Little Feat - Ain't Had Enough Fun
Swamp rock
Eleventh album

I gotta hand it to these guys. Despite being considered one of the great American rock bands (by those who know their history, at least), and having records dating back to the early '70s, they don't have a single household hit to their name—hell, even my dad never listened to them—but they still kept doing their thing anyway, and have earned themselves a legacy of one of the most commercially underachieving yet unerringly persistent rock bands in history. There's definitely something to appreciate about that.

That said—if you've ever wanted to listen to 70 straight minutes of the most meat-and-potatoes rock and roll music you've ever heard in your life, then boy, do I have the album for you!

Yeah, this was quite the slog for me. These guys deserve nothing but respect, but I cannot for the life of me feel any degree of entertainment or inspiration from rock music this boilerplate. It's just too plain. I can't do anything with it. They did get Shaun Murphy to sing on this one, though, and her impressive pipes are probably the one highlight in my opinion—but I will not be revisiting this one any time soon.

If you wanna get into Little Feat, I suggest listening to Dixie Chicken first. That's probably their best effort, and was made during the absolute high of their career in the mid '70s, so that's where the best stuff is.

5/10

---

Maná - Cuando los Ángeles Lloran
Latin rock
Fourth album

Pretty decent and inoffensive rock album with a few catchy songs on it. Not much else to say. Even though it's entirely in Spanish, it doesn't take a genius to figure out what the dude is singing about, accounting for the music's overall romantic sound—especially with how liberally the word "corazón" is used.

6/10

---

Flotsam and Jetsam - Drift
Heavy metal
Fifth album

Just another decent-ass metal album that fails to bring anything unique to the table. I guess if there's one thing that sets F&J apart, it would be their attitude? Eric A.K.'s vocals do have this charismatic in-your-face bravado to them, but this one element isn't really strong enough to carry the rest of the album into the "recommended" zone.

6/10

---

Mobb Deep - The Infamous
Hip hop
Sophomore album

I've been waiting anxiously for another great rap album after all this middling metal music—and I'm happy to report that my patience paid off this time around. The Infamous is easily one of the better records I've heard on the hip hop end of things, which is saying something, because I've given high praise to almost everything I've covered in the genre so far. At this point, I'm comfortable attesting to the notion that East Coast hip hop was setting some serious flames in the mid '90s.

Our two main MCs, Havoc and Prodigy (RIP), are accompanied by an impressive bevy of featured artists, including Nas, Raekwon, Ghostface Killah, Big Noyd, and Q-Tip—the last of whom also lent a hand in the album's gritty and nocturnal production. Crystal Johnson also shows up to do some crooning on "Temperature's Rising," which may not be my favorite single, but it's certainly a highlight nonetheless.

Consciousness in subject matter is something that I value a lot in rap lyricism, and again, being that this is an East Coast group, a great deal of care was taken to make each and every bar hard-hitting and meaningful. Combine that with the ominously off-kilter beats that keeping you on your toes on a track for track basis, and you get one hell of a riveting experience.

I still need a few more listens (and a couple visits to genius.com) to fully appreciate the poetry behind each track, but there'll be plenty of time for that in the future. For the time being, from a purely emotional standpoint, I can already tell why this is regarded as a classic. If you're into some old-school hip hop, but not too old school, you have to listen to this. This is the kind of music that oldheads will point to and say, "Why can't they make rap like this anymore?"

7/10

---

King Crimson - THRAK
Progressive rock
Eleventh album

When I noticed King Crimson on my big list of '95 albums to listen to, I was like, "Ah, fuck. I'm not gonna be able to listen to this one," because Robert Fripp is notorious for his curmudgeonly boomer-ish views on the way music is distributed in the modern age, and for the longest time, pretty much none of King Crimson's albums were available to stream (legally) online. Apparently, though, he changed his mind about this—and just last year, too, because now those records are available to stream now, which is fantastic.

I've heard almost all of them at this point—everything leading up to their '95 release, of course—and as a result, although I wouldn't necessarily call myself a King Crimson fan, I've definitely seen the light when it comes to this band. These guys are kinda fucking awesome, and consistently so, with not a dud across their entire oeuvre—although, admittedly, I still haven't heard a record in their discography that I would rank above In the Court of the Crimson King. I think knowing just how fucking old that record is—1969—really adds a lot to it for me, because they were so sonically ahead of the curve. It's actually unbelievable.

In the specific case of their 1995 album THRAK, however, I was told on Wikipedia that this record is intended to be a companion piece to an EP that was put out in 1994 called Vrooom. For the purposes of this challenge, just to make my life a little bit easier, I typically choose to ignore anything that's not a full-length studio album—that means no EPs. However, in the case of an album being a direct followup to a pre-existing EP, that makes me feel somewhat compelled to listen to it.

Aaaaand it's not available. Anywhere. Not for free, at least. I ended up paying $7 for the thing, because I'm a chump, and because I'm ultimately okay with monetarily supporting a band this cool. But that's the first and last time I ever pay for anything with regards to this project.

That $7 was well-spent, I would say. Vrooom is a pretty great EP. Not only is it lengthy enough to be its own album, it's another testament to the band's consistency in quality and experimentation. It's loud, stentorian, and bursting at the seams with flavor and pizzazz. There's even some industrial influence, which is pretty cool, albeit risky—but it worked out just fine in their favor, I think. All in all, it's just yet another artistically satisfying and evocative prog rock effort.

However, a number of songs from this EP would end up being rerecorded for THRAK, and I guess that's what makes these two records companions—although, honestly, there are points where I just feel like the latter is just an extended version of Vrooom.

That doesn't mean it's better, though. In fact, I enjoyed THRAK significantly less than I enjoyed Vrooom, and for a number of reasons—which is very unfortunate, because while I do still think it's a good LP, there's just something intrinsically less exciting about a King Crimson album where you've already heard half the tracklist. The new mixes aren't really different enough to make them feel distinct, and paradoxically, the two songs that were not taken from the EP would've drastically improved it. Further, out of the album's material that's actually new, most of it's actually quite boring to listen to. it all just kinda sounds like uninspired filler to me.

As a result of these issues, THRAK has actually turned out to be my least favorite King Crimson album. Again—it's not that it's bad, but most its best material had already been readily available in 1994, so...

6/10

---

Fair Warning - Rainmaker
Hard rock
Sophomore album

Sleep-incuding garbage. When the rock music is this generic, this trite, and this fucking dimestore, you would never in a million years guess that this band hails from Germany of all places. Who in Germany was asking for music like this in 1995? And why?

5/10

---

So ends the April segment. Overall, that was a pretty shitty month. Probably the weakest one so far. There was a handful of good stuff, of course, but there was so much mediocre bullshit, too, and I never gave anything higher than a 7/10, which is a huge bummer. I can think of three candidates that might deserve an 8/10, and might get one from me down the line, but I don't really think that's in the cards as of right now.

I don't know when I'll move onto May just yet, but it probably won't be until July, since I'm a little burnt out.

Anyway, here's the all-important chart:



Snobbier music nerds than myself would probably recoil at the thought of placing White Zombie over Aphex Twin, but I don't care.

I actually have some adjustments to make on previous charts, because Wikipedia is imperfect, and their list is constantly in the flux of maintaining date-accuracy. For example, when I covered that Porcupine Tree album, I was under the impression that it was a February release, but it is now being considered a January album—so I'll have to adjust for those shifts, I guess. This is what I get for relying on an unreliable resource.

I also have a few score adjustments to make, as well, but most of them are relatively minor, so I probably won't bother posting any of those.

Right now, I recently came up with another stupid (albeit quarantine-induced) idea: try to watch every music video from the '90s. I'll start and finish with the year 1995, in which about ~700 videos were made, according to this database that I found, so if I get tired of the mission by the end, I'll at least have completed one year's worth of videos. I've already seen over 90, and if I keep it up, I'll be able to finish up a ranked list in a matter of two weeks. Should be fun.

Quote from: Verbatim on June 03, 2020, 05:48:20 PM

Quote from: 🍁 Aria 🔮 on June 03, 2020, 05:44:35 PM

Quote from: Verbatim on June 03, 2020, 05:31:07 PM

Quote from: 🍁 Aria 🔮 on June 03, 2020, 05:19:30 PM

-The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask (CE)

would CE be with or without the holographic label?

With! The box also says "collector's edition". I believe it's the least "collectory" ce I've ever owned.

cool, that's the one i have too, then

do you think you'll actually play it this time? 🤔

It's on the backburner for now. I have a lot of shorter games I'm rotating through right now, trying to get some completions under my belt before I jump into something more taxing.

While I find the time limit mechanic to be a novel idea to incentivize players to action, it also frustrates me for those same reasons. It's not really a criticism or anything, it's just a personal barrier to truly getting into the gameplay loop for any longer period of time.

yeah, that's understandable—although the mechanic becomes significantly more manageable once you learn the inverted song of time, you still can't really afford to dick around too much, which can be stressful (exclusively eustress for me, though)

what else are you playing

-The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask (CE)

would CE be with or without the holographic label?

How you are you gonna read Flower of Evil or Trail of blood and not say it's literary genius? It's impossible

never underestimate my power again

why do i feel like cheese potato has been waiting his entire time on sep7agon for this thread

The Muffs - Blonder and Blonder
Pop punk
Sophomore album

Pretty standard pop punk fare, truth be told, but with a (recently deceased) female vocalist, Kim Shattuck, who seemed to possess a lot of Courtney Love-esque energy—and I do mean that in a positive way. Her roars on this record are pretty ferocious, and it's definitely her performance alone that highlights what is otherwise a pretty unspecial album. RIP to the lady.

6/10

---

FireHouse - 3
Hair metal
Third album

Over the years, I've developed a strong distaste for '80s glam metal. Earlier, I described the music of Rob Zombie as being the "good" kind of cheesy—for the bad kind of cheesy, look no further than this disgusting genre.

FireHouse is a band that kinda slid under my radar, though, and from what I've heard so far, I actually can't say that I hate them. They don't do anything special, but they do what they do well, and I think that's good enough. The best glam metal is the kind that's less glam, more metal—which is to say, putting the music first. The bottom line is that these guys have some genuinely catchy songs in their repertoire, and that's all you can really ask for in this genre.

This album is somewhat of an exception, though, because it's comprised almost entirely of power ballads—and there's only so much ballad that I can really put myself through. I'm just a guy who needs variety, and this record doesn't have much of that, unfortunately.

I'd like to shout-out the song "Somethin' 'Bout Your Body" for not being the typical braindead lusty horndog ballad that I was expecting it to be—or at least, not entirely. It's still ultimately about lusting over a woman, but in a bit of a twist, it actually starts out by praising the woman's intelligence over her body—which totally falls apart in the chorus, sure, but I just think it's neat how they thought to make a song about uplifting women for something other than their physical appearance for once. It was kind of refreshing, I guess, so I'll give them props for that.

5/10

---

Pavement - Wowee Zowee
Indie rock
Third album

Pavement is one of those too-cool-for-you indie rock darlings that every hipster on every message board will tell you is one of the best bands of all time—even Robert Christgau hailed them as the single best rock band of the '90s.

So, naturally, I don't quite understand what all the fuss is.

Slanted and Enchanted is one of the most It's Okay, I Guess? albums I've ever heard, and I feel the same way about Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. Granted, I've only heard them once, and from a purely musical standpoint alone (not reading into the lyrics whatsoever), I found them to be anywhere from nondescript to outright dull.

It must be the lyrics, then—but my thing about lyrics is that, in order for me to care about them, I kinda have to be into the music first. Maybe that's unfair, but that's pretty much always how I've felt about the medium.

That said, the way I feel about Wowee Zowee (awful title, by the way) is pretty much how I feel about the rest of their material, as well. The main difference, I guess, is that they must have gotten really fucking baked this time around, kinda like that Dandy Warhols album I covered earlier, because there's definitely some psychedelic shit going on with some of these riffs and guitar tones. Sometimes it's cool, other times it seems like they're just dicking around.

I certainly didn't hate it—I'm just not really hearing what all the hubbub is about.

6/10

---

Hum - You'd Prefer an Astronaut
Alt rock
Third album

Well, I certainly wasn't expecting this of all albums to be as good as it was. In a way, this record kind of embodies everything that I wanted Pavement's music to be like—more driven, more tuneful, less bullshitting, and exhibiting a more colorful and interesting emotional palette instead of just trying to impress you with how alternative they are. There's actually songs present on this album—and pretty good ones, too. Ones that feel focused and purposeful without compromising that indie energy.

It's an album that functions under a pretty simple formula, so don't go into it expecting anything fancy beyond some of the moodier cuts like "The Very Old Man" or "Why I Like Robins," which are incidentally my favorite cuts—but if you like your alternative rock music to be a little bit on the morose side, I'd give this one a shot. Apparently, Chino Moreno of Deftones has cited this as one of his favorite albums, if that means anything.

7/10

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Iced Earth - Burnt Offerings
Thrash metal
Third album

When reading Wikipedia's article for this album, it was described as the band's "heaviest and darkest" record—which got me all excited, but when I actually listened to it, I was kind of underwhelmed. It's certainly dark and heavy, just like any other metal album in existence, but it didn't seem particularly so to me. I might have to listen to it again with a different frame of mind, because that description honestly tainted my perception a little bit.

The music is okay, though. If you like metal, you'll invariably find something to enjoy about this. It's just not special.

Really cool album cover, though. I've been compressing each and every cover down to 200x200 pixels for the sake of having a clean and consistent standard, which is why some of them look like complete shit, and that's ultimately my bad. I'll have to figure something out to prevent that while maintaining consistency.

6/10

There's a reason MLK said that, "darkness cannot drive out darkness, only the light can do that." His movement didn't go around singing kumbaya, but they didn't go around hurting people for no reason either, and yet they somehow managed to get the civil rights act enacted and abolish segregation and Jim Crow laws.

don't forget stopped racism!

oh wait he didn't do that because peaceful protests have demonstrably done fuck all to stop racism, fucking whoops

HMLTD

The Highwaymen - The Road Goes on Forever
Country
Final album

Four words: Cash. Jennings. Nelson. Kristofferson. It's no secret that I don't like country music, but as it turns out, when you have a supergroup that combines the quadrilateral talents of all the most beloved stars in the genre (only two of whom are still living today, unfortunately), you get a pretty good album. Go figure.

It's not the kind of album that'll convert you, by any means, but it's hard for me not to be won over by just the sheer novelty of it, especially knowing that this is the last time they'd ever collaborate. The opening track, "The Devil's Right Hand," was written by my guy, Steve Earle, and is probably my favorite track.

That said, this is probably not even the best Highwaymen album. Try the first one instead, if you wanna hear the best they've been able to produce together. This one's worth a listen, but perhaps not if you just hate the genre out of pocket.

7/10

---

General Public - Rub It Better
New wave
3rd album

This is just some shitty reggae-infused new wave that probably sounded out of date in 1995, let alone 2020, notwithstanding some of the homoerotic overtones (not that there's anything wrong with that). Pretty strong "why the fuck am I listening to this?" material.

5/10

---

Duran Duran - Thank You
New wave
8th album

These guys are okay, but this is pretty much just a throwaway covers album. The song choice is definitely interesting, though—from Bob Dylan, Led Zep, and Lou Reed, to Public Enemy and Grandmaster Flash—and I don't fully understand the logic behind these choices, but judging by the album cover and the title, it appears that Duran Duran just wanted to pay tribute to a bunch of artists that inspired them and nothing more.

That's all well and good, but none of the material is very interesting. I enjoyed the cover of Lou Reed's "Perfect Day" (and Reed himself reportedly gave it high praise, saying it was the best cover of his own material that he'd ever heard) and "Drive By," the only original song on the record, is pretty interesting as well, but this album got completely slammed by critics for some reason. Q magazine in particular said it was the worst album ever made.

I mean, it's not that it's good, but I honestly don't know how you could come to that conclusion. It's just whatever. Not memorable, not useful, goes in one ear and out the other for the most part, but completely inoffensive. If a record has to be bad, this is as bad as I'd ever want them to be.

5/10

---

Montell Jordan - This Is How We Do It
R&B
Debut album

This is the one with that dumbass "THIS IS HOW WE DO IT" song on it, which is easily one of my least favorite popular songs that apparently came out in 1995. Everything else is just typical hyper-sensual R&B trash, and I have nothing nice to say about it. By all accounts, the guy does have a nice voice, but if he didn't, he wouldn't have a CD, so I need a little bit more than that. There's only so many songs about licking vaginas that I can put up with.

4/10

---

Blind Guardian - Imaginations from the Other Side
Power metal
5th album

This was pretty neat. As far as metal goes, I don't really think it does anything special or unique, but the band does seem to place an emphasis on dramatic narrative storytelling in their lyrics. Besides that, they pretty much just make really cool and shred-happy metal music. Every song is as epic and grandiose and empowering as you'd expect it to be—but depending on how much metal you listen to, the appeal may not come across to you at all, or it might just seem lame or passé to you. As someone who finds himself in the middle, though, I liked it.

7/10

Imagine my shock when this thread hasn't been necrolocked yet... Anyways, I'm bringing this back momentarily. I'm bored, I'm quarantined, I have nothing else to do, so let's review some old fucking albums.

In the context of 1995, these will represent the month of April, and after this batch, I'll have sixteen more to listen to, and ten more that I've already heard to post my thoughts about. I'm not sure if I'll head straight into May after I'm done just yet, but probably not. This shit takes for-fucking-ever, and listening to bad music (which 90% of music is) can be extremely discouraging.

---

Daddy Yankee - No Mercy
Reggaeton
Debut album

This is the guy who would end up recording "Gasolina," and being featured on "Despacito"—although, hopefully, you've been living under a rock and haven't heard either of those songs.

This debut isn't actually that bad, though. I don't love it, but he raps really fast—at least twice as fast as Eminem on "Rap God" at certain points—which I think is inherently impressive if not fun to listen to, even if the lyrics are shit. I wouldn't know if the lyrics are shit, however, because I don't understand Spanish anyway, which is somewhat of a bonus.

The beats are kinda shitty, but Yankee's aggressive, rapid-fire, and in-your-face delivery makes up for it. I think most of you would probably find his flow extremely irritating, and I can completely understand that. Personally, I like his energy, although it can get a little grating for me sometimes, too. As such, I can't really give it a strong recommendation—although I do kinda see how he got so big just from this album alone.

6/10

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Guided by Voices - Alien Lanes
Indie lo-fi
8th album

I'm not gonna beat around the bush—I don't really get this one. I'm definitely not opposed to the concept of lo-fi music, but GBV's particular brand of it kind of makes me question a few things. The record is an average length at 40 minutes, but it has almost 30 songs. This basically means that there isn't a single track that goes above the 3-minute mark. One track, "Cigarette Tricks," is a mere 18 seconds.

Is this album a serious attempt at music? It's hard to tell. I couldn't tell you if there's any songs that I like, because none of them last long enough for me to make that call. But they also don't last long enough for me to feel annoyed by them if they sucked. The entire album just kind of bleeds together into this big blurry mess, kind of like the days spent during a lockdown.

This is, more or less, how all GBV albums are. It's just kind of their style, I guess. I can't say that I'm personally into it, because I like my music to have some semblance of effort or purpose woven into them, but I can respect the desire to do something different than what everyone else is doing. I just struggle to recommend it on virtually any level.

6/10 (feeling generous)

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Sugar Ray - Lemonade and Brownies
Proto nu metal
Debut album

If you're over the age of 20, the answer to the following question is an assured "yes," but otherwise: Have you ever heard the song "Fly" by Sugar Ray? If not, I apologize for linking you to this obnoxious earworm.

Anyways, yeah, that's these guys. Until they made reggae-flavored pop music, they actually used to make nu metal before it exploded in the late '90s to early 2000s—and it was no less cheesy and stupid in 1995 than it was afterwards.

Here's an embarrassing fact about me, though: I actually enjoy me some nu metal, albeit in progressively small doses as I get older. An album's worth of the stuff is probably a bit much for me nowadays, especially when this particular record has some super dumb jazz piss-takes thrown into it. It was also produced by the film director who goes by the name of McG, and if you don't understand why that's absolutely hilarious, I apologize.

No matter how much I try to deny it, though, "10 Seconds Down" is still kind of a banger, and "Danzig Needs a Hug" is not only a hilarious song title, but a pretty nice cool-down moment on the record as well.

At the end of the day, it's still just really shitty and dated bro music to the core, but I'm still able to find things to appreciate about it, even if it's only in an ironic sense. You could say it's my favorite kind of stupidity, although I've been weening myself out of it, and I ultimately blame my parents for getting me into the genre at an early age.

5/10 (but in my heart, it's a 6/10)

---

Strapping Young Lad - Heavy as a Really Heavy Thing
Industrial (death?) metal
Debut album

This is probably the loudest and most unhinged album I've covered so far—but if you can't tell by the title, it's done in a somewhat tongue-in-cheek fashion, where it doesn't take itself very seriously. It really is insanely heavy, though, to a point where it's actively hostile to the ears. There are some tracks on here, like "Drizzlehell," that are just absolutely out of fucking control with their noise levels. It's like you're stuck in an echo chamber filled with hundreds of people screaming at the top of their lungs in the most exaggeratedly horrifying way possible, or something.

At the same time, though, if you're somebody who looks for music like this, I wouldn't be surprised if you'd consider this to be lightweight shit. It's hard to tell with you degenerates sometimes.

Me personally, it was a bit much, in the same way that death metal is a bit much. But I did appreciate some of the more composed moments, like on "In the Rainy Season" or "Skin Me." There's definitely something positive to remark about music that activates your fight/flight response, or makes you feel like you're under attack, or being chased around by a crazed yet inexplicably musclebound lunatic on the street with an ax.

If any of that shit sounds like fun to you, maybe check this one out, but it's worth noting that frontman Devin Townsend has since disowned this album as "record company bullshit." Take that as you will, I suppose.

6/10

---

KMFDM - Nihil
Industrial dance
8th album

I'm not huge on these guys, but for the time being, this is probably my favorite KMFDM. Just really solid industrial music with a fiery political intensity, similar to the Atari Teenage Riot that I raved about several months ago, albeit not quite on the same level. I don't have much to say about it besides that. It's just cool music.

If you like Rammstein, you might consider trying these guys out—especially if you like aggressive EDM, because while they're not metal by any means, they do possess that familiar "angry German music" energy.

7/10

i haven't been a fan of the amazing atheist for years now, but the video he just uploaded on this subject covers how i feel to a T and more or less answers all of your questions:

honestly my entire perception of transformers has been completely tainted by michael bay

Quote from: ಠ_ಠ on May 27, 2020, 11:23:39 AM

I will never understand the appeal because I find the tropes and especially their idea of "cute" as being viscerally disgusting. Had weeb friends in middle school/high school and I genuinely tried to like it, watched several shows and even read some manga since they pushed it onto me really hard. Instead of converting me like they wanted, it had the opposite effect and I went from not really caring to flat out hating anime. Also made me realize how fucked up Japanese culture is.

I kinda get this too, though probably not to the same extent.

Though I'm also just not a big cartoon person in general, the only one I'd say I'm genuinely a fan of is Clone Wars and even that is about 35% shit.

maybe give Legend of the Galactic Heroes a try

it's about space warfare, and it takes itself very seriously

i personally find it boring, but i think it has baconshelf written all over it

Quote from: Verbatim on May 26, 2020, 09:03:28 PM

Quote from: MetaCognition on May 26, 2020, 07:47:44 PM

What is it you study, again?

english and compsci

Since when were you doing compsci

same moment i realized that i needed a minor to get my degree

went for compsci because i already had a few credits in it from that time i switched