’en be there, they’re so easy to ignore; but this song has much mo’ energy to it & this song probably has Scatlin’s best singing on this album, with him sounding like he’s genuinely losing his mind during the 2nd verse. Also, in this song’s defense, it does make sense for a song talking ’bout “1 more time” being repetitive.

Grade: C

9. Better Place

Another sad pop song that has decent, catchy melodies ruined by Scatlin’s nasally voice — especially the way he bleats out, “NEVER WANT TO SAY GOODBYE” in the chorus like a talking doll whose batteries are dying. I don’t get why a band like this called Puddle of Mudd would make a song like this. ¿Do people get catharsis from Puddle of Mudd in the same way one would get catharsis from an Adele song? I guess “Blurry” was their biggest song, & that song was kinda sad; but it was morose in a way that fit their grimy sound; it didn’t demand Scatlin to cry out clearly beyond his voice’s range like he’s Mariah Carey.

Grade: F

10. Hooky

& then that very sad song ’bout a lost loved one is followed by a goofy-ass song starting with someone going, “a-woocka wow”, ’bout how this grown-ass man doesn’t want to go to school today & wants to play hooky so he can stay home & masturbate. I’m not making that up — here’s the 1st chorus in all its Petrarchan glory:

i don’t want to go to school today
i wanna go outside & play
i don’t want to go to school today
i’ll stay @ home & masturbate
i don’t want to go to school today
the teacher’s always in my face
i don’t want to go to school today
i wanna punch the lunch lady

¿What did the lunch lady do to you? ¿Provide you sustenance to keep your energy up while you’re trying to learn?

Also, this:

i don’t want to go to school today
the girls all making fun of me

& this:

i don’t want to go to school today
¿what’s the point? i won’t get laid

Bro, you were around 37 when you released this song: it’s a good thing you weren’t getting laid by school girls. ¿Haven’t you gotten into ’nough legal trouble already?

This is the only other song I remembered from this album ’cause o’ how bizarre it was. Honestly, I kind o’ respect its audacious terribleness, which is a’least on brand for a band like Puddle of Mudd, unlike all the generic pop-rock songs I had to trudge thru earlier. If most o’ the songs on this album were like this, this review would’ve been far mo’ entertaining.

Grade: 🏫

Conclusion

It doesn’t surprise me that much that Puddle of Mudd took a long hiatus after this album. Relistening to it with critical ears, it’s clear that they had no idea what kind o’ band they wanted to be. It’s not nearly as unlistenable as, say, the Saliva album I reviewed; other than the 2 highlights, it’s mostly just forgettable & a li’l annoying.

Final Grade: D

“Divorced dad rock” is a common derisive term used gainst a vague mass o’ music, usually late 90s – early 2010s post-grunge, hard rock, & nu-metal music that had a style o’ mellow angst that would seem to apply to the kind o’ stereotypically regressive divorced ( usually white, since the assumption is that the average black man would be e’en mo’ disheartened @ the prospect o’ listening to these ignoble sub-genres & seeing what the crackers did with the rock genre they’d spawned; & in any way most o’ them had long past given up mainstream rock — we can’t include hipsters who listen to hardcore punk or black metal, as their whole goal is to be anomalous — as a lost cause to the crackers & have long moved on to hiphop & R&B ) man who is in need o’ catharsis from their music, but are too toxically masculine for traditional sad music, whose lyrics oft include bitterness o’er relationship troubles with a woman, oft with misogynous undertones, tho it may just be ’bout vague conflict gainst some “enemy” or angsty self-aggrandizing ’bout being “alone” or a “demon”. The stereotypical image is o’ a middle-aged beer-chugging ( usually working-class, since, let’s be honest, this stereotype was largely devised by college-educated middle class self-elected music-listening “elites” to look down @ the rabble ) trailer-park-dwelling white trash loser in a wife-beater & a motorcycle they bought during a midlife crisis & the common bands given as prime examples are either fake tough-guy angsty hard rock like Godmack or Five Finger Death Punch or masculine wangst like Nickelback, Creed, or Staind.

Now, I am no self-elected music elitist: in fact, tho I am college educated & middle class now ( & I am a hipster effete ’nough to prefer robes & denim skirts o’er wifebeaters & prefer public transportation o’er motorcycles ), my family are white trash ’nough that I once did spend a summer living in a trailer when I was in high school, & I did, in fact, grow up with a healthy dose o’ all 5 o’ these bands. Howe’er, as those familiar with other entries in this series know, I am also not music elitist ’nough to be insecure ’bout the music I listen to, which is why I have no problem polluting my YouTube recommendations with shit like Saliva ( in any case, the music I actually like listening to is the kind o’ weird mix o’ hipster experimental & mainstream trash like el horso that makes Creed look like real art ), so I have no problem joining in on the fun o’ making fun o’ this kind o’ music.

Howe’er, for this album I’m less interested in meming ’bout each o’ its enormous 43 tracklist, — tho I will be doing so, too — but seeing how well these songs fit within the genre o’ “divorced dad rock”. I’ve seen plenty o’ playlists & they oft include bizarre, seemingly arbitrary choices, so we’ll see if this seemingly official album does better.

1. “Here Without You”, 3 Doors Down

We start this album with a weepy, sad song that would be considered emo if 3 Doors Down weren’t a band so mainstream & plain they make Matchbox 20 look like Joy Division. I don’t hate on this band as much as other people — e’en tho, yes, I know they cringily played for the 2012 Republican Convention ( contrast that with Rage Against the Machine, who were far less biased: they played for both conventions ) — but I’m not particularly fond o’ this song unless I’m playing the Rock Band 3 version, which is a great way to test hammer-ons.

¿But does it make a good divorced dad song? I mean, it is sad & is ’bout losing someone & is from a band one would expect the kind of ol’ boring person who’d sit round listening to music while pining ’bout their divorce would listen to. Granted, I always suspected this song was ’bout a dying loved one, since it’d be very creepy to sing ’bout how their ex is “still on [ their ] lonely mind” & how they “think about you, baby” & how they “dream about you all the time”; but then Genius showed me an interview by this song’s composer where he outright says that, yes, ’twas inspired by an ex. I’d be curious to know how she felt ’bout it.

So, yeah, this 1st track is a perfect fit for divorced dad rock.

Relevance: S

2. “Scars”, Papa Roach

We can ne’er escape Big Poppa Roach. This is from an album we surprisingly haven’t looked @ yet, Getting Away with Murder. It’s cheesy & melodramatic, but I can’t not love this song for the same reason — tho the decision to not go with the Spanish-language version is cowardly.

In stark contrast to the previous track, which is ’bout someone stalking their ex, this is ’bout how the protagonist wants nothing to do with the ex. Or a’least that’s what it sounds like it’s about: apparently, according to composer Jacoby Shaddix, it’s ’bout a “horrible night in Vegas that changed my fucking life”, whate’er that means. Still, people reinterpret songs to fit their needs all the time, — I still insist that Arctic Monkeys’ “Crying Lightning” is literally ’bout a lightning storm, e’en tho I’m pretty sure that’s also ’bout relationship troubles — & I could definitely see a divorced dad getting drunk & singing karaoking to this to vent his frustration @ his mean ol’ ex.

Relevance: A

3. “Whiskey Hangover”, Godsmack

E’ery song by Godsmack is divorced dad rock, especially 1 with the title, “Whiskey Hangover”, so we don’t e’en need to waste any time making any kind o’ argument.

Relevance: S

4. “She Hates Me”, Puddle of Mudd

This is the kind o’ song I bring up whene’er anyone has the audacity to claim that Nickelback — much less Limp Bizkit or Creed, who sound like Led Zeppelin compared to this band — are the worst band, when nothing Nickelback has made comes e’en close to this sonic atrocity.

&, yeah, with its drunken guitar plicking & “singing” that doesn’t e’en sound like Wes Scantlin is trying to sing ’bout how she fucking hates him, this is a perfect song for some lame-ass divorced dad.

Relevance: S

5. “You’re Gonna Go Far, Kid”, The Offspring

After a strong 4-track streak, this album starts to really lose me with this song, which is a sarcastically peppy pop punk song ’bout some vague master manipulator — probably Bush or some vague US president, given the single’s cover showing the US bald eagle looking angry, tho, given this came out just before the end o’ Bush’s presidency, I’m not sure what the point o’ the former would be. I could see someone interpreting the lyrics ’bout some lying, manipulative ex & singing ’long to the song as mo’ snarky bitter venting than beer-in-hand depression, but it still feels like a weird choice, especially since The Offspring have a much, much better option in the form o’ “She’s Got Issues” or “Feelings”, both from their much mo’ popular album, Americana.

There’s also the genre mismatch: ¿aren’t divorced dad rock s’posed to be in the realm o’ post-grunge or hard rock — you know, boring bands trying to sound tough but failing that are s’posed to appeal to middle-aged people who wear wifebeaters & own a motorcycle they ne’er ride or some shit, like Godsmack? ¿How does a snarky 90s pop-punk band by a bunch o’ nerds whose lead singer has a PhD in molecular biology appeal to that stereotypical wifebeater-wearing motorcyclist? Yeah, they’re ol’; but you can’t just call any ol’ band “divorced dad rock”, or it means nothing. Nobody considered boomers who listened to Led Zeppelin or the Beatles in the 90s divorced dads; they were just out-o’-touch boomers. The divorced dad boomers were the ones listening to the fucking piña colada song or the original version o’ “Feelings”. No sane person considers all out-o’-touch millennials divorced dads; only the ones who still listen to bands like Hinder or Puddle of Mudd unironically & not just so they can snark ’bout it on a blog.

Relevance: D

6. “Fly Away”, Lenny Kravitz

& we just get worse from here. ¡“Fly Away”? ¡“Fly Away”? ¿The funky, catchy song ’bout wanting to fly ’way like a dragonfly or to see the Milky Way? ¿In what world is that divorced dad rock? It’s so happy & hopeful & just a fun song that has nothing to do with divorce. I mean, yeah, a divorced dad may indeed want to listen to this song to distract himself from his unhappiness: but a divorced dad just as may want to listen to Kirby music for the same reason. Again: @ this point the term becomes meaningless.

I mean, if you were going to pick a Lenny Kravitz song, it should’ve been “American Woman”.

Relevance: F

7. “The Kill (Bury Me)”, Thirty Seconds to Mars

¿A fucking emo song that isn’t e’en ’bout lost love? ¡A’least pick a Fall Out Boy song! This sounds less like a song a divorced dad — certainly not the stereotypical wifebeater-wearing motorcycle-owning dudebro mentioned earlier — would listen to & mo’ a song your cringe middle-aged millennial mom & dad would listen to @ their high school reunion after having a few too many drinks & singing it to themselves incompetently while trying to pretend they’re back in high school again.

Still, it is sad & the lines “I am finished with you” & “what if I wanted to break” a’least could be interpreted as breakup lyrics, so it’s far from the worst example.

Relevance: C

8. “Father of Mine”, Everclear

¡IN WHAT UNIVERSE DOES IT MAKE SENSE FOR A DIVORCED DAD TO WANT TO LISTEN TO A SONG FROM THE PERSPECTIVE O’ THE CHILD O’ A DEADBEAT DAD WHO THE CHILD SAYS BEAT HIS WIFE & WHOM THE CHILD CLEARLY DESPISES? This is s’posed to be songs that divorced dads listen to, not songs about divorced dads.

Relevance: F

9. “My Own Prison”, Creed

I mean, Creed is very much a divorced dad band, & this is a very mopey — but in a HARD, angsty way — song. ¿But would a song ’bout being stuck in “my own prison” really fit divorce? ¿Is divorce the prison? Sounds like it’d fit a dad who wishes he could get a divorce, but doesn’t want to have to pay child support or lose custody, so he sticks around “for the kids”.

For the record, I absolutely adore this song in all its cheesy melodrama: the deep “& I SAID OHHH…”s during the chorus & the absolutely gunky way Scott Strapp growls “SHOULDA BEEN DEAD ON A SUNDAY MORNING BANGING MY HEAD…”. That said, for me this is mo’ an “idiot trying to grind for a rare enemy encounter in Final Fantasy” song — that’s my own dorky-ass prison — than a divorced dad rock, but I admit my experiences aren’t e’eryone’s.

Relevance: B

10. “All American Nightmare”, Hinder

Ugh. As mentioned earlier, Hinder is a grade-A example o’ a band that divorced dads would listen to; ¿but this song, which is ’bout all the sexy girls the singer s’posedly gets? I mean, I guess it could be a song for divorced dads who are happy they’re divorced so they can have all the all night stands they want now. I feel like there were better choices that were mo’ popular: “Lips of an Angel” would fit well with a dad divorced for cheating with an ol’ flame or “How Long” for dads divorced ’cause the wife was cheating. But by the standards o’ this album so far, this is a much better choice than fucking “Fly Away”.

Relevance: B

11. “Simple Man”, Lynyrd Skynyrd

& now we’re back to the weird examples — not the least since I’m surprised, given this album’s focus on 2000s rock, this wasn’t the Shinedown cover. This song is ’bout, ’mong other things, how the young protagonist’s mother is telling him how he’ll eventually get married, making this a weirdly hopeful song for a past-his-prime divorced dad. It’s also too classic &, quite frankly, well-respected a song to be the kind o’ novelty cringe a divorced dad would listen to. Again, you can’t just call any boomer song divorced dad rock.

Relevance: D

12. “Call Me When You’re Sober”, Evanescence

Including a song by a woman in “divorced dad rock” is an interesting choice; tho there’s no reason why a divorced dad couldn’t find just as much solace commiserating with a woman who’s had a break up as with another man; & this song literally is ’bout the singer breaking up with someone: specifically the lead singer o’ another band, Seether, Shaun Morgan. I expect to see that band somewhere on this list, since they have tons o’ divorced dad rock material. &, you know what else, it’s also just a very good song in itself. Hell, I’ve ne’er e’en been interested in being in a relationship with anyone & I like to sing along to this song ’cause it’s just got great vocals.

Relevance: B

13. “Anthem of the Underdog”, 12 Stones

I don’t e’en know who the hell this band is, but as soon as I heard this song’s opening strained post-grunge singing that sounds like bootleg Skillet I knew this band a’least was divorced dad rock material. & indeed, looking @ the lyrics, it sounds like it might be ’bout someone whose been broken up with the lyrics, “& you’re here now feeling the pain of a thousand hearts”, which would sound emo if not for the bombastic hard rock sound — & that’s what I interpret divorced dad rock to be: hard rock emo.

Relevance: A

14. “Tear Away”, Drowning Pool

I mean, if anything, it’s nice to get acknowledgment that Drowning Pool did mo’ than the “bodies hit the floor” song, especially this song, whose calm, cool chorus crooning ’bout how the singer, “don’t care about anyone else but me”, especially the end o’ the 2nd verse leading up to the bridge, where the singer says with heavy filtering, “god damn i love me”.

& I guess you could interpret this song’s lyrics as being ’bout someone whose selfishness pushes ’way love interests & I guess this band’s nu-metal mellow angst sound would be popular with divorced dads… but I just feel like there are far mo’ fitting choices that we haven’t seen yet. Plus, the implications o’ the stereotypical divorced dad is usually that he lacks the self-awareness to blame himself for the relationship falling apart, certainly not in the calm way this song does.

Relevance: C

15. “Say It Ain’t So”, Weezer

Sigh, this is the same problem as “Father of Mine”, but maybe less egregious, since Rivers Cuomo seemed much mo’ conflicted ’bout his feelings for his father & stepfather than Art Alexakis’s righteous vitriol gainst his alleged wifebeating father. Yes, this is a song ’bout divorced dads in a way, but, ’gain, it’s ’bout the child’s perspective & the lingering affect it left on them, making it mo’ “child o’ divorced dad” rock than music a divorced dad would want to listen to. & again, this is pop-punk emo, & a band that is a bit o’ a meme ’mong gen z, to boot. Calling Weezer divorced dad rock is like calling Smash Mouth or My Chemical Romance divorced dad rock: it’s just wrong, not the least ’cause most Weezer fans are probably still too socially maladjusted to get a girlfriend @ all, much less a wife.

Grade: F

16. “Touch, Peel and Stand”, Days of The New

Days of the New is 1 o’ those post-grunge bands barely anyone remembers, but ’mong those who do, they’re considered a bit o’ a cult classic, 1 o’ the few post-grunge bands with any kind o’ critical respect, probably due to the relative obscurity & due to the early end o’ the band & the sad way it came ’bout, too. & indeed, I did always loved this song’s swampy guitar & bass notes.

That being said, we have to be honest with ourselves & admit that this is far from the worst example o’ divorced dad rock with its mellow angst post-grunge sound. & while this song is almost certainly ’bout the singer abusing himself with drugs, the lines, “you’re always talking back to me / you won’t let it go”, show how this self-abuse includes pushing ’way ones loved ones, leaving one alone. @ the very least, it’d be hard to deny that this would make a good song for a dad who ended up divorced due to drug problems, which I can only imagine is a common cause for divorce.

Relevance: B

17. “New Tattoo”, Saving Abel

Saving Abel is ’nother post-grunge band that isn’t very well known; but unlike Days of the New, they’re not respected critically, & that’s probably ’cause, unlike Days of the New, they blow ass. Also, Days of the New hit it in the late 90s when grunge was still somewhat fresh, whereas Saving Abel came up in the late 2000s when people were sick o’ post-grunge. I’m almost certain I won’t remember this song with its plodding drums & weak vocals trying & failing to sound smooth & tough before I’m e’en done with this post.

This song is like Hinder’s “All American Nightmare” in that it’s mo’ ’bout going out on one night stands with women, so mo’ for dads happy they’re divorced. If the band weren’t completely forgotten by e’eryone but me, I’d think that the band Rehab’s “Last Tattoo” would fit better, as that is clearly ’bout a man bitter ’bout a breakup & has the same white-trash mellow angst sound.

Relevance: B

18. “If You Could Only See”, Tonic

Terrible choice, absolutely terrible. You boneheads, this song is ’bout someone being in love with someone, not breaking up with someone. ¡This is the last song a divorced dad wants to hear! Especially an older, past-his-prime divorced dad, since it’s ’bout a young man being in love with an older woman. Also, an alt rock band like Tonic feels way off course for the stereotypical divorced dad demographic.

Relevance: F

19. “My Sacrifice”, Creed

Since I’m probably ne’er going to do a post on the album whence this song comes, now is the only time where I can come out in say it: this song sounds nice. Honestly, in general Creed isn’t that bad a band & have genuinely good music; they just have a terrible singer who sounds like he’s choking on a squirrel as he sings & has a lot o’ drama surrounding him — most seriously getting a felony for domestic abuse gainst his wife — & has goofy, sappy lyrics — as evident by Alter Bridge, which is just Creed with a better lead singer, being liked as much as they are.

Also, this is an e’er weirder choice than “My Own Prison”, given how hopeful this song sounds & how it’s ’bout trying to build back one’s life after terrible times. I guess that fits for a divorced dad trying to rebuild his life after said divorce… Honestly, thinking ’bout it mo’, Creed feels less like divorced dad rock & mo’ like “person who converted to Christianity because they ruined their life with drugs & feel like they need some kind o’ external magic to keep them from being a fuckup” rock. I’d ne’er gotten a sense that a Creed fan would wear wifebeaters or think o’ themselves as that tough as, say, a Godsmack or Five Finger Death Punch fan.

Also, since we’re talking ’bout this song in particular, I have to bring up the hilarious MadTV parody o’ postgrunge, which includes a parody o’ this song’s goofy music video with them rowing a boat thru a flooded city:

Relevance: C

20. “Lips of an Angel”, Hinder

O, here we go: I was waiting for this. As I said, this is a perfect song for a dad who got divorced ’cause he got caught cheating, & Hinder is the perfect sound for the stereotypical divorced dad.

God, this song sounds so bad. It makes the worst 80s metal ballad sound like Otis Redding. Unlike, Creed, whose sappiness is funny — mainly ’cause Scott Strapp is so bad @ sappy singing with his gremlin voice — this song has so much cheese it makes me feel sick listening to it.

Relevance: A

21. “Forever”, Papa Roach

E’en when this album doesn’t pick weird bands, — Papa Roach is a perfectly good choice for divorced dad rock — sometimes the songs they pick are surprising, especially when they’re lesser known songs, like this 1. ¿How many people remember this 1?

This is, like the 1st track, a creepy example, since it’s a romantic song ’bout how the singer’s “feelings for you are forever”; howe’er, unlike 3 Doors Down, Jacoby Shaddix is not a complete creep ( as far as I know ), & this song isn’t ’bout an ex o’ Shaddix’s, but, hilariously, ’bout drug use: it’s apparently ’bout Shaddix deciding to give up on his “7-8 years of debauchery” & presumably a bittersweet feelings he have ’bout giving up something that is so unhealthy, but also probably brought a lot o’ fun & good memories. Honestly, that’s a cool, funny idea for a song & makes me like this song mo’.

This song loses points on relevancy because e’en if maybe a divorced dad might want to listen to this song to commiserate ’bout his ex, he shouldn’t, & while Papa Roach in general oft sounds like a divorced dad rock, this song sounds like 1 o’ their lesser o’ that sound, having a much gently, smoother sound: it’s certainly mellow, but there’s hardly any angst.

Relevance: B

22. “I Stand Alone”, Godsmack

“I stand alone” sounds like the perfect cope a divorced dad would tell himself while putting on his wifebeater & revving up his own midlife-crisis motorcycle while cranking up his good ol’ Godsmack.

Relevance: S

23. “Everyone’s Fool”, Evanescence

OK, I defended the earlier Evanescence song, ’cause ’twas literally ’bout a break up, but this is a song primarily aimed @ teenage women feeling pressured to fit in with society. I’m not saying a divorced dad couldn’t like this song: I’m saying one who does is either too progressive to fit into the denigrating stereotype that people harbor when they use the term or is way too interested in matters regarding teenage women to not merit being put on a list.

Relevance: F

24. “Savior”, Rise Against

I don’t care how ol’ this song or I am: this will always be a youthful anthem. Also, pop punk is not divorced dad rock — just stop. This is less egregious than the earlier pop punk examples, since this song is ’bout a breakup; but it feels mo’ like an angsty teenage breakup than the breakup o’ a douchy, past-his-prime dad.

Relevance: D

25. “Paralyzer”, Finger Eleven

No, no, no. ¿What idiot put this on the list? This is a club dance jam ’bout getting ladies, not ’bout getting divorced. The last thing some mopey divorced dad wants to hear is this happy song ’bout going out & partying when he clearly isn’t. It doesn’t e’en have the bitter cope that “All American Nightmare” & “New Tattoo” have, either. Furthermo’, the singer sings with a kind o’ youthful wallflower shyness o’ someone who probably hasn’t had a girlfriend yet, much less been divorced. Finally, this indie-pop sound doesn’t gel with the “divorced dad” energy @ all. Like the Thirty Seconds to Mars song earlier, this sounds mo’ like a song a cringe ol’ married couple would sing to each other @ the bar; it’s too romantic for divorced dads.

Worse, there are much better Finger Eleven songs: ¡“Talking to the Walls” is literally ’bout whining ’bout how “bent & broken” the singer is “since I’ve been without you”! ¡& that was from the same album as “Paralyzer”!

Relevance: F

26. “The Diary of Jane”, Breaking Benjamin

I was waiting for ol’ Ben to show up. Sigh. I love this song, but, yeah, I can see this as divorced dad rock. I mean, when I look up “divorced dad rock” in Google, 1 o’ their top questions is “Is Breaking Benjamin divorced dad rock?” & Google’s “AI Overview” answers bluntly, “Yes” — & as the wise Karl Jobst said, “AI never lies. I mean give me a single example that AI was every wrong. You can’t”. & tho this song is mo’ ’bout the protagonist obsessing pining o’er a women he probably has ne’er been able to get, I can see a divorced dad twisting that to be ’bout his obsession with his ex or just his obsession with having love or sex after losing it.

Relevance: A

27. “What If”, Creed

These opening notes sound eerily similar to the Beatles’ “She’s So Heavy”. This is especially funny, given that after this nice sounding symphony, we suddenly get Scott Strapp shouting @ the listener like Cletus from The Simpsons with corny-ass whitebread riffs. Also, ¿this was made for Scream 3? I ne’er watched that movie, but the idea o’ asking Creed to make a horror movie — e’en a comedic horror movie — song is hilarious.

Anyway, this is a better choice than the other Creed songs, since it sounds angry & bitter; & tho it’s probably not ’bout an ex, the vague vitriol gainst someone else who “lied” & how the singer wants “an eye for an eye” could certainly be twisted to serve an evil ex.

Relevance: A

28. “One Headlight”, The Wallflowers

While sad, this song is not ’bout divorce, but maybe ’bout a loved one dying; & there’s no bitter sad angst, but weak hope. Also, nobody thinks alt rock is divorced dad rock material. I’m pretty sure the stereotypical “divorced dad” would find this song “gay”.

Relevance: D

29. “When I’m Gone”, 3 Doors Down

God damn it, now you’re fucking up with bands that could be candidates for divorced dad rock. Listen to the fucking lyrics to this song: ¿does it sound like divorced dad material? “So hold me when I’m here, right me when I’m wrong”. ¿Does that sound like bitter divorce material? No, it’s romantic love gestures from someone who has to leave his lover to the regret o’ both o’ them, presumably temporarily, & probably either to go on tour or to go fight in a war. Only a divorced dad under the delusion that he’s not divorced would want to listen to this.

Relevance: F

30. “Addicted”, Saving Abel

I’m gonna go apeshit:

I’m so addicted to
all the things you do
when you’re going down on me
in between the sheets

I think it should be completely uncontroversial for me to assert that no romantic song or song ’bout making love or being addicted to someone should be a contender for “divorced dad rock”, e’en when by a band as buttrock-ass as Saving Abel.

Relevance: F

31. “Between Angels and Insects”, Papa Roach

¿Did the curator for this list just read this song title & assume it’s ’bout a broken relationship & not antimaterialism? I mean, yeah, maybe a divorced dad might cope by saying, “take my money, I don’t need that shit” when his wife & her superior lawyer takes him to the cleaners, but that requires some creative imagining.

Relevance: C

32. “Bound for the Floor”, Local H

OK, this band was ol’ when I became a young adult, & I still think this is a youthful band, especially when this song involves a bunch o’ kids on… whate’er that playground wheel thing is. ¿Who else is divorced dad rock? ¿Nirvana? ¿Sonic Youth? This song is ’bout the grunge angst the youth felt during the 90s, not an ol’ man whining ’bout his mean ol’ ex leaving him.

Relevance: D

33. “Control”, Puddle of Mudd

God damn it, they did it ’gain… O’ all the Puddle of Mudd songs that would’ve made perfect fits, you picked the song ’bout how the singer is having so much filthy sex & how he “hates it” ( read: loves it ) & “you’re not the one for me” ( read: “you’re bad for me, but I love it” ). This is, ’gain, a romantic song. It’s a gross & stupid song, — especially the way he keeps talking ’bout how he loves “the way you smack my ass” in the most white-trash-ass drawl while dramatically increasing his voice — but still a romantic song.

Relevance: F

34. “With Arms Wide Open”, Creed

¿How many Creed songs are on here? ¿Why does Nickelback get no love? They make a better divorced dad band.

This is a hopeful song ’bout the singer realizing he is ’bout to become a father, which is almost the opposite o’ a dad becoming divorced & most likely losing custody o’ his children. Congratulations, curator: you picked literally the least-fitting Creed song.

Relevance: F

35. “Re-Education (Through Labor)”, Rise Against

¿What the fuck? OK, this just makes me laugh out loud, ’cause it’s such an out-there pick: this is a political radical pop punk song whose title ironically compares the brutality o’ capitalist societies to the prison systems o’ totalitarian communist regimes. ¿What does that have to do with divorced dads? I mean, yeah, I guess it’s possible for a divorced dad to, while pondering the breakdown o’ his marriage, turn his attention to the material conditions that might have led to that breakdown & may come to blame the capitalist system o’ production for his divorce & become a radical communist as a result. Again: requires a lot o’ imagining to get to that conclusion, tho.

Relevance: F

36. “All Over You”, Live

OK, this is just the curator being an idiot who wasn’t paying attention to the lyrics: they heard “all over you” & interpreted it as being ’bout breaking up with someone; but if you pay close attention to the lyrics, the singer is actually talking ’bout how they’re all o’er each other like water & how she lays him down — it’s a song ’bout having sex. So we have yet ’nother romantic “divorced dad” song.

Relevance: F

37. “Hands Down”, Dashboard Confessional

Yes, this twink-ass emo song is totally what a wifebeater-wearing middle aged divorced man would listen to & not what a mopey middle-class teenager would listen to while putting on their mascara.

Relevance: F

38. “Downfall”, TRUSTCompany

Honestly, by this point I’m so numb to bad choices that I just feel like shrugging @ this choice. Sure. ¿Why not? It feels a bit too calm for the stereotypically wangsty divorced dad & a bit too emo & it seems to be mo’ a plea to the other to break up with the protagonist, not complaining ’bout being rejected, but maybe a divorced dad could view this as cope: “I was the one who broke up with her”. I mean, nobody e’er specified that the divorced dad wasn’t the one who initiated the divorce — that was always implied, but technically ne’er specified.

Also, I had no idea this song came out in 2002. It’s not that surprising stylistically, since this kind o’ postgrunge / nu-metal / emo kind o’ music was common then. It’s not too far from Chevelle or Taproot. But I remember hearing this song on the local buttrock station — 99.9 ¡THE ROCK!, which, I shit you not, back when I listened to it in high school had talk shows called “The Morning BJ” & “The Men’s Room”, which were exactly what you’d expect — in the early 2010s, so I figured ’twas part o’ that era I called the “undead grunge” era, when postgrunge had really started to decay, with bands like Redlight King, Halestorm, & 10 Years. I can feel the nostalgia flowing into me while thinking ’bout these long-forgotten bands already.

Relevance: C

39. “Whatever It Takes”, Lifehouse

O, god, yes, this fits great with its hokey fake KFC twang & the stalkerish wangst ’hind lines like, “i’ll do whatever it takes to turn this around”. Also, this chrous’s melody sounds like a copy o’ Buckcherry’s “Sorry”, which is probably ’cause it sounds like the most cliché wangst melody.

Relevance: S

40. “Fix Me”, 10 Years

¡Speak o’ the devil! Now this song did come out 2010, when I remember hearing it all the time on that aforementioned buttrock station. &, yes, its petrified postgrunge angst telling you, “don’t try to fix me”, & how they “feed on the friction” fits that “fuck you, I’m not mad, but I’m gonna listen to a bunch o’ songs ’bout being mad” energy that defines divorced dad rock.

Relevance: S

41. “Suffocate”, Cold

As soon as I heard the sewer-sounding low guitar strings, followed by a voice with an accent I don’t recognize but sounds like the accent a poor white person somewhere would have saying, “i could take e’ery fuckin’ word she said / throw it in her face”, I knew this was a perfect fit for this album.

I almost thought I’d ne’er heard o’ this band, — I certainly don’t remember this song — but ’pon looking them up, I ran into this song called “Just Got Wicked”, which I do remember ’cause… just listen to that song & tell me you wouldn’t remember how goofy it is. I think they stopped playing this nu-metal wannabe band on the radio before I got into rock, so I missed this band ’long with other early B-list nu-metal bands like Coal Chamber, Mushroomhead, & Skindred, & only found this song a couple years ago while watching random music videos.

Relevance: S

42. “Crawling in the Dark”, Hoobastank

I’m not feeling this choice. This sounds mo’ like ✝-rock than divorced dad rock & sounds mo’ like what some teenaged emo would make an Inuyasha AMV for, — &, in fact, I was able to find a’least 4 do exist in amazing crusty Game Boy Advance resolutions — not something a divorced dad would listen to while drinking beers in his man cave. “¿is there something more than what i’ve been handed?” just doesn’t sound like a line from divorced dad rock.

Relevance: D

43. “Overcome”, Creed

This album compiler overcame @ the thought o’ adding Creed songs to this album, as I think this is the 5th song. & this is from their 2009 “comeback” that e’eryone ignored, — I ne’er heard this single on the radio — which is surprising, as it sounds better than a lot o’ their earlier work with that guitar solo in the bridge & Scott Strapp sounding less stuffy & mumbly in his singing. Honestly, it’s a better choice than nearly all o’ the earlier choices, since it has a mo’ southern sound than their other work, is much less gentle-sounding, & is ’bout overcoming some vague troubles, which could include being divorced.

Relevance: B

Conclusion

As you’ve probably already gathered, I was not impressed by the song choices in this list. In fact, this list had some o’ the worst song choices imaginable. There was also a lack o’ variety & a shocking lack o’ expected bands. I can only imagine there were licensing issues behind Nickelback being missing, as ’bout half o’ All the Right Reasons could be considered divorced dad rock. Same could be said for the absence o’ Theory of a Dead Man, which is near the top o’ divorced dad rock.

Because o’ this, I’ve decided to provide my own list o’ songs I think would’ve worked better, not including the songs I praised from this album, like “She Hates Me”.

“No Surprise”, Theory of a Deadman

It was certainly a surprise this song wasn’t on this album with its squeaky bootleg saloon guitar melodies & with a chorus like this:

well it ain’t no surprise
that you turn me on & leave
it ain’t no surprise
that you turn it around on me
i don’t know why
you won’t give me what i need
it ain’t no surprise
that that bitch is leavin’ me

If that ain’t divorced dad rock material, I don’t know what is.

I would also add “Bitch Came Back” as another excellent choice. If you’re sitting their with curiosity & dread, I have to confirm your worst fears, but, yes, that is a remix o’ the ol’ blues song, “The Cat Came Back”. & that’s not e’en the worst song this band has concocted, either. People who call Nickelback the worst band e’er are blissfully ignorant o’ the true depths music can stoop.

But the upside o’ this is that it gives me surely my 1 & only chance to show you guys this ol’ Canadian cartoon, which will make a nice break from divorced dad rock:

“Someday”, Nickelback

Speaking o’ Nickelback… — & Canadians — It actually took me a bit to decide on what song to prioritize, since many, including “Should’ve Listened”, “Do This Anymore”, “Flat on the Floor”, &, as mentioned earlier, practically half o’ All the Right Reasons would’ve been good candidates. I picked this song ’cause o’ how big a single ’twas & how much it whines ’bout relationship problems while blaming the other — tho I probably would’ve chosen “Do This Anymore” if ’twas a single.

“Sorry”, Buckcherry

A better choice than the Lifehouse song.

“Walk Away”, Five Finger Death Punch

¿& how was Five Floured Danish Pies not on this list? I picked “Walk Away” because, I mean, just listen to the passive aggressive way he croaks out, “I’m sorry… for the demon i’ve become”.

Also, ¿has this song always been so shittily mixed or did Five Fantasy Dragon Power’s official YouTube video just upload an MP3 they found off a file sharing site? The high hats sound like someone dropping a bunch o’ silverware in the other room.

“Right Here”, Staind

Tho I’m surprised not to see this band on this list, to be honest, like Creed, this band’s a questionable choice, being on the gentler side, especially since I think most o’ Staind’s songs were ’bout angst toward parents rather than toward an ol’ lover. But “Right Away”, with lines like, “i’ve got some imperfections / but how could you collect them all & throw them in my face”, followed by a chorus talking ’bout how she’ll always have him “right here waiting” — for her restraining order, that is — & just the general passive aggressive tone makes this song a perfect fit.

Also, speaking o’ the band Cold from before, my YouTube recommendations tell me that Cold had a song featuring Staind’s lead singer. It sucks.

“Breakdown”, Seether

I’m also shocked @ the lack o’ Seether, given how many songs they made that would fit. I mainly included this song ’cause ’twas a response to Evanescence’s “Call Me When You’re Sober” above after Evanescence’s lead singer, Amy Lee, — that black-haired woman in the music video is clearly her — broke up with Seether’s lead singer, Shaun Morgan, & so it would’ve made a funny inclusion.

“Always”, Saliva

It’s a Saliva song & he’s nasally whining ’bout how he can’t live without you. I need to say nothing mo’.

“Home”, Three Days Grace

Sigh. I s’pose I should be glad this band was left off the list, but as much as I love this band, they’ve made plenty o’ relationship angst songs that could be classified as divorced dad rock. I picked this song o’er “I Hate Everything About You”, ’cause that song could arguably be a love song. “I Don’t Care” by Apocalyptica featuring Adam Gontier as the singer would also be a good choice, but probably isn’t nearly as well known as this song nowadays. Same could be said ’bout “Bitter Taste” — tho that song, ’long with its whole album, has a softer sound, so I don’t think it works as well as this song.

“All The Same”, Sick Puppies

& while we’re @ it, we should include the Australian Three Days Grace bootleg, the Sick Puppies. This is far from a well-known song, — honestly, ¿does anyone else e’en remember this band, & if so, do they remember any song other than “You’re Going Down”? — but this has a music video, which is good ’nough, & the cheesy shout during the bridge, “¡JUST GO AHEAD SAY IT! — you’re leaving / you’ll just come back running”, fits perfectly.

“Send the Pain Below”, Chevelle

I really like this song, — e’en if Chevelle is clearly bootleg Deftones — but just lol @ this song’s title. You can’t tell me a song that symbolizes a toxic relationship thru the emasculating image o’ genital mutilation isn’t prime divorced dad rock material.

“Happy?”, Mudvayne

You know, I’ve ne’er thought ’bout it, but I’m pretty certain this is a breakup song, with lyrics like, “tear me from myself / ¿are you feeling happy now?”.

“If You Only Knew”, Shinedown

Surprisingly, I don’t recall Shinedown having that many relationship angst songs, — a’least ’mong their singles; I’m not sifting thru their whole discography to find a fitting deep cut — but I found this song, which was apparently written ’bout an ex pregnant with the composer/singer’s kid.

“Last Time”, Fuel

“Hemorrhage (In My Head)” was way mo’ popular, this song being a deep cut, but that song’s ’bout the singer’s grandmother dying & seemed too sad & not angry ’nough. This song fits much better.

“You Oughta Know”, Alanis Morissette

I mean if we’re going to include songs by women like “Call Me When You’re Sober”, I don’t see why we’re leaving out “You Oughta Know” — I would certainly put it @ the top for “divorced mom rock”.

2nd Conclusion

I could probably find many mo’ better examples, but I think you get the point.

¿Remember Saliva? They did that song “Click Click Boom” & the album Every Six Seconds, which apparently went platinum. While not as popularly hated as the big nu-metal lolpigs like Limp Dick, Staind Boxer Shorts, or since their recent crashout brought them back to attention, Trapt Being Fascist Edgelords for Scraps o’ Attention, there are quite a few people who’ve memed on them, & my main rival in meming ’bout 2000s rock, Rocked’s “Regretting the Past”, covered the aforementioned Every Six Seconds.

I, howe’er, will not be covering that album, but what is apparently their least-selling album, Cinco Diablo, which, as this post’s title says, is just Spanish gibberish that translates to “5 Devil” & which no Spanish-speaking person says — which is why Google searches for that term just show this album or some sandwich — ’cause it sounds dumb as hell. Yes, that’s right: we’re digging e’en deeper than Rocked & going after the bottom o’ the bottom o’ the barrel.

¿Why did I pick this album? Where, I’ll just reveal how the sausage is made & give you my 3 ( nonbinding ) guidelines I follow when deciding what albums to review:

1. Ideally, Rocked hasn’t already covered it in “Regretting the Past”
2. Ideally, it’s not something that e’eryone on the internet talks ’bout
3. Ideally, it’s something I actually listened to in the 2000s & for which I harbor some nostalgia/embarrassment

While Every Six Seconds only fits 1 o’ those 3 criteria, unfortunately, Cinco Diablo fits all 3. I remember I stumbled ’pon this album @ my local library where I checked out albums instead o’ buying them, ’cause ’twas too broke & cheap & lol on the idea o’ e’en high school me paying money for fucking Saliva, & checked it out ’cause I remember this band as the “Click Click Boom” “Your Disease” — I actually preferred that song as a teen — band. I haven’t thought ’bout this album much since then beyond seeing it sometimes when digging thru my ol’ MP3s.

1. Family Reunion

¿Where do I e’en start? I love how the singer, Josey Scott, sings all tough & badass, but covers up his filthy mouth by saying “motherlovin’”. For all the flack they get for their goofy emo lyrics, Linkin Park were able to avoid swearing on their 1st 2 albums without anyone really noticing, ’cause they didn’t have to resort to words like “motherlovin’”, but for Saliva that would’ve taken actual creativity, so let’s just replace common profanities with substitutes your grandma would say instead for no reason.

Add to that the fact that this song is yet ’nother “let me make a big deal ’bout how I’m singing a song as the topic o’ the song itself”, clearly made to get crowds going in concerts, with Josey telling the audience to “sit back while i wrestle this microphone” — yeah, you show that microphone who’s tough. This song also sounds like the most halfassed attempt @ cultlike emotional manipulation o’ trying to pretend your crowd o’ randos are a “family” having a “reunion” & how them all coming together to watch a C-list nu-metal band sing 1 o’ their least successful singles will “make you feel all right” & make you “forget the world’s confusion”.

But forget the lyrics… That chorus… If you made the wise decision to avoid partaking o’ this song into your ears yourself, imagine a high-pitched squealing voice singing some hoedown-type ditty: “’cause here we come agiiiiiiiin / everybody get all your friiiiiiiiiiends”. People who are used to my reviews will note that I am by no means a full-on hipster: I’ve defended songs by Nickelback. Hell, I kinda like “Click Click Boom” & “Your Disease” in all their goofiness. So it says something when I, who grew up listening to this crap on the radio thruout the 2000s, wonder to myself how they e’er let this on the radio. I don’t e’en have anything to say ’bout the guitars & drums other than that they’re there, I guess.

Grade: F

2. My Own Worst Enemy

Believe it or not, this was a song I willingly listened to — & off the radio, too — back in high school, & possibly e’en burned to a CD from a CD I checked out from the library. In a world where I knew o’ far less music than I know now & now have @ the tip o’ my fingers much better music than the slop I’d happily take from mainstream radio, when I could tolerate any song with heavy drums, chugga-chugga riffing, & a man growling o’er it, I guess I could see myself liking this in the background.

&, you know, e’eryone hates on Josey Scott’s nasally voice, but I don’t think it’s always terrible. I think he does fine when singing the prechorus in this song. I mean, the lyrics are vague trash ’bout how “you” ( which guess is the protagonist, since he’s calling himself his own worse enemy ) made him bleed & killed his dreams. ¿What dreams? ¿What the hell are you talking ’bout?

But his singing gets much worse in the chorus proper, where he enunciates “you’re gonna be dead & gowan” in such a goofy way, &, as if mocking the listener begging for a reprieve from the sound o’ ass — & I think that’s a humble request IMO — the music becomes quieter & you get to hear him much mo’ clearly enunciate that “life goes owan”. As this album promised, this is, indeed, diabolical.

I should add that the rest o’ this song’s lyrics are no better: “i’m outta control”, “i sold my soul”, “i dig this hole”, “abomination”, “hesitation”, “revelation”, “devastation”. People oft say AI generated something when they call something low-effort slop, but I actually think AI would’ve made better lyrics.

Grade: D

3. Best of Me

See, this song isn’t so bad. I kinda like the somewhat menacing way Josey sings the verses, only to burst into thoughtless shouting ’bout how he’s bending & breaking. Howe’er, we get a sharp turn into balladlike crooning just afterward, “out of the best of me / you took everything”, which e’en a mental breakdown couldn’t ’scuse. E’en the music isn’t too bad, especially the way it builds from the weird chants @ the beginning.

Grade: C

4. How Could You?

¿How could you follow that decent song with this lame-ass nu-metal ballad? Ugh, the twinkling plunking guitar strings starting with possibly the most cliché post-grunge phrase e’er, “i’m addicted to [every single thing] you [do]”, only to build into melodramatic bombast during the chorus.

Just read these poetic chorus lines:

¿how could you cheat on me?
then turn your back on me
you told me all the lies
& hypnotized & I believed

Yes, Josey, if she successfully hypnotized you then, by definition, she made you believe — that’s how hypnotizing someone works. Pure lyrical filler.

¿What is with nu-metal & post-grunge bands & being unable to do e’en the bare minimum o’ not just stating outright what kind o’ song you’re writing? This is why people shit their pants @ Deftones making the most basic o’ abstract imagery: ’cause it’s legitimately shocking to see baseline competent lyricism in a genre where it’s OK to just write, “that bitch cucked me with my friend / now this is the end”, which I’m pretty sure is a real Theory of a Dead Man song.

Grade: F

5. Hunt You Down

A bunch o’ generic riffs, a pause, & then, “¡HUUUUUAGGGHHH!”. Brilliant.

But it doesn’t stop there. Next we get Josey in his squeaky voice valley-girl-rapping ’bout how “i am the master of this game / & everybody knows my name” & how “you have thrown the gauntlet down” & how he’s the “one who wears the crown” & how “when you chose to raise your hand / that’s when a boy messed with a man”. This sounds like shit a sword collector on YouTube would write. But then he ends the chorus by growling, “i will always hunt you DOOOOOOWWWWN…”.

This song sounds like ass with its sputtering drums & weird beep in the background during the verses & basic guitar chugging during the choruses… But it does make me laugh, so I’ll save it from a F grade with an emoji grade:

Grade: 👑

6. Judgment Day

OK, this is where e’en my high school self had too high standards to keep listening, so the rest o’ these are mo’ blurry to my memory. I can say that I’m already starting to get a headache from the thick, textureless guitar riffs that fill e’ery 1 o’ these songs, clearly falling into the philosophy that louder is better. I can only assume that if I were to look @ the wavelengths o’ these songs in Audacity they’d just show blue rectangles. The annoying chorus o’ “BANG BANG BANG / another body goes”, both hokey sing-songy & thudding, a terrible combination, doesn’t help.

Arguably, this is a better song than any o’ the previous songs, a’least lyrically, as it’s mo’ than just vague boasts ’bout how tough the singer is or whining ’bout some ex, but is instead the cliché hard rock trope o’ a song ’bout the troubles o’ soldiers in the war & how they just want to go home & raise their families. It’s something, I guess — it’s something weaker than the average song off Disturbed’s Ten Thousand Fists, which I considered 1 o’ their weaker albums, so not much. Then again, the western style matched with the description o’ desert-like weather — presumably referencing the middle east — is kind o’ an interesting mix.

Sonically, this song’s only reprieve is the weird noodly faux-southern guitar solo during the bridge.

Grade: D

7. Forever And a Day

Another shitty love ballad. ¿Why would a band named “Saliva” make so many love ballads?

The music’s what you’d expect, — a blend o’ the worst elements o’ pop moaning & tweening with stock hard rock elements for “flavor” — so I’ll focus on the lyrics, which are the worst on this album so far. You know it’s all downhill when you start with the lyrics, “the complicated ways of love / become all you’re thinking of”. Later we get an e’en better rhyme pair with “compromises” & “eyes and”.

E’en this song’s concept is stupid: “forever and a day” is both inane in itself, being no greater than just “forever”, & yet still a cliché. ¿Couldn’t you come up with something mo’ creative, like “till the day i learn to write good lyrics”? I’d argue that that would hammer in the eternity angle e’en better.

Grade: F

8. I’m Coming Back

This song’s beginning is just storebrand “Down with the Sickness”, with the bland marching drums & the whispered, “¿are you ready?”, but without all the funny stuff afterward. Instead, Josey whines ’bout some vague badness going on now like an ol’ man yelling out clouds, crying, “¿what happened to the world we grew up in? / ¿was it this serious?”. It’s all stock clichés with agonizingly corny rhymes: “road’s too long to follow”, “pain’s too much to swallow”, “seems there’s no tomorrow”. If they needed a 4th rhyming line I would bet money it’d be “feels like my time is borrowed”.

Meanwhile, the verses have the other problem o’ not e’en trying to rhyme, “rhyming” “dangerous” with “serious”, & then “serious” again, which is rhymed with “back to us”.

& then in the bridge they do the generic marching drums & “¿are you ready?” & I’m like, dude, this isn’t a hard song, stop adding this weird bravado shit ’tween whining ’bout how much pain you’re feeling. It’s like if partway thru “Crawling” Chester Bennington suddenly shouted, “¡now i’m slappin’ ya with my big dick!”, ’cept that would actually be funny & probably would’ve made that song better.

Grade: F

9. Southern Girls

¿Do I need to review a song called “Southern Girls”? ¿Do you think a song called “Southern Girls” by Saliva has any chance o’ being good? No, I don’t need to hear Josey in his valley-girl country accent jizz all o’er me with lines ’bout girls with “baby faces” ( CERTIFIED LOVERBOY CERTIFIED PEDOPHILE WOP WOP WOP WOP WOP ) & “orange knee-high hips” — hold it, ¿what the fuck does that mean? 1st, ¿why is the girl orange? 2nd… ¿“knee-high hips”? ¿DO YOU IDIOTS KNOW WHAT HIPS ARE? HIPS ARE BY DEFINITION NOT UP TO YOUR KNEE BUT WAY HIGHER. AUUUUUGGGGGHHHH.

If that kind o’ alien doesn’t turn you on, Josey also talks ’bout wanting a girl who will “milk your cow” & “climb your tree” — you know, as all the bros say when talking ’bout their lays down @ the pub: “Aw, man, she totally milked my cow, dogg”.

I refuse to listen to anymore o’ this song to hear what it sounds like, but it’s ass. You can listen to yourself & dare tell me I missed some great guitar licks somewhere or just accept that a song with the line “they can milk your cow” could have the riffs from “War Pigs” & still not make up for it.

Grade: F

10. So Long

¡Thank god!

¿Why does this song start with weird spacey electronic notes? ¿Who said to themselves they wanted fucking Saliva to do space rock but shitty? Well, good news, it ends soon & is replaced by the same generic soft riffs & crooning on all the other lame ballads — tho they do add some goofy spacey filter that makes his voice sound far away @ the start o’ the 2nd chorus for no reason.

Grade: F

Final Verdict

Tho the Hollywood Undead album was far cringier, I honestly would rather listen to it, given that it had a’least some catchy moments. This album was shockingly bad, e’en by the standards o’ what we normally listen to. I’m not surprised this album was the worst-selling Saliva album: e’en if you liked Saliva’s hits like “Click Click Boom” & “Your Disease”, hardly any o’ the songs on this album e’en match their caliber. ¿Who would listen to Every Six Seconds & think, “this band should do schmaltzy emo ballads & fake country shit”? ¿Who do you think you are, Saliva, Machine Gun Kelly?

Final Grade: F

S’posedly 2 reviewers called this band Deftones the “Radiohead of metal”. Now, I don’t know anything ’bout music beyond what my early 2000s radio stations let me listen to, so I don’t know what this “Radiohead” is or why it’s been detached from its Radiobody, but we can assume it must be cheesy & lame, given that Deftones is a nu-metal band, & e’eryone knows all nu-metal bands are silly & lame.

So we’re going to look @ their biggest album, White Pony.

1. Back to School (Mini Maggit)

We start with the greatest song Deftones has e’er made. ¡Just look @ that amazing music video!

This song, which shows off Chino Moreno’s amazing rippity rapping skills with these hard bars ’bout the street thug life in high school:

while everyone’s out trying to make the cut (what)
& when you think you know me right, i switch it up
behind the walls, smokin’ cigarettes and sippin’ vodka
i hop a fence to catch a cab, ain’t no one can stop us

Yeah, ¡cracka! ¡We be smokin’ cigs & jumping the fence to catch a cab! Paragraph to yo’ auntie.

Then in the chorus he boasts ’bout how back in school, we are the leaders o’ all. ¡Yeah! ¡Fuck being an adult! I’m going back to school to be a leader! ¡Push back that square!

Unironically, this song is musically excellent, especially thanks to those opening high-pitched noodly strings & those menacing low-tuned guitar riffs that bounce up & down thruout the verses while less low guitar noises break thru.

Grade: S

2. Feiticeira

Sadly, we don’t get any mo’ hippity hop songs & the next song is some droning song with super clear, clacking drums that’s ’bout… ¿a Brazilian woman being kidnapped?

Chino Moreno sings here from the perspective of a person who has been kidnapped. He explained on Deftones World: “It’s named after a Brazilian female, but its lyrically about a kidnapping scenario. It details a few hours of being held captive. There’s a lot of dialogue in there that was fun to write.”

That’s, um, an interesting topic to write ’bout. Glad you had fun writing ’bout it.

Tho it’s not as amazing as their previous magnum opus, this song has some great music itself, including the aforementioned super clear, clacking drums, the revving opening strings, & especially the bellowing low notes during the interlude ’tween the 1st & 2nd verses.

Grade: S

3. Digital Bath

Still doing this weird slow, droning singing instead o’ that amazing rapping from “Back to School” for some reason… O, well, this song’s all right with its beautiful imagery o’… ¿somebody leading a girl into a bathtub & murdering her by electrocution by throwing a toaster in it & then standing her corpse up & dressing it? OK, Deftones, ¿what the fuck? Real talk: ’tween these 2 songs & that album cover leering down @ a woman’s cleavage, this band are starting to sound like those weird edgy incels that women avoid in school. ¡You’re not going to be leaders back in school like that, Deftones! Ironically, the fact that this song is so much better written than the average misogynist nu-metal song — & there are a lot — with its strong imagery & detail contrasted gainst the average nu-metal bands’ generic, abstract word salads makes it sound worse.

& for a song with such imagery, ¿who the fuck decided to make the music video just trite footage o’ them playing on stage, them screwing around in their tour bus, crowds cheering, a few scraps o’ unclear imagery — I think there’s 1 shot o’ a bubbling bathtub — &… ¿a custodian mopping the floor? We really needed that clip. Good o’ Deftones to show some support for the underappreciated blue-collar worker, I guess.

Anyway, despite all those flaws, this is a very nice-sounding song, especially its opening smoky whistle noises, more o’ those super clear drums, & those moody notes. I might e’en go far ’nough to say that the bizarre droning singing that goes from tired to loud moaning works well for a bizarre song ’bout killing a woman with a toaster in a bathtub.

Grade: S

4. Elite

I was going to criticize this song as a forgettable banger where the singer just keeps shouting in his whispry voice — ¿where is that rapping, Chino? You’re wasting your Eminem-like skills, man — with a clunky, repetitive melody in both singing & playing, mixed up only with unimpressive filter effects that make the singer sound like an alien. But then I read the lyrics, which are impossible to hear thru Chino’s singing, & they’re amazing: any song with lyrics that go, “stop parading your angles / ¿confused? you’ll know when you’re ripe”, deserves an S in my book. He’s right: people should stop parading their angles; angles aren’t special — e’eryone’s got ’em, folks.

Grade: S

5. Rx Queen

I was going to joke ’bout how I think Deftones is like Radiohead in that they just pull random lyrics out o’ a hat to sound deep, which is how we get lines like, “we’ll stop to rest on the moon”; but to be fair, other than that & most o’ the lyrics from the previous song, this song’s lyrics actually serve a clever metaphor o’ parasitical insects stinging another, killing it for sustenance, for a toxic relationship involving drugs, which fits well with the wasplike low drone o’ this song & the title o’ this song — presumably referring to his girlfriend. I know this song is still falling into the “dead girl syndrome” trope o’ cheap dark drama, but a’least this is a mo’ relatable problem, not just the singer out o’ nowhere coming up with the idea o’ women being kidnapped in Brazil or electrocuted in a bath tub. Plus, this time the song mostly works in abstract metaphors, & this time to the song’s benefit. So, sure, have ’nother S. ¿Why not?

Grade: S

6. Street Carp

Ah, now here we go; now we’re on familiar territory: a man whining ’bout his bitchy ex-wife.

Actually, being 100% honest, this song kinda blows ass. The way Chino sings, “ohhhh, well, here’s my new aaadrehhhhs / ¡6! ¡6! ¡4! ohhhhhh, I forgehhhhht”, sounds so terrible it actually impresses me. Like, you have to be very creative to come up with something so sonically toxic. Meanwhile, the singing & music are just repetitive, bland versions o’ what’s done better on other songs & the opening, where we have grinding guitars filtered thru what sounds like Game Boy Advance speakers & a sudden, “¡nyaaaaaah!”, is just goofy as hell. “It’s not that I care”, indeed. But this song makes me laugh, it has a funny name like “Street Carp”, which Genius tells me is probably this song’s protagonist calling his ex a ho bag, &, most importantly, I have already settled on my joke o’ giving e’ery song on this album as S rank for the memes, so here ya go.

Grade: S

7. Teenager

Not gonna lie: considering how creepy & weird this band has been ’bout women, I felt dread when I saw a song called “Teenagers” that I’d get a good ol’ fashioned Beatles-type “well, she was just 17…”. Luckily, in this case, the protagonist is also a teenager, & this is probably the least creepy song Deftones has e’er wrote ’bout a woman.

I’m a sucker for record player texture — which is why my hipster ass has a vinyl record player & such classics as 3 Three Days Grace albums, Korn’s Issues, & 311’s greatest hits on vinyl — as well as the weird alien sucking noises near the end & those soft drum beats, so have ’nother S.

Grade: S

8. Knife Prty

¿What does Chino have to say ’bout this song?

I made up this fake scenario of some kind of underworld society of knives, people who just get off on these erotic fantasies…or something like that. An ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ kind of thing.

OK, sure, yeah. ¿Does e’ery song need to be ’bout sex, tho? Like, you could just have the “underworld society of knives” without the sex & not make it weird.

Also, you have this weird-ass premise, ¿but you couldn’t come up with a better chorus than, “go get your knife, go get your knife”? ¿& why couldn’t you spell “knife” correctly in the title? ¿Did your “I” key on your keyboard fail to fire like mine keeps doing?

I do kind o’ like the muffled guitar notes that show up @ the beginning & keep coming back, but nothing else is all that interesting. I guess some woman is singing mo’ than halfway thru the song ’cause some woman happened to be singing in the next room. Yeah, that sounds like the reason this random part o’ the song is here.

Unfortunately, I can’t hear the lines, “’cause in here, we are all anemic”, which I’m sure are super deep &, uh, deep, but I can’t hear that line without hearing that e’en mo’ fantastic line from Young Thug: “i’m like i’m anemic too / a Neiman Marcus shoppperrrrr”. & by, “unfortunately”, I mean, “unfortunately, I have to give you an S grade for that”.

Grade: S

9. Korea

The only interesting part o’ this song is that we finally learn the reason this album is called White Pony: it’s cocaine. It’s too bad this is the least interesting song on this album, talking ’bout doing drugs & partying. It doesn’t sound bad, mind you: it has the same crisp production with sharp drumbeats & heavy guitar riffs; I’m just saying, if I had to remove a song, it’d have been this & not “Back to School (Mini Maggit)”.

I mean, e’en the title has no relevance:

While the album was released in 2000, Deftones have not toured South Korea until 2009. Unless they traveled there within that era, the title of the song seems to be unrelated.

Bro, ¿how do you name an entire song “Korea” & not tour in a’least 1 o’ them for nearly a decade? Unless this band did tour in North Korea, which would be pretty bad ass & would immediately merit an S grade, but also hard to believe, I’m afraid I can’t in good conscience give this song an S grade, so I’ll just give it a South Korean flag emoji instead:

Grade: 🇰🇷

10. Passenger

I’ve heard a lot o’ people lavishly praise on this song, presumably ’cause it features Maynard James Keenan, lead singer o’ Tool, e’ery hipster’s favorite prog-metal band, & A Perfect Circle, the band that people list when they want to be e’en mo’ hipster, & the guy whose name I always mix up with the economist John Maynard Keynes. I think it’s all right, I guess. Genius says, “this slow-burning ballad is rife with metaphorical imagery and atmospheric musical arrangements”, ¿& who am I to argue with them? I’ll tell you who I am: J. J. W. Mezun, certified nu-metal specialist. I don’t really see much metaphorical imagery in this song’s lyrics, which mostly seems to describe parts o’ the inside o’ a car mo’ than anything. I also don’t see what’s so atmospheric ’bout the repetitive “nuh-nuh-nuh nuh nuh” riffs thruout most o’ this song, broken off by the sparse, seemingly arrhythmic drum beats ’hind the verses. I do kind o’ like Keenan’s vocal performance on the choruses, I guess. I also find it funny that the Genius note assumes this song is ’bout people having sex in a car, ’cause presumably e’ery Deftones song needs to be ’bout weird sex.

But if e’eryone else is saying this song is amazing, I must be wrong, so here’s ’nother S:

Grade: S

11. Change (In the House of Flies)

You know, it’s ironic that the labels apparently pushed Deftones into making a new song that eventually became their magnum opus, “Back to School (Mini Maggit)”, ’cause this album s’posedly had no hits ( my apologies for the eye-searing white text on red background ), only for this other song to become a far mo’ iconic & successful hit for them. As amazing as “Back to School” is, this song truly defines this band, with its iconic opening notes, ghostly wind sounds, & following foreboding drums, followed by a perishing voice calling out, “i watched you chaaaaange”. Best o’ all, this song takes a break from this album’s typical thematic obsessions with sex & violence gainst women — a’least I think it does — & instead focuses on the classic literary trope o’ someone transforming into an insect like Gregor Samsa. There’s not much imagery to this song’s lyrics — or many lyrics @ all — but that sparseness fits well with this sparse song, which, like Franz Kafka Metamorphosis, is a mystery that is mo’ ’bout what isn’t said than what is.

There. ¿See? I can be just as good a hipster lyrical analyst — I just noticed how goofy that word looks, including the word “anal” in it, as if it meant “somebody who studies rectums” — as any upper-middle-class liberal arts college cracker who won’t shut the fuck up ’bout Tame Impala.

Grade: S

12. Pink Maggit

The acceptance o’ this song by critics & not “Back to School (Mini Maggit)” is proof that critics will love any slow, dreary song, no matter how inane, as this song literally has the same goofy-ass chorus as that song, ’cept now it’s trying to sound serious when saying “pushed back the square” & “’cause back in school / we are the leader of it all” — ’cept in this song we also get some extra violence gainst women with “now that you need her, but you don’t” replaced with “now that you kneed her in the throat”.

Since we are taking these lyrics seriously now apparently, instead o’ just laughing @ their goofiness, I should add that the sentiment ’hind this song is really dumb:

The title comes from a Kool Keith song. We just thought it was some funny stuff. The song is meant to be triumphant. I’m trying to spread a little confidence. Lots of artists try to make songs for the kids who are tormented in school, telling them it’s okay to be tormented. But it’s not okay. Don’t be ridiculed. Become the leader of your surroundings. Confidence is one of the most important things in life. If you are confident, you can do whatever you want.

Chino Moreno

That’s good advice to people being bullied: “¡just stand up for yourself & stop letting yourself be bullied!” This super deep album literally ends with fucking pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps self-help bullshit. Thank you, Deftones, for the best April Fool’s joke.

All that being said… I’m a sucker for the slow build up, with Chino sounding like he’s being strangled like a squealing horse — ¿a squealing white pony? — near the end o’ the intro just to hold it back e’en mo’, only for the song to finally stop edging & finally start cumming with its blast o’ rock-hard guitar riffs that make me rock hard, similar to Tool’s “Parabol” leading into “Parabola” — & therefore turning my cock into a parabola… Wait, I don’t think that’s the right shape.

Having said that, ironically I think this song ending the album only makes it make mo’ sense for this album to start with “Back to School (Mini Maggit)”, giving this album a bookends feel that wouldn’t be there when starting with “Feiticeira”, which also doesn’t start with nearly as iconic an opening as “Back to School”.

Grade: S

Final Verdict

White Pony is a 1-o’-a-kind album, instantly recognizable but impossible to copy, with lyrics taking sharp turns on e’ery song, e’en if many o’ those sharp turns are kinda dumb. ¿But does it have an angsty song ’bout The Wizard of Oz? Because it doesn’t, I’m afraid it doesn’t quite meet an S grade, but will have to settle for a, “白子🐎”.

Final Grade: 白子🐎

(həd)^p.e., which has the weirdest punctuation o’ maybe any band name, is a criminally underrated nu-metal band, especially their classic 2000 album, Broke, which is still an absolute banger, blending in punk & mo’ believably hip hop elements than most nu-metal bands for a much wilder sound.

1. Killing Time

We start with what I think is the best song, starting with those memorable noisy notes, 1st sparsely broken up by long, awkward pauses, & then building into droning regularity. Then we get verses where the singer ironically smoothly croons in his raspy voice ’bout what a fuck up he is, laying around all day doing drugs & watching Jerry Springer, before repeating, “just killing time…”, in an eerily calm voice & then breaking out into a manic snakelike screaming during the chorus, “¡KIIIIIIIIIISSS THE WOOOORLD GOODBYYYYYYYE!”. Then in the 2nd verse we get a different singing style: now the singer is pleading excuses for his empty life. & then during the bridge we get a hammy incoherent rant that seems to vaguely references the 2012 apocalyptic theories based on ( a misinterpretation o’ ) the Mayan calendar & Christian eschatology:

i keep my eyes on the stars
that’s where i come from
belt of orion
son of a sun god
you know my name i’m a conqueror
the lion king kamehameha come
2012 come 12 tribes
come 12 strands come 12 lives
12 steps 12 months 12 motherfuckas
will all make bail kicked ’cause o’ the crowded jail
sex & violence sells
12 serial killers 12 dead without a trail or a trace
it’s prime time the fight night pay per view suicide
the bee sting butterfly

Grade: S

2. Waiting to Die

“Waiting to Die” continues the nihilist theme o’ “Killing Time”, but is, if one could believe it, e’en mo’ unhinged audibly, with the singer growling the profanity-laden verses with weird up-&-down rhythms followed by screaming @ the edge o’ his voice, “¡EVERYBODY DIES!” repeatedly. It’s not quite as interesting as “Killing Time”, but I certainly love its frantic energy.

Grade A

3. Feel Good

This is the most well-known hit from this album, probably partly thanks to the accompaniment o’ System of a Down frontman Serj Tankian adding his own unhinged energy as they both singing in what sounds like a parody o’ duet sing-alongs, singing in pleading voices how they don’t care if the sky is falling, they just want to feel good, while the verses are made up o’ deep-voiced, mainly monotone rapped verses describing how the world is falling apart much like the previous 2 songs, as well as an inner skit o’ part o’ a conversation o’ someone doing drugs & having sex, & this bizarre section where the singer just says 1-word insults o’ increasing vulgarity sparsely separated by pauses & with particularly heavy, hammy pronunciation, especially on “mothafuckaaah”.

Despite the thematic repetition from the past 2 songs, the lyrics & medley o’ styles sounds distinct, with the lyrics being an anachronistic mix o’ Biblical prophecy — mo’ somber & coherent than the rant @ the end o’ “Killing Time” — & contemporary hiphop boast talk.

In essence, this is yet ’nother crazy-ass song.

Grade S

4. Bartender

This was the other hit from this song — apparently bigger back then, as it actually has a music video. This song goes back & forth from sleazy, smooth, jazzy verses o’ the protagonist trying desperately to get with a woman in a scuzzy bar with footage o’ strippers dancing on poles & standard nu-metal shouting choruses with the typical footage o’ the band playing ’hind a wire fence in front o’ cement walls with graffiti & plenty o’ red light, whose shouts o’, “I JUST WANT YOUR COMPANY”, only emphasize the protagonist’s desperation. The bridge then slows down into a hango’er-like slow slump, repeating the beginning o’ the 1st verse, “ain’t nothin’ working / ain’t nothin’ right / there’s a hole in me that i can’t fill / no matter how hard i try”, showing how li’l the protagonist’s vying for hedonistic excess has gotten him. None o’ this revolutionary artistry, ’course, but this song’s storytelling & the way it matches the music is much mo’ competently done than most o’ the nu-metal I look @. Just compare to something like Hollywood Undead’s magnum opus, “Everywhere I Go”.

Grade: A

5. Crazy Legs

I guess this is the party song, which weirdly remixes the chorus to The Notorious B. I. G.’s “Hypnotize” as its chorus. I think this would’ve worked better coming before “Bartender” instead o’ after: it’s a weird sequence to go from a dour song ’bout the emptiness o’ hedonism to an unironic celebration o’ sex parties. The singer’s performance on the 2nd verse & especially the bridge are great, but this song does feel like 1 o’ the less memorable songs on this album that treads themes that were better done in earlier songs; it kinda just feels like a weaker version o’ the 4 songs preceding.

Grade: B

6. Pac Bell

Thankfully, that song is followed by a much mo’ different song. Yes, it’s an angsty song ’bout troubled relationships & how it’s led the protagonist to suicidal depression; but albums almost entirely dedicated to that theme are hardly rare in nu-metal. Like many o’ the other songs, it’s the singer’s performance in the verses & how he twists his voice in such a deranged way, e’en when saying something as mundane as “¿why the fuck you fucking with me?”, that makes the difference.

E’en mo’ different, howe’er, is the chorus, with its autotune-sounding emotionless singing, “we used to drive all the time”, that sounds mo’ like the kind o’ songs you’d hear in the 2010s, not anything like what I’d hear in nu-metal albums.

To add to the surrealism, this song’s title is “Pac Bell”, the title o’ an ol’ phone company that 2 years later would be bought by AT&T. It’s relevant, since this song is ’bout someone trying to call his ex, & the song does start & end with the robotic voice o’ an automatic operator asking the protagonist, “if you’d like to make a call, please hang up & try again”.

Grade: A

7. I Got You

Wait, ¿this song had a music video, but not “Feel Good”? I ne’er e’en heard o’ this song before now. Granted, listening to this song, I can imagine this song was probably played @ many concerts, as it seems particularly made for such, with the following lyrics in particular seeming to call out to people to dance:

all my people come on
choose your side
you’re a long way from home
but not alone

To be honest, this song’s doesn’t have as much as the others on this album, with much vaguer lyrics — tho I do like the line, “yeah, eat the rich / but pay me motherfucker”. But, ’gain, I just love this singer’s performance, such as the way his voice dies out a li’l in his throat when he says “afraid” in “they are afraid of you” @ the beginning o’ the 2nd verse &, ’course, the houndlike way he barks, “yeah, I got you” in the chorus.

You can most clearly hear Korn’s influence on this bad in this song, with its music-box low, dreary start to the verse & the singer’s low, raspy, menacing sing-songy voice starting, “Mmm mmm mmm mmm…”.

Grade: B

8. Boom (How You Like That)

¿This had a music video, too? ¿How did all these songs have music videos & not “Feel Good”? That must’ve been some blacksheep hit then.

This song has a couple o’ highlights. For me the best being during the bridge when the singer calls out various people to say, “¿how you like that?”, & asks whiteboys to say it & a bunch o’ super honkey voices say it. That’s pretty funny.

That said, while the song in itself is a fun banger, compared to other tracks on this album it feels less interesting, repeating the same themes, with the same vague social commentary you’d find from many lower-tier nu-metal bands like Papa Roach: “we’re so desensitized, we were raised on TV, something something, American Dream”. E’en the call out for various people to shout, “¿how you like that?” goes on too long: ¿did he really need to ask virtually e’ery city in the US? Nothing in this song is cringe a’least.

Grade: C

9. Swan Dive

I’m surprised this song got a music video; but unlike the previous 2 songs, this time I have listened to this song before & this time it’s a pleasant surprise, as I always liked this song with its jazzy verses with the protagonist poetically describing himself climbing up a building, “putting distance between I & I & the ground”, only to then shout ’bout how it’s ’cause he wants to jump off & “swan dive” into the asphalt. In a genre where suicide is typically described either abstractly or with the cliché emo imagery o’ wrist-slitting, a song with the mo’ concrete ( pun not intended ) imagery o’ the very, very brutal death o’ smashing one’s body gainst the street from several stories high is refreshing.

& then in the bridge the protagonist seems to answer — well, maybe not really answer, given how incoherent it is — why he’s suicidal with rants up @ the sky ’bout all the evils in the world, which would be trite if ’twere just him asking, “¿where is the compassion?”, but is made mo’ interesting with bizarre questions like, “tell me, ¿who can control the floods?”, hinting @ the mental disturbance going on in the protagonist’s head, amplified by the bearlike growl the singer employs when answering, “¡NO ONE!”, after each question in the 2nd half.

Grade: A

10. Stevie

( Laughs ). What a weird-ass song:

come on, I’m not deaf or dumb
I’m not little Stevie Wonder
whatever
¡No more lies!

Yes, that’s the chorus & the basis for this song being named “Stevie”. The fact that he caps that imaginative comparison with the bland, “¡No more lies!”, only adds to the absurdity.

Other than that, this is 1 o’ the mo’ middle-ground songs on this album, neither relatively strong nor weak. I do like the jazzy, smooth, & sing-songy 1st 2 verses & the particular way the singer becomes unhinged round the 2nd half o’ the 3rd verse.

Grade: B

11. Jesus (Of Nazareth)

¡✝-rock jump scare!

Actually, unlike corny bands like Thousand Foot Krutch or Skillet, with their Kroeger-brand mass-manufactured WASP evangelism with generic celebrations o’ how wicked ( ¡in a cool way! ) Jesus is & fairy tales o’, um, a psychologist convincing a couple to hold a funeral for the woman’s aborted fetus… this song is much mo’ complex: the singer doesn’t seem to really believe in Jesus, saying to the crucifix on his wall, which inspires paranoid fear rather than hope or comfort, “I can’t believe a single word that you’re saying / I see your lips moving, but nothing’s coming out”, & seems to only be turning to Jesus out o’ pure desperation. & the song ends with the singer expressing doubt that it’ll work:

they’re telling me to take my own life
breathe my last breath, eat my last meal
you got what you deserve
¿how’s that feel?

This deliberate comparison to Jesus with “eat my last meal” makes it ambiguous whether or not the protagonist is criticizing himself or criticizing Jesus, including the line earlier, “mass murder, court convicted, terroristic creature of the night”. I mean, Jesus was convicted by a court; & if Jesus is God in human flesh, there was that whole flood that killed nearly e’ery human; & I would call passover, wherein God killed the 1st-born o’ e’ery non-Jewish-person in Egypt round midnight to scare Egypt into freeing Jewish people the act o’ a “terroristic creature of the night”… I’m probably reading too much into this… Still, a’least I can do that instead o’ just making jokes ’bout Thousand Foot Krutch making a song ’bout being sorry one wasted one’s life just jerking off all the time.

While not mindblowing, I like the shifts from the eerie sparse piano notes — which sound a lot like the ones on “meet the grahams”, just so I can keep talking ’bout that year-ol’ beef — with low bass notes & tired vocals vs. the loud choruses.

Grade: A

11. The Meadow (Special Like You)

( Note: this song also has a music video, but it’s just mo’ concert playing & hanging round their tour bus & doesn’t include the whole 9-minute track ).

This is a nice song, especially with the funk notes in the background, which was not something you saw much in nu-metal. The way the singer’s voice rasps out a bit during the chorus is a nice touch.

E’en better, this song ends with some woman babbling ’bout elephants thru a fast food speaker box.

To add to the absurdity — ’cause e’en this otherwise nice ballad can’t be normal — this track’s dour ending is flipped after a pause with a secret track that’s just outtakes & goofing around. Such is the emotional complexity o’ nu-metal.

Grade: B

Final Verdict

This album unironically holds up much better than most o’ the albums I’ve looked @ in this series, blending some o’ the weirdness o’ nu-metal with much less cringe edgy elements & a much wilder less polished sound. Tho thematically it does get a bit repetitive, stylistically it has mo’ variance & does mo’ that other nu-metal bands didn’t do. It’ll probably ne’er warrant the critical acclaim o’ bands like Sevendust or Deftones; or bands I’ve ne’er heard o’ that are probably only acclaimed on Rate Your Music because they’re obscure like The Shiznit, Ikd-sj, or Stepa; or… ¿Incubus’s S.C.I.E.N.C.E., ranked as the 10th highest rated on Rate Your Music? That’s actually pretty based. I’ll definitely be talking ’bout that 1 eventually…

Anyway, I think this album should be remembered mo’, especially since it makes a better balance o’ being mo’ fun than the drearier o’ acclaimed artists while being less embarrassing than your Limp Bizkits — up there with, like, Korn, maybe.

Final Grade: A

I think it’s time we take another look @ our friends, Breaking Benjamin. This time I’ve chosen their 1st LP, Saturate, for 2 reasons: 1, it gets less attention than their other albums, & 2, it has 1 song in particular that I’ve been dying to write ’bout. Hopefully the rest o’ the album gives me something to talk ’bout, too.

1. Wish I May

O, man, you know a song is hardcore when it starts with a scream.

Well, I’ll say 1 thing ’bout this song: Ben does a good job o’ sounding drunk on this song, with the way he slurs his speech & the tipsy way he says the incoherent line, “we left this land of shiny lights”. That’s not a snide “compliment”, either: this song is really ’bout alcoholism, so it fits.

Unfortunately, otherwise, this song sounds very generic, especially compared to the kind o’ songs they would write on this same subject thruout, say, the album Dear Agony, & doesn’t have the kind o’ cheese I’m looking for.

Grade: C

2. Medicate

This song’s an OK banger, but also not as good as a lot o’ the stuff they’d do later, & doesn’t have anything that stands out as either unironically good or good, either. ¿Did I make a mistake choosing this album? I do kinda like the menacing way Ben sings the verses; & while the lyrics are generic, the chorus is mildly catchy.

Grade: C

3. Polyamorous

the day has come to an end
the sun is over my head

¿What? ¿How?

Honestly, given how many anti-romance songs in these kind o’ early 2000s angsty genres like nu-metal & post-grunge blame it on the the significant other for being vaguely bitchy, it’s somewhat refreshing see a song that blames the protagonist for being a cheating douche. I also like the play on the title “polyamorous” sounding poetic & romantic itself while just being ’bout how the singer can’t control himself from sleeping around, which fits with this song’s lyrics involving the protagonist trying to justify & minimize the consequences o’ said sleeping around, repeating in the chorus, “I ne’er hurt anyone”. I also find it funny that this angsty anti-romance song starts & ends with Ben shouting in his raspy voice, “¡let’s go!”, like he’s ’bout to get the club going.

I also appreciate this music video’s set design for having the band play in what looks like a giant bath tub.

Grade: B

4. Skin

I always thought this song was ’bout becoming an ol’ has-been — a funny topic for your 1st major album, but 1 with which I, as someone who has dedicated an article e’ery month or so to waxing nostalgically ’bout ol’ nu-metal albums, can relate; but taking a closer look — or just reading the Genius annotations — & it seems this is ’bout Ben dumping some woman ’cause he thinks she’s gotten ol’ & he’s gotten bored o’ her. That’s kind o’ funny, too, I guess, especially with the catchy, poppy way he sings it. ¡& it is, indeed, catchy! I can’t help singing ’long, “”cause you’re old, & battered & beateeeeen…”, & especially the very throaty way he sings, “& we’ll throw” afterward.

Grade: A

5. Natural Life

I swear e’ery line o’ this song is a different cliché & Ben sounds bored singing, “your natural life, you’re born, you die”, in a nah, nah, nah, nah fashion. I do like the cannon shots during the bridge, like this is the 1812 Overture, tho it doesn’t fit this song @ all.

Grade: D

6. Next to Nothing

This song has, unironically, some o’ Ben’s best singing, especially during the 1st verse when he says, “you know I’ll always be around”. It’s too bad that lyrics & music are pretty meh. I guess the chorus is kind o’ catchy, in a poppy way. ¿Is it too late to switch this out for Phobia? I think I’d actually have mo’ to say ’bout that album.

Grade: C

7. Water

¿What the hell is this song? I don’t e’en remember this song. You’d think I’d remember a song with the mysterious title, “Water”.

¿what’s all this talk of emotion?
i’d rather drink from the ocean

¡Ha, ha! ¡Those are amazing lines to open with! That’s some “you were wrong, since the beginning o’ the bomb” type rhyming just to rhyme there, & I live for it.

Actually, I’ve come to like this song ’bout Ben arguing with a bottle o’ booze, specially the imagery o’ alcoholism being like an anthropomorphic bottle o’ booze holding someone’s head underwater; & realizing that’s what this song is ’bout, the 1st 2 lines e’en make sense now. I also like the choppy, foreboding sound to this song, which has a drowning-like sound to it.

Grade: A

8. Home

¡Here’s the song I was looking for! This song is a treasure & I will fight to my dying breath for it to be put in the registry o’ nu-metal songs worth meming ’bout: take Ben’s angsty perishing singing but mix it with lyrics ’bout, I shit you not, The Wizard of Oz. If you haven’t listened to any o’ these songs, ¡you have to listen to this song! This jabroni legit sings “& I’m gonna get you & your li’l dog, too” like this is a song ’bout his wife dying. If you’re too cowardly to sing ’long to the bridge —

in the black & the white
a technicolor life
then another arrived
¡it’s a cowardly lion!

— with as much dramatis as Ben does in this song, you are a fucking beta. ¡I said it!

I think this song is s’posed to be metaphorical, but you can’t go indepth into the lore o’ The Wizard of Oz as these lyrics do ’bout an “a man made of tin with an oil-can grin” when your song is s’posed to be ’bout something deeper.

I should also note that this “music video” isn’t official in the slightest — ¡but it should be!

Grade: S

9. Phase

In case you think Ben’s done trolling, we follow that masterpiece with what starts out sounding like Breaking Benjamin attempting a cover o’ “DK Island Swing” from Donkey Kong Country. But, you know: it actually works with this song, whose subject manner is interesting: it’s ’bout hypochondria & having several phobias & how people tell you — or you tell yourself — that it’s “just a phase”; such wild fear does fit with a jungle-like sound.

Grade: A

10. No Games

You heard Ben: he’s not fucking around anymo’. This game is o’er & he’s mean & older. Granted, the soothing croon in which he sings this doesn’t convey much meanness…

Hold on: ¿how does he end the chorus?

& i bend to your will
i’ve fellated myself

i dunno, that sounds like a pretty common game men play to me. &, yes, he does sing that last line with the urgency he sang, “& your li’l dog, too”. I’m not going to waste any time talking ’bout petty things like how this song sounds: you get an automatic S rank for that.

Grade: S

11. Sugarcoat

I love how his lines ’bout how he’ll “never know your sugarcoat” paired with “suck on your lies till your eyes turn red” imply he’s jealous ’cause she’s sucking some other guy’s dick in secret while he can’t e’en get a taste o’ that Wet Ass Pussy™. I ne’er realized how, um… mo’ vulgar this earlier album is ( then again, this is the band that made “Topless” for Phobia ).

Musically, I do like the contrast o’ the acoustic strings & soft singing in the verses gainst the banging riffs, beats, & screaming o’ the chorus.

Grade: B

12. Shallow Bay

¿Another song ’bout Ben being thirsty? ¡Finish up before getting in the booth, Ben! That’s just common courtesy. Especially when you hurt your chances with whoe’er this theoretical woman is with, “i don’t think you want to fuck with me”, sung with his voice crackling out weakly, which is certainly a sonic choice. I think the lines ’bout him “float[ing] upon a shallow bay” hint that the protagonist o’ this song is s’posed to be a pathetic drunk, so the irony is probably intentional.

During the few couple years that Breaking Benjamin were a band, the band would close the setlist with this song, with frontman Ben Burnley dedicating the song to “all you Shallow Bay-ers out there.”

Genius

That just makes my interpretation e’en funnier: “¡Here’s for all you drunk fuck bois out in the crowd! — ¡you know who you are! ¡You’re in your mid 30s & @ a god damn Breaking Benjamin concert!”.

Grade: C

13. Forever

This is just the song they put on during the end credits ’cause they know nobody’s going to sit there & read them all. I can take a cue: it’s time for me to leave this movie theater.

Grade: D

Final Verdict

¿Would you believe me if I said my opinion o’ this album actually improved on this listen? The lyrics were mo’ interesting than I remember, as are some o’ the musical choices. Granted, this mainly applies to the latter half; the 1st half was pretty forgettable.

Final Grade: C

I’m sure I’ve mentioned it before in 1 o’ these installments, but Linkin Park is 1 o’ the few nu-metal bands that people generally consider to not be embarrassing anymo’, which, to be cynically blunt, has a lot to do with the lead singer’s suicide — let’s be real: if it hadn’t happened, half o’ these posers out there would still be meming ’bout the crawling that was occurring inside his skin. I am the exception, ’course: I was defending them long before, as I defend bands that still haven’t become appreciated like classic Three Days Grace — but not that latest single they released with the original singer back in the band: that song like o’erproduced trash & I have no idea what they did to poor Adam Gontier’s voice.

Anyway, it’s 2024 & Linkin Park recently released their 1st album since Bennington’s passing with a new singer, Emily Armstrong. Said singer has some controversy surrounding Scientology & supporting or seeming to support that guy from That 70s Show who was sentenced to 30 years in jail for rape. It seems e’ery nu metal band needs to have some member doing something cringe, whether it be signing IDF missiles, bitching ’bout not being able to buy Dr. Seuss books on ebay & WAP for making a better song than his band will e’er make, participating in that shitty Nostalgia Critic review ’bout The Wall, & the billions o’ stupid things that guy from Trapt said, so unfortunately, I can’t only review the albums by innocent people like Papa Roach, who I know have ne’er done anything wrong in their life, & it’s not like me talking ’bout any o’ these albums is glowing recommendations to give them money. As a dirty commie, I don’t believe in giving money to anyone: that’s your money; hoard that shit like the gnomes do.

1. From Zero (Intro)

Linkin Park oft starts albums with throw’way intro tracks, going all the way back to Meteora starting with sounds o’ throwing shit around for some reason. I ne’er understood it as a kid & I still don’t now. This 1 is probably the weakest o’ them all: half o’ it is generic chanting & then the rest is some background clip o’ who I assume is the new lead singer trying to figure out why the album is named “From Zero”. ¿Who cares? ¿Does anyone know why the 2nd album is called “Meteora” or what that e’en means? In the past 20 years o’ that album’s existence I’ve ne’er heard anyone ask why, ’cause nobody cares: it sounds cool, that’s why.

Grade: F

2. The Emptiness Machine

The 1st single comes surprisingly right out the gate on this album. I like the calm way the song starts with low piano notes, muffled drum beats, & Mike Shinoda’s melodic singing, contrasted with the mo’ bombastic 2nd verse introducing the new lead singer, Emily Armstrong.

Not surprisingly, the Genius annotations are full o’ theorizing ’bout this song’s vague lyrics ’bout the vague “you” being nothing but critical o’ the protagonists & how they just “want to be part o’ something”, &, yeah, that could be the case… but Linkin Park has been writing ’bout this kind o’ stuff from the beginning — just compare to the lyrics o’ “Numb”, which, if it had come out on this album, would get the same theorizing, with lines ’bout feeling numb ( ’cause o’ the loss o’ Chester Bennington ) or struggling with the feeling o’ being “put under the pressure of walking in your shoes” — yeah, imagine the implications o’ Armstrong singing that line. Seriously, try out this game with all kinds o’ songs like “Papercut” or “Somewhere I Belong”.

In short, unless a line really sticks out, I’m not going to put much thought into it & treat it as the same abstract angst they’ve been writing since Hybrid Theory.

Grade: A

3. Cut the Bridge

I’m not so fond o’ the chorus for this song, which just sounds like melody-less shouting, which is too bad, as I do like the menacing way Armstrong sings the prechorus, which stands out much mo’. I must say that I’m happy Linkin Park didn’t try to make Armstrong sing like Bennington but allowed her to sing in her own style.

I know I mentioned I wasn’t going to focus on lyrics much, but this is different. ¿What the hell are with the verses Mike be spittin’?

& I can’t even tell if you’ve been tellin’ me a lie
every time you start it’s like the 4th day of July
reckless like you’re makin’ rockets just to blow up in the sky

1st, maybe this isn’t Shinoda’s fault, but I can’t hear a rhyme o’ “lie” & “July” without hearing that wack bar from Drake in “Slime You Out”: “July, that’s when I found out you lied”. 2nd… ¿What is this metaphor? ¿Shooting off fireworks on the 4th o’ July, a day for setting off fireworks, is the most “reckless” example you could think of? I guess it’s creative, a’least.

& then that’s followed by, “feelin’ like it’s chemical, all under my skin like it’s medical”, which doesn’t e’en make sense: ¿how is something being under someone’s skin inherently “medical”? I’ve ne’er thought Mike Shinoda was Nas or anything, but this kind o’ lyrical-spherical whiteboy nu-metal rapping is mo’ on the level o’ a Jacoby Shaddix.

Grade: D

4. Heavy Is the Crown

All right, here’s a much better song. While I wouldn’t consider the lyrics brilliant, they’re much better than “Cut the Bridge”’s, as is Shinoda’s flow, especially the subtle twists to the rhythm done @ the beginning o’ the 2nd verse. I also find the line @ the end o’ the prechorus, “’cause I’m tired of explaining what the joke is”, a genuinely clever twist on that cliché line that I’ve ne’er heard used in the context o’ what sounds like a failing relationship.

But the best part o’ this song is the opening mix o’ electronic symphony & electric guitar which sounds like what you’d find in 1 o’ the best songs o’ Meteora.

Grade: A

5. Over Each Over

But this song is less interesting — not quite as bad as “Cut the Bridge”, but not interesting. Honestly, it sounds like a lot o’ the generic post-grunge stuff I’d hear on the radio station literally just called “The Rock” @ the end o’ when I still listened to the radio, with the o’erproduced electronic loudness that doesn’t seem to know what tone it wants to portray & the way Armstrong o’ersings e’erything. Also, the constant refrain o’ “over each other” gets kind o’ grating.

Also, I swear the background talk noise clip @ the end where Mike Shinoda tells Emily Armstrong to “get her screaming pants on” is the worst thing I’ve e’er heard on a Linkin Park album.

Grade: D

6. Casualty

There are some vocal flourishes I like in this song — especially Mike Shinoda’s raspy singing, which I’ve ne’er heard on any other album before — & the slight back & forth the 2 singers had in the prechorus — tho I wish there was more o’ that. I also like a few o’ the record scratches; but for the most part the music just sounds like walls o’ heavy riffs & this song is clearly trying too hard to be the “heavy” song on the album without much else inspiration. While I appreciate the desire to add variety, it comes off as Linkin Park failing to play to their strengths & failing to bring what this kind o’ genre brings better. If I want this kind o’ wall o’ yelling & riffing, I’d rather stick with Lamb of God, who have mo’ rhythm & riff variation.

Grade: C

7. Overflow

Whereas the other songs that deviated from Linkin Park’s older sound sounded mo’ like pale, watered-down imitations of other styles, this song’s deviation sounds much mo’ creative & unique — with the exception o’ the main light tone in the background, which sounds kind o’ like the main notes to “Crawling”; but given that’s the only thing ’bout this song that sounds similar to that song, it’s actually mo’ interesting that they made the callback, if ’twas intentional. Mike Shinoda’s rapping sounds much mo’ modern than his usual ol’ school Run-DMC flow & fits the ethereal tone o’ this song; same with Armstrong’s dour singing on the chorus.

Grade: A

8. Two Faced

This is a Hybrid Theory style banger with plenty o’ catchy hooks, including the great idea o’ having the verses & choruses break into 2 catchy hooks each. In fact, it perhaps sounds a bit too much like Hybrid Theory, with the bridge sounding very similar to the famous “¡SHUT UP WHEN I’M TALKING TO YOU!” bridge o’ “One Step Closer”. Granted, Armstrong does a great job with her version, especially with the various ways she whispers, “I can’t hear myself think” early on. & I’m a sucker for any song that ends with record scratching whilin’ out — it’s been too long since Mr. Hahn, who is truly the best member o’ the group, got to work his magic again.

Grade: B

9. Stained

While most o’ this album sounds like nostalgic throwbacks to noughties nu-metal, this song sounds like a throwback to 2010s “indie” electronic rock, including the millennial whoas. ¿Has it been long enough for those to go from being a hated cliché to fond nostalgic memory? Eh, as goofy as it is, it is kinda catchy. This song’s all right.

Grade: B

10. IGYEIH

Musically, this is very middle-o’-the-road — a “Runaway”, you could say. If you ask me, “¿What the hell is ‘Runaway’? ¿You mean the Kanye West song?”, that answers your question: it’s the Hybrid Theory song you don’t remember. I guess there is that weird squeaky sound in the background sometimes. It’s kind o’ annoying, tho, so I’d hardly consider it a +.

Lyrically, this song is mixed. There are some lines I would actually call pretty good, like the good ol’ emo line, “I write all the memories down all over my skin”, which is a metaphor I’m surprised I haven’t heard before ( for tattoos, yes; cutting oneself, no ); but then we get goofy-ass lines like, “The clock keeps ticking, the rules aren’t written” — ¿what rules? ¿what the fuck are you talking ’bout? — or “I give you everything I have, all you give me is your ugliness”. O, no, don’t give me your ugliness. & while “Forgotten doesn’t mean that it’s forgiven this time” is a relatively clever line, unfortunately I haven’t forgotten you used that same line on the previous song.

Grade: C

11. Good Things Go

For most o’ the song I didn’t have anything to say ’bout this song, ’twas so middle-o’-the-road, but then the bridge came on & Mike decided to rap like some mediocre modern rapper who for some reason making sounds like, “eh” & “oh” ’tween lines sounds cool. He should’ve gone all the way & made those weird sounds that mumble rappers always did, like, “¡brrrrddddup!” or “¡shoo shoo!”. That’s the new kind o’ nu-metal we’ve been needing all this time: mumble rap metal.

But, yeah, otherwise this is a very tepid sad song with standard low notes, ’cept for maybe the crescendoing melody @ the end o’ the chorus being somewhat catchy, only to be ruined by the lame lyrics, “sometimes bad things take the place where good things go”.

Grade: C

Final Verdict

E’en tho I’ve come across as somewhat dismissive in some o’ these song reviews, o’erall this album is better than I would’ve expected, especially given the circumstances. Since their 1st 2 classic albums Linkin Park has struggled to evolve, sometimes with disappointing results that seem to be tied too closely to trends, sometimes with interesting surprises. This album is probably Linkin Park doing their best balance o’ hearkening back to their ol’ sound while still sounding distinct itself & not sounding too much like a sad self bootleg. It’s pretty far from my favorite o’ their albums, but not @ the bottom, either.

In fact, I’d say my biggest complaint ’bout this album is its cover, with its random pink bubbling liquid o’er some random surface, which reminds me too much o’ Metallica’s Load album cover with blood & semen mixed together — no, I’m not exaggerating: that’s really what it is.

Final Grade: B

Like with Disturbed’s Believe, I don’t think anyone e’en remembers that this album, Papa Roach’s sophomore — unless you count their weird primordial albums like the EP Old Friends from Young Years or whate’er the hell Potatoes for Christmas was — album, lovehatetragedy — which, to its credit, was ahead o’ the pack by implementing the hipster all-lowercase, no spaces, style that many hipster indie rock bands like “lovelytheband” would use in the 2010s — after their big breakout hit Infest with classics like “Last Resort” & the song whose background music was used in the online classic, “Ram Ranch”, e’er existed. Like a surprising lot o’ nu-metal bands, Papa Roach saw the writing on the wall early & ditched nu-metal & whiteboy gangster rapping for… some sort o’ vague alt rock. It’s not surprising nobody remembers this album, as it doesn’t stick in the mind. I have some nostalgia for this album, & always liked its warm, moody guitar work as a kid, — what the zoomzooms would call “vibes” — but it’s mo’ an album you would listen to in the background while sleeping than something you’d actually pay attention to. It’s telling that I’m only learning ’bout much o’ the lyrics today as I review this, since I clearly ne’er gave a shit ’bout them as a kid.

There’s no good reason for me to be reviewing this album’s songs other than morbid curiosity @ trying to see if I can find something to say ’bout it. If you’re looking for funny memes, I’d move on. Only read these reviews if you, too, are morbidly curious to see opinions on an album that nobody else has e’er cared ’bout ’cause, seriously, ¿who the hell else is wasting their time doing a track-by-track review o’ the sophomore album by the “cut my life into pieces” band?

1. M-80 (Explosive Energy Movement)

This album starts with a standard banger that ne’er stuck with me. It’s not bad or cringe, but it’s also not funny or particularly memorable, specially if you start listening to better alt rock bands. I think my biggest problem with this song is Jacoby’s trying so hard to talk ’bout how “filthy” & “nasty” & “dirty” — so much that he says that word twice in the same line — he is, but the song sounds so clean & polished. Most o’ the lines are very generic or outright perplexing. ¿What is “demented as the night is long” mean? Nights are not always long — hell, in some places @ certain times, it’s daytime all day.

Also, rock songs talking ’bout rock itself — specially when you use the full phrase “rock ’n roll” like you’re a boomer — is cringe unless you’re ACDC.

Grade: D

2. Life is a Bullet

This song is a better picture o’ this album’s general sound: a dour song with dour downtuned guitars & generic lyrics with generic metaphors ’bout life: in this case life being a bullet — I guess ’cause life is mean, or something. It’s neither the best nor worst song. It exists.

I will say, tho, I do kind o’ like the line, “you caused the fire, now fuck the flame”; not because it means anything or anything: I just find the imagery o’ someone trying to go cock 1st into a flame like that dude did to the pie in American Pie funny.

Genius commentators clearly disagree, howe’er, as someone wrote an entire thesis paper on this song’s deep — like Jacoby’s speech, deep like the sea — meaning with references to, I shit you not, ol’ philosophers like, um… “Socrates Plato”, which is actually 2 different people. I mean, Plato did appropriate much o’ Socrates’ work, since Socrates was too lazy to write anything down, but still:

The song explains the forces that subject us to the brutality of our society, which does not care about you or me.
He could explain everything, the fire, and how our inaccurate perception of reality facilitates the brutality, but nobody is going to listen because our minds have been shut down, regardless of the pain we see in others and ourselves daily. Fuck the flame, separate our souls from our body, the goal of every philosopher, from Socrates Plato and beyond.
Life is a bullet, the experiences we face prove it, not our identity. Identity is a trick in which our creation of, is imposed on us for the soul purpose of developing a platform which can be exposed, by easily tearing of our fronts, spilling out what we conceal, as vulnerable individuals. This is what divides us into easily controlled segments of society.

Genius

Grade C

3. Time and Time Again

This music video is the “Pepsi version”, whate’er that means. The main difference is that they censor “pills”, ’cause we wouldn’t want kids to go taking too many Flintstone vitamins ’cause Daddy Roach told ’em to. Look out, guys: I just took my daily prescribed antianxiety meds. ¡’Cause I’m a reckless, I’m a reckless god damn son o’ a bitch! ’Course, committing various traffic violations & endangering road safety ’cause you’re too distracted jamming out to this sick beat is fine to show. I do like how they have a black guy — a nerdy black guy with glasses & a nasally voice — cosign these crackers’ hard rappin’ by telling them to TURN THAT SHIT UP only for them to turn it up so loud his glasses break — ¡O shit!

Anyway, I guess the verses have a better balance o’ having that rhythm o’ rapping but without sounding like a gangster wannabe, tho the chorus is bland. But then we get lines like “emotional swords slash my soul”, which… I dunno, man. I feel like giving your metaphorical noun an adjective that it’s s’posed to represent is cheating, like Super Scribblenauts players who just add the word “invincible” to e’erything, specially when that adjective is as broad as “emotional”. You could replace “sword” & “slash” with anything & it’d work as well: “emotional guns shoot my soul”, “emotional fists punch my soul”, etc. I guess there’s some alliteration.

I once read in a review I read decades ago that this song was apparently ’bout the lead singer’s dog dying, but can’t find any mention o’ this tidbit on Genius.com. In fact, Genius.com doesn’t say shit ’bout most o’ these songs ’cept the previous 1 — almost as if I’m the only person on earth who gives the slightest shred ( & as these reviews show, it’s a very slight shred ) o’ a shit ’bout this album. Also, the lyrics seem to be mo’ ’bout a breakup, so I think the review was making it up. Honestly, being ’bout their dog dying would’ve made it mo’ interesting. Maybe the reviewer got this idea from the song starting with Jacoby howling “¡OW! ¡OW!” like a dog @ the beginning.

Grade: C

4. Walking Through Barbed Wire

This is a much better banger than “M-80” whate’er ’twas called, with those rusty guitar riffs. Also, there’s a’least some imagery here with the whole “walking through barbed wire” thing… tho it’s a pretty cliché symbol, & the rest o’ the metaphors & similes filling this song are similarly trite, including outright stale figures o’ speech like “kissing death” & “walking tall like trees”.

Grade: B

5. Decompression Period

Honestly, this gets a much higher grade than probably all the other songs only ’cause “decompression” acting as both a metaphor for letting out one’s frustration & sounding like “depression” is probably the only legit clever wordplay Papa Roach has e’er done.

& as a ballad it’s not that bad, probably ’cause oddly for Papa Roach it’s not that bombastic or full o’ too much cheese. Granted there are a lot o’ trite phrasing & repetitive lyrics, but for a song as depressed as this it kind o’ fits. There are much, much better songs that do this same thing, but look @ where our standards are. Plus, I kind o’ like how the song gradually builds energy. That cheap trick always gets me.

The aforementioned review also claimed this song was ’bout some inner band turmoil, with the reviewer e’en joking ’bout this song being Jacoby singing ’bout how he didn’t want to hang out with his band anymo’. Like with “Time and Time Again”, I can no longer find any hint o’ this idea anywhere else, so this reviewer could’ve just made up this interpretation, too.

Speaking o’ out-o’-nowhere interpretations, here’s what Genius has to say ’bout the seemingly innocuous line, “& I need some space…”:

Metes and bounds is a system or method of describing land, real property or real estate. The system has been used in England for many centuries, and is still used there in the definition of general boundaries.

Set those boundaries wisely. People’re bound to explode.

Well, I’ve certainly become a genius with these enlightening words o’ wisdom that have been shared to me.

Grade: B

6. Born with Nothing, Die with Everything

Yup, ’nother banger, better than “M-80”, but not as good as “Walking Through Barbed Wire”, or whate’er that song was called. I have to say, @ this point I’ve come to kinda appreciate the weird mechanical warmth o’ the guitar thruout this album, which works better for a mo’ banal song like this than, say, “M-80”, which is trying to be a big blast up the ass, but was just, eh.

After Genius’s fount o’ knowledge before, you may be wondering, ¿what have these historians discovered ’hind the arcane words, “People wake up & sing along”? Well wonder no mo’:

When people sing along they do it because they have or want to have that same mind state illustrated in the song

Thank you, Explain-O-Bot 4000™ for that thorough explanation on how the flesh creatures operate.

Grade: B

7. She Loves Me Not

’Nother example o’ Papa Roach’s terrible choices for singles. I know it’d be silly to get all hipster when talking ’bout Papa Roach, but this is a bit too poppy for a band like Papa Roach, who can’t really pull off great pop, specially with the same generic, broad lyrics as e’erywhere else in this album. The return o’ the rippity rapping doesn’t help: when Jacoby’s rapping worked — if we allow ourselves to entertain the idea that it e’er worked — ’twas giving off this groddy, scuzzy feel. That was why they were called “Papa Roach”. Now this album has none o’ that, which makes the name “Papa Roach” not fit well here. For as much as people rag on how bad rap metal is, I can tell you, rap alt rock is a far worse idea.

But the lyrics here aren’t just broad, but flat-out terrible. E’en by Roach standards, the raps make Thousand Year Krutch sound like Linkin Park in comparison; not only are there 2 lines that rhyme “¿What’s the deal, girl?” & “Tearing up each other’s world”, which is trite as all hell, but then these are followed by, “We should be in harmony, boy & girl”, rhyming with the 1st word again! I know there aren’t a lot o’ good words that rhyme with “girl”; but none o’ these lines were good, anyway, so just throw them all out. & yet none o’ the other lines are much better.

The verses are arguably worse, as they are sung in such a clunky, stop-&-go way as if a robot is trying to describe heart break, with lines in stiff perfect trochee like “WILL this BE an AMPuTAtion” or clinical lines like “this situation leads to agitation”. Yes, romantic turmoil does in fact lead to some sort o’ “agitation”. There’s particularly nasty — & not in a good way — enjambment with the lines, “but I hesitate / to tell her I hate / this relationship…”; & after that awkward rhyme in the middle o’ a sentence, the verse gives up on rhyming or e’en following the meter & just sputters out, “I want out today this is o’er”.

Grade: F

8. Singular Indestructible Droid

This is the best song in this album. Actually, in complete contrast to the sentiment I gave in the previous review, this song kind o’ blends the best elements o’ Infest & this album, having the mad science elements that sort o’ showed up on songs like “Dead Cell”, but much less cringe & replacing rapping with a mo’ effective droidlike monotone singing, with the cleaner, but mechanical-sounding guitar work. I particularly like the guttural BUH-BUH BUH-BUH. Granted, I’m not sure how I feel ’bout the weird chanting & village drums in the background. I guess the droid is attacking the village.

Grade A

9. Black Clouds

’Nother song where the monotone delivery, bland lyrics, & clean but downtuned guitar fit, since, like “Decompression Period”, it’s just ’bout being depressed. For background music songs, this 1 is 1 o’ the best on this album. Just don’t pay too much attention to the lyrics unless you like the kind o’ trite emo poetry with such similes as “tears fall like rain” & “pain strikes like lightning”. O well: this song is thematically coherent, sticking to its bad weather metaphor thruout; that’s a lyrical accomplishment for this band.

Grade B

10. Code of Energy

In contrast to the previous song’s coherency, this song is a mess that doesn’t know what tone it wants to give, jumping from announced verses, sudden shouts o’ the song title ’tween only the 2nd verse & chorus, &, in contrast, the chorus being the most monotone part, while after some amping during the bridge, there’s this bizarre spoken-word section where Jacoby in some mad scientist voice babbles some trite sci-fi shit. You’d think I’d like it, but it’s not weird ’nough to be interesting, & this song doesn’t have the energy that “Dead Cell” & “Singular Indestructible Droid” had.

Grade C

11. lovehatetragedy

We end with the worst song on the album, the title track, a song with a kooky mix o’ a lullaby-like but loud verses followed by an annoying nursery-rhyme-like chorus going “traaageeeedeeee”, & then the 2nd chorus is followed by sudden clanging announcing & shouting, & then this perishing, higher-pitch version o’ “traaageeedeee”, & then after the final chorus we get 1 final “¡TRAGEDEDE! ¡TRAGEDEDE!”. E’erything sounds so thudding & loud but not exciting, specially when this song is s’posed to be ’bout love, but with lyrics as awkward & generic that it, like “She Loves Me Not”, altogether sounds like it’s from the perspective o’ a robot who has only briefly heard rumors o’ this “love” thing. Only by reading the linear notes today have I realized that apparently there’s a war that brought the singer & some other person together, but that’s ’cause it’s briefly hinted @ in 2 lines, while most o’ the song is just repeating the word “tragedy” o’er & o’er.

Grade F

Bonus: 12. Gouge Away

¡Wow, this song’s very good! ¡It’s amazing how Jacoby’s lyricism totally improved so much, with lyrics that have that creative & mysterious imagery that early alt rock bands were known for!

O, wait, that’s ’cause this is a cover o’ a Pixies song. It’s certainly a competent rendition, — no Wes Scantlin squeeling out “About a Girl” like a dying donkey or MGK belting out “Arials” like a 10-year-ol’ angry that his mom took ’way his Switch energy. Granted, Jacoby tries a bit too hard while singing this song: a big point o’ this song, & the Pixies in general, is their mo’ laid-back vibe. This rendition doesn’t stray too far from that, — they could’ve done far worse — but it does lack some o’ the charm o’ the original. For instance, Jacoby’s plainer “doo-doo-doos” aren’t nearly as good as CMKTIV’s warm hums.

Grade B

Bonus: 13. Never Said It

I only reviewed the bonus songs so I could make the jokes ’bout the Pixies cover, but by doing so, I feel obligated to also review the other bonus song, since it’d be weird to just review 1 o’ the 2 bonus songs ’stead o’ either neither or both. All I can say ’bout this song is that it certainly exists.

Grade C

Final Verdict

Save for 2 terrible songs, I still stand by this being a solid album to listen to in the background. Tho not as memorable or interesting as Infest, it’s mo’ listenable unironically — tho it’s not nearly as good as Disturbed’s Believe.

Final Grade: C

To make up for this low-key review, I promise I will do Papa Roach’s far crazier Potatoes for Christmas — I swear that’s a real album — next December.