Pearl Jam : "Dark Matter"

 Do I really need to introduce Pearl Jam? If you do not know who these guys are, this is not the blog for you as they are now like Led Zeppelin a band that is one of the fundamental artists of the era and genre they forged. This album comes closer to what you expect from them than some of their more recent albums that found the band taking more chances. Granted if you think of these guys as a grunge band, then you might find this album lacking in grit, however, this is their 12th album, and only their first two albums should really be considered grunge, as the band has ventured off into varied forms of rock and Americana since then in the 10  albums that followed these guys have a pretty basic formula to follow to be successful and please their fan base. Eddie sings and the rest of the band supports him allowing Vedder to do what he does. 

The second song picks up the pace in a way that is not "State of Love and Trust" but it still works. Then comes their more Neil Young-influenced ballad with the casual folkish strum of "Wreckage".  Vedder's voice has held up well. If this sort of thing still had a place on the radio, this song would fit the format. But rock radio has hit a place of stagnation and has not progressed past 'Better Man". They have given themselves enough room to grow that allows a song like the title track to be different enough, yet as a song holds up against the songs like "Jeremy" they have built their career upon. Amazingly, they can still be consistent as artists 12 albums later and still write songs this good. Mike McCready is ripping out plenty of guitar solos on this album. 

"Won't Tell" might have more of a pop sensibility, but it's really well written and Vedder vocal melodies work their magic.  The more balladic musing that is this album's "Yellow Ledbetter" is "Upper Hand" though it's less Jimi Hendrix influenced.  "Waiting For Stevie" rocks out a little more with  Mike continuing to rip it, and Matt Cameron continuing to show why he is one of the best rock drummers in the business. "Running" is a more energetic return to the "Vs." era. The almost country strum of "Something Special" is just a little more upbeat than what I prefer. 

You can't argue that Bruce Springsteen has not been an influence on these guys as it permeates "Got to Give". It has echoes of 90s rock anthems but is more of a blue-collar rocker. The last song is almost more of a ballad, as it seems to muse upon mortality and the human condition. There is also a slight country unpining to this which is the first time this has crept into what they do. I will give this album a 9.5, and see how it sits with me, it holds up better against their classic works than some of the post-Vitalogy releases. 

 

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The Pretty Reckless :" Other Worlds"

This is an album of covers and songs that are remixes different enough to feel like a reimagining which is the case with "Got So High: that feels more like a 90s alternative radio single. When names go into consideration for who might be worthy of replacing Chris Cornell for a Soundgarden reunion Taylor makes a great case for her name being thrown in the cat with her cover of "Loud Love". She even takes things a step further by cover a Chris Cornell solo song, which is not as compelling as taking on Soundgarden, but clearly her intentions are known. When it comes to covers, I am going to be most critical when someone covers David Bowie, but she does a fine job with "Quicksand ". Bowie's keyboardist Mike Garson plays on this making it more legit. 

"25" is even darker and more urgently sung as an acoustic piece which works really well. Her voice works well when dipping into the smokier place before she belts it out. They accomplish similar with the t acoustic reworking of "Only Love Can Save Me Now". With things stripped down in such a fashion you can hear how nuanced her voice is and confirms she is the real deal. I have always stood by the fact that if a song is good, you should be able to strip it down to acoustic guitars and play it in its simplest form which is what they are doing here, and it further proves my point. When it comes to "Death By Rock n Roll" they use more percussion.

She covers another Soundgarden song with "Halfway There" which finds Matt Cameron harmonizing with her. While he sand back ups on Soundgarden songs I guess he gets the job done , but the song is not the most impressive offering here. The cover of "What's So Funny About Peace Love and Understanding", works really well, even if it is less like Elvis Costello's version. "Harley Darling" works but is not as interesting as the others. I will give this a 9, and see how it grows on me.  

3rd Secret : "s/t"

 Combining members of Soundgarden and Nirvana, and technically Pearl Jam as well considering Matt Cameron is also in Pearl Jam. It opens sounding more like the Sundays. The familiar sounds of grunge do not occur until the second song " I Choose Me". Energy wise I think the Pretty Reckless carried the torch better with last year's album. They smooth groove and smoother melodies is doing something different while being familiar and it's still pretty effective.  "Last Day of August" is well played guitar wise, but the overall vibe of the song sounds like a folk version of Hole.  "Winter Solstice" continues even further in a hippy direction with more of a folk feel than anything rock. 

"Lies Fade Away" finds a return to distorted guitar and more driven drumming. There is more of tension than heaviness.  Soundgarden's later work is what this comes closest to. There is none of the raw punk feel of Nirvana.  The 60s swagger of  " Live Without You" works well, but if these were some pot smoking witches from Sweden then it would add up more easily.  The same can not be said from the pola induced chaos of "Right Stuff' which seems unsure of which way it wants to go.  "Dead Sea" finds it back to the more Arizona hippy take on what Hole did. The melancholy melody is fine, but not the albums best or worst song.  They remember they were in rock bands again on "Diamond in the Cold" . I like the almost middle eastern drone that possesses the song going into it. 

"Somewhere in Time" is a more slinky rock song that has more in common with Alice in Chains than their other bands.  The riff reminds me a little on  Lynyrd Skynyrd's "On the Hunt". "the Yellow Dress' is back to a darker form of folk music, At this seven minute song builds it does so like a storm over the desert , ya know kinda of like the Doors.  It wanders around for half the song. This is not what I expected and perhaps that fact needs to grow on me, I will give this album an 8.5, do not go into this expecting for any of these guys to be picking up where they left off. 

The Top 50 Metal Guitarists - 20 to 11

The death of a guitarist I played with turned my thoughts to what makes a good guitarist great. Metal finds the stakes for guitarists high. Shredding can come before playing a fucking song. While all of these guitarists can play a solo, I was also looking for tone, impact on the genre as a whole and how their personalities came through in their playing. So this list of the top 50 Metal Guitarists. If you don't find your favorite guitar player here then know they were just wankers.



20- Kerry King

Sure his solos are formulaic,and has a punk sloppiness to it at times but his playing has a fire to it that helps define the sound of his band. Marrying metal and punk at the cross roads that became thrash. He uses an evil chaos in his playing that made his band darker than the other thrash bands at the time.




19-Ihsahn

His playing goes beyond black metal. Romantic touches of neo-classical gives a more gothic touch to the architecture of his songs.He has branched out to 8 strings for his solo work. More of a shredder than you might expect he will go down as underrated except on this list where he is earning his rightful place.



18-Adam Jones

He doesn't solo in the traditional sense. He does add sonic dynamics where solos would go and is almost jazz like in the way he gives the drums and bass room to breathe. He knows how to keep the tension and get a big arena rock sound when needed. He influenced an entire generation of progressive metal players who live for the groove no matter how complex or simple.


 17-Kirk Hammett

He has some memorable solos. His band is known for their big riffs, but he works around the chugs and gallops owing more of a rock sensibility to his playing that heavy metal thunder. I don't think his band could work without him even though he stepped in to replace Dave Mustaine many moons ago.



 16-Kim Thayll

How could he beat out Hammet you ask? His playing is more creative and darker. He uses up more sonic space to create a sense of unease on his band's earlier work, but is able to solo with the best of them when it is called for. He weaves in noise and chaos while still managing to create grunge anthems that dominated the air waves.




15-Zakk Wylde

He had some big shoes to fill. Rather than living in the shadow of the great players who stood beside he boss before he, Wylde carved out his own sound and brought something new to the table. He could pulls off the Randy Rhodes stuff with his own flair which was impressive live.





14 Arve Isdal

Until you see this guy rock it live you have no idea. He is the prime reason his band almost blew Dimmu Borgir off the stage. They might play viking prog, but his playing keeps the band rooted in the rock side of classic metal.




13- Don Anderson

He can pulls a sweep arpeggio out of thin air, despite the fact he is mainly adding melody to the more post-rock side of his former band Agalloch. I haven't sought out his current project as Agalloch is a moment in time I do not want to put down.



12- Ace Frehely

You wanted the best you got the best. He plays guitar for the hottest band in the land.  Technically he is outclassed by many players ranked lower than him, but chances are they would not have picked up a guitar in the first place if it was not for him.His solo work is also pretty decent for all you rock soldiers who want the Ace back like he told you so.




11- Trey Azagthoth

He took what Kerry King did and sacrificed it to the Ancient Ones. It returned back to this plan as death metal and crushed many souls. The unique twisted on his personification of chaos, sets him aside as his own island in a genre guilty of rehashing the same old grind. He is the Eddie Van Halen of death metal.

 

Classics ? Soundgarden's "Badmotorfinger"

It would almost be pointless for me to review "Louder Than Love " which is my favorite album by these guys so there is no question there. This one however is much more up for debate. When it came out I was a little disappointed as it felt less metal and more rock n roll than "Louder Than Love" So lets dig into this and give it another listen. I could give a fuck that this is the album that helped break them into a wider audience as wider audience doesn't mean quality , but quantity. It opens with a song that is yes decidedly grunge, but has more in common with Pearl Jam than I wanted these guys to have when it came out. It's an up beat rock song that could do without the horn accents. I do like when it breaks down to just bass, drums and vocals. Soundgarden had already raised the bar for themselves past the point of shuffling off into glorified garage rock. There is a more Mudhoney punk recklessness to "Face Pollution". Not sure if this manic direction the album starts off in wins me over any more now than it did then. They slow down to the Black Sabbath swagger and it gives Chris more room to open up an actually sing. I love the line "as I'm raped another monkey circus freak". I think this song has more of the things I want from the band than the first two.

The first song they really slay me with is "Jesus Christ Pose". It finds Cornell's voice soaring up where I want him to be and the drums locked into a tribal mechanization versus the bass and guitar. Its one of those rare perfect songs that a band writes sometimes as happy accident. The bass leads into "Mind Riot" which is a dynamic shift down from the song that preceded it, which found them at 11 so there was no where else to go from there. The guitar riff is more introspective and Cornell delivers with the range of Robert Plant applied to the cerebral fixation of the Doors. I love how the vocals are layered with the call and response. I had almost forgotten about the song "New Damage" until I went back to give this album another listen. It has a darker throb to it. The bridge coming out of the chorus is the song's only weak link. Is this nitpicking? Well these mother fuckers just wrote "Jesus Christ Pose" so I don't think so.

"Outshined" this one of the singles from this album that got beat into the ground. The lyrics are great. At the end of the day this song has stood the test of time so anything else that I might have attached to it doesn't really matter. I think my favorite song on this album might be "Room a Thousand Years Wide" the riff has weight yet glide. You get to hear a very dynamic range from Cornell.The guitar riff to this song is not my favorite though I like the reverse delay on the vocals and I really love when the song breaks down to a more half time. The intro to "Searching For a Friend With My Good Eye Closed" is one of the best ever , making this the 3rd perfect song on this album. It's another one that captures that hypnotic groove that is sonic and heavy, but flows with not effort . "Slaves and Bulldozers" has more of a Sabbath meets Zeppelin groove to it. Chris adds grit to his voice and then soars back up into something with the soul of Ian Gillian. It's one of the albums heavier and more metallic moments.

"Somewhere" is another song I don't really give much thought about until I go give this album another listen. I'll go ahead and give this one a 10, so it is a classic of the decade in which it was conceived, so I will have give "Louder Than Love" another listen and see if it holds up to the pedestal it's on.

The Top 100 albums of the 90s :40 to 31

Ok here we go, you know the deal. We do not give a fuck about what album sold what or if it was on Mtv or not, we care about what has stood the taste of time. 


40-Only Living Witness -"Innocents"

The best post-hardcore band you never heard. Their singer can actually sing his ass off and their song have hooks and are in your face. Jonah would later lend his voice to a Converge song.Their drummer who also wrote most of their songs died in 2011 which was several years after the band had broken up.




39-  I Mother Earth - "Scenery and Fish"

 This Canadian band was often written off as Jane's Addiction wanna-bes, due to the trippy sonic nature of their music and the singer's high raspy and heavily effected vocals on their first album. Their second was huge step forward in terms of songwriting for the band. The band had a strong cult following, by those in the know.

 

38- Porno For Pyros "s/t"


 Perry Ferrel's post Janes band. Steven Perkins was also on board. The first album had more rock to it. People always think of the song "Pets" which garnered the most radio play, but it was "Cursed Female" that had the most sleaze ridden drug fueled passion to it and that is what we wanted from music out of this decade.



37- Sound Garden -Badmotorfinger

Why is Soundgarden so low you ask? Well this album is arguably better than "Superunkown" which despite a few darker moments was another steps towards a more commercial direction. When I first got this album I threw the tap out of the window because I thought the guitar playing sounded too much like Van Halen. It took it a minute to grow on me.

 


36-Danzig - "Lucifuge"

Yes the first album is better but it came out in the 80s. This one was coated in blues and had a more rock n roll feel to it, despite the fact that all the metal kids ate it up when it was released. Another album that grew on me over time.


  35-Acid Bath-"When the Kite String Pops" These New Orleans sludge legends are one of the few bands who is able to appear on this list twice, because their shit is so good it can not be denied.

34-Ben Folds Five -"Whatever and Ever Amen"


One of the best post -Elton John pianists who can also write a mean pop song. Moody and cynical, the ballads are honestyly emoitve. Ben Folds might not be Freddie Mercury , but he knows how to use his voice.

 

33-Kyuss - "Welcome to Sky Valley"

The band most modern sludge and stoner rock bands owe big time. Pre- Queens of the Stoneage Josh Homme, his fuzzy desert guitar sound was in full effect for this album. The soulful vocals of John Garcia were one of a kind.

 

  32-Tool- "Undertow"

 Now we are well into the albums that you can get endless listens out of. Very tense with sinewy guitar slithering through the labyrinth the bass line weaves under Maynard's sensitive drill Sargent approach. The songs are all very tight and well written but get beaten out by another one of the band's albums."I have found some kind of temporary sanity from this shit , blood and cum on my hands."




31- Depeche Mode - "Violator" 

 This one hardly needs an explanation and perhaps it should even rank higher. This was my I have been up all night on drugs and now I am watching the sun rise album.