The Top 100 albums of the 90s :20 to 11

Here we are in the top twenty , so let the butt hurt begin as you start to see what you thought to be the best album of your drunken high school days is not on the list, because there are better albums, sure these might not have out sold Pearl Jam, but they have stood the test of time much better.

  20- Sade - "Love Deluxe"

 Half of you might have been conceived to this album. There were many trip hop albums that could have made the list, but Sade does what they do better, yes that includes Tricky and Massive Attack, who put out some good songs, but we are talking entire albums front to back and even "Mezzanine" has a little filler on it.

 



  19- Cranberries- "Everybody Else Is Doing It So Why Can't We?" 

This album carried more longing and passion than every thing they released after. The Cocteau Twins influence was very strong, but the vocals were layered in a different manner that makes this album.

 

  18- Sunny Day Real Estate - "Diary" 

If you were to own only one so called "emo" album, this would be the one. The band was disrupted in their prime by this guy named Dave Grohl who stole them for his cock rock band. Jeremy always claimed they started off as a hardcore band who was trying to play slow songs and on this album you can hear that more than the others.

 


  17-Tori Amos- "Little Earthquakes"

 Three years ago I ruined Tori Amos for my fiance when I played her Kate Bush and we have never been able to listen to her in the car since. While this is her "Lion Heart" it carries much more anger than Kate Bush ever taps into with the exception of the last song on "the Dreaming". Front to back their are no filler songs anywhere to be found and Tori can tinkle the keys better than Kate.

 

  16- Nirvana - "In Utero"

if you don't understand why this beat out "Nevermind" I'm not sure why you are reading my blog, but the short blurb version is that "Nevermind" is restrained and slick, where this album is a drugged out rock star in full train wreck mode. I need my rock stars dead on drugs.

 

  15- Jeff Buckley - "Grace"

For the rest of this list I will answer the nagging question of "But how did that beat out Nirvana?" . Have you ever heard Jeff Buckley sing? He could improvise singing from the phone book and it would beat Nirvana.He killed himself with much more style as well.

 


14-Alice in Chains - "Dirt"

An ode to drugs and misery. This rocks, "Rooster" is the only song I do not like on this album but "Would" balances that out. Reason it beat Nirvana? Jerry's guitar playing and Layne is a better junkie, Cobain also smoked crack while Layne just shot hard and he died from an overdose , not his wife murdering him. Yes trolls I know I just implied Cobain killed himself in the blurb above, and he did by staying with Love.


 


13-Acid Bath - "Paegan Terrorism Tactics" 

Yes they made it on here twice. Dax Riggs' first alright trumps Nirvana's discography. He might be alive or is he for he claims " dying felt so god damn good today" They are from New Orleans so my theory is he did before this album was made then brought back to life with voo-doo by children playing in the catacombs. Drugs... I scream ,you scream, every body screams for morphine.' He even admits to being a zombie.

 

  12-Fugazi - " Steady Diet of Nothing"

Dave Grohl would tell you they could not hold a candle to Fugazi, in fact he did while making a tv show about his terrible album. Ian Mckaye means no drugs. But this album has groove and punk anger coiled together and ready to burst at any moment, glued together with chops worthy of the Police.


  11- Nine Inch Nails - " the Downwards Spiral" I am not sure how this album's dominance over Nirvana could be in question. They even did it and got massive radio air play. This album did for industrial what Van Halen's 1984 did for cock rock. Reznor made it out alive, but this album has tons of self loathing. 11- Sade

The Top 100 albums of the 90s :30 to 21

30 -Darkthrone- "Total Death"

 Sure "Transylvanian Hunger" is a classic album because every black metal black born out of weather under 50 degrees imitates it, but here there are actual songs that go somewhere and not just blast beats and tremolo picked guitar for the sake of blast beats and tremolo picked guitar to drone out to.

 

 29- Madonna -"Erotica"

 Her name is Dita she will be your mistress tonight. Before Fifty Shades of Grey was a sparkle in a vampire's eye, Madonna delved into kink with this album. She even touches on trip hop before it became a thing on this album.


 

 28-Ani Difranco- "Dilate"

 While the darling of lesbians broke hearts when she married a man years later, it doesn't diminish the impact of this album that show feminist folk can rock and still have something to say. "Super-Hero" might be more popular but "Napoleon" is the best song on this one.


 

 27- Pj Harvey- "Rid of Me"

 Here is another reminder that its not about record sales as Polly Jean has sole more records, but doesn't rock as hard on or put the same malicious passion into the song. Her voice is perfect on this album, while she disappointed me going into the 2000s , I am now able to get over that and go back to listen to this again.


 


 26-The Cure- "Wish"

 This is not the Cure's best album by far, but it's their best of the 90s thought "Blood Flowers" is pretty close. It wasn't until he started messing with Korn's producer that Robert Smith started missing the mark and even then it's not that bad.

 

25- Sonic Youth - "Goo"

 Noisy indie rock , before it was called indie rock it was called punk and there is enough punk on this album to justify it , but there is also a mix of sounds that have never been captured again even by Thurston Moore.

 

 24-Ministry- "Psalm 69"

Or How to Succeed and Suck eggs if we are counting straws. Then there is this album that happened to sell well to it's demographic and help break into real industrial music tough this is more of a metal album, I wore it out at the time due to that fact.

 

 23- Emperor-"Anthems to the Welkin At Dusk"

 Yes, these guys beat out Darkthrone, while it helps them that this alum drips with King Diamond influence, its one of the best black metal albums ever made of any decade or metal albums period.

 

 22-Guns N Roses-"Use Your Illusion"

 I am counting this as a single album because did any fool buy one and not the other? There is some pretty awesome stuff on both of these that balances out the Meat Loaf like power ballads that got a little tiresome until Guns And Roses went away, then you found yourself missing even those moments. Hair metal went out on the best note possible with this one.



21-Skinny Puppy - "the Process"

Yes, I had to pick this over both "Last Rights " and "Too Dark Park" , because well the second side of "Last Rights" is just noise to do drugs to and the real songs...awesome as they are really are all in the first act. We can nit pick over "Too Dark Park" which is an amazing album as well is when it came out " the Process" sounded fresh and showed the band branch out and become actually musical.

The Top 100 albums of the 90s :50 to 41

Ok here the countdown continues , we don't care about the biggest sellers , but albums that have stood the test of time and sound just as fresh today.


50- Jimmyeatworld - "Clarity" Before they hit big on the radio and pushed emo into the mainstream they had already released their best album. Tender and atmospheric , the melodies and harmonies both are filled with wonderment and yearning in equal doses and proves the genre once had actual emotion infused in it and was not about the hair cuts of the proto-hipsters.

 

 49- Soul Coughing - "Irresistible Bliss" 

 When alternative actually turned out to be an alternative to the current trends at the time. While band's like Cake used a similar quirky narrative, these guys did it with organic trip hop grooves played with real instruments and little button pushing. Mike Doughty's voice has a ton of personality and his non-sensical lyrics were and odd form of poetry. "Soundtrack to Mary" might have been my favorite song on this album , but this one got worn out one drug summer.



 48- Voivod - "Angel Rat" 

 The 90's were a little weird for Voivod because having been ahead of their time, it felt like with "Nothingface" they had already been there and done that, in fact Soundgarden and Faith No More opened for Voivod when those bands were poised to break through. You can touches of Killing Joke in what would be one of Voivod's rare stabs at having a more   radio friendly sound , though it is still steeped in the prog they had begun to explore on "Dimension Hatross".


 


47-Satchel- "EDC"

 If Prince decided to make a shoegaze album it might yield similar results. Shawn Smith's other project Brad might have been more popular due to having one of the guitarists from Pearl Jam involved, but this album was hands down better than Brad's "Shame" album. Ethereal but still possessing plenty of groove and soul and they even rock out when called for. If you get too stoned it might seem like a concept album about Reservoir Dogs are samples from the movie crop up
through out.

 


  46-Ours - "Disorted Lullabyes"

Jimmy Gnecco's voice resembles Jeff Buckley's, but he rocks out more frequently than Buckley with no family ties to folk music and a taste for writing from a darker place as he explores things like addiction in his lyrics. Post-grunge his music really stands up well with time and could have come out last week.

 

  45-Neurosis - "Souls at Zero" While some people will swear by their more punk rooted "Pain of Mind" this is the album that put them in my radar. It's more melodic and darker than "Through Sliver and Blood" which is clearly more of a metal album where this one is more of an inner apocalypse.

 

  44- Screaming Trees -"Sweet Oblivion" One of the more introspective albums from the grunge era. The thing that struck that me about these guys is they didn't just seem like punk band that wore flannel. Mark Lanegan's Morrison like croon helped separate them from their peers.



  43- Siouxsie and the Banshees-"Superstition"

She might have been the queen from the 80s , but Siouxise transitioned well into the following decade with this album being her crown jewel.


 

42- Deftones- "Around the Fur" Chino and the boys took a step away from rap-rock on this one and helped to set themselves apart from the nu-metal scene their friendship with Korn wrongly placed them in. Their song writing hit the next level with this one.

 

  41-Killing Joke- "Pandemonium" The 80s post-punk war lords returned to show all the industrial bands that popped up in their wake how it was done. This album is one of their best and always a timeless listen

.

The Top 100 albums of the 90s : 60 to 51

Ok, you know the deal we are counting down the top 100 album of the 90s, who cares about album sales though one of these albums was the artists big sellers, but that doesn't always equate with quality, since the sheeple tend to like pretty color by numbers art. So here we go... 60- Cold -s/t The only NU-METAL album that really needs to be on the list, they are like Bush with more muscle on their skinny frames and more dope in their dirty veins. They would put out a couple of more commercial albums, and lead singer Scooter would begin to start singing more.
 

  59-Mindfunk- "S/T"

 This album rocks, but going back and listening to it doesn't hold the weirdness it seemed to back in the day.  Mother Love Bone were good for what they did,  but these guys did it better and Andrew Wood and the boys just got more recognition once Pearl Jam came out. One of the first non metal albums I got into even though these guys can get pretty balls to the wall when they want to and some of the members came from Ministry and S.O.D. Jason Everman who played with both Nirvana and Soundgarden did a stint with this band as well.

 


  58- Deee-Lite-"Infinity Within"


 Yes, there was more to them than groove is in the heart. Lady Miss Kier has some pipes and uses them in a much different way than she did on their first album. They could have tried to replicate their big hit , but instead they but with more thought both lyrically as well as compositionally and created one of the best dance alums every that goes beyond button pushing. They bring in not only funk, but jazz on this one before trip hop was a thing.

 

57-Mad Season -"Above'

 Grunge meets jazz, the songs might wander around in a drugged out hazed that envies the Doors. It always sounded really good on the mornings after taking xanax to go to bed after being up all night tripping. The song that Mark Lanegan only furthers the Doors comparison. I like the fact Layne uses more jazz intervals in his melodies on this one.

 


  56-This Mortal Coil- This double album was the last to be released by this collective from the 4AD label, is a goth classic even though it's not the more iconic 80s release "It'll End in Tears". Members of Shelleyan Orphan, The Style Council, Throwing Muses, Breathless, and the Pixies, appear on this album. 55- Sugartooth- "S/t" They fell between the cracks of grunge and metal, though grunge had pretty much seen it's peak once these guys put this album out. The drummer went on to play with Danzig. The singer did not feel the need to use the constipated grunge baritone.This kinda makes them come across like a heavier and darker version of Candlebox. 54-the Crow Soundtrack This is one cd you could find in the collection of kids you weren't normally into goth , but owned it because Stone Temple Piolots , Rollins Band and Pantera were on it. Most did not know that Pantera was covering a Poison Idea song or that Rollins was covering a Suicide song, but they were so dumb they didn't know who those bands were any way.The Cure song is awesome and their heaviest . 53-Curve- "Doppelganger" Garbage might have sold more albums and put out slicker product thanks to producer Butch Vig being in the band. Songs like "Wish You Dead" had a darkness and bite to them that made these guys closer to goth than Garbage and "Always Yours" carried more of an sensual edge than the likes of Elastica. 52-Sublime- "40oz to Freedom" "Easy E were your ever caught slippin...hell no." "Smoke Two Joints" was my soundtrack to wake and bake to. While 311 jerked back and forth from dance hall to alt-rock, Sublime stuck closer reggae and punk creating a more authentic vibe. 51-the Verve- "Urban Hymns" They are the first to toast to their rotten souls, they also kicked the hell out of both Oasis and the Stone Roses with this one. It has song like "Rolling People" that rock harder than other Brit pop out at this juncture."Bitter Sweet Symphony" is obviously the albums best known song, but "the Drug's Don't Work" is the album's best song and would later serve as my break up song with heroin.

The Top 100 albums of the 90s : 70 to 61

Closing in on the halfway mark . If you don't know the rules we don't give a fuck about what records sold well or ruled the radio , but what has stood the test of time.

70-Hum- "Downward is Heavenward"

Think you indie rock band is clever , well chances are you have less balls than Hum. The guitar tones on this album stand up against anything out today. Apathetic yet sublime, if you took the bubble gum out of Weezer and didn't give a fuck about the radio you would be close to Hum.




69-Far-"Water & Solutions"

 Here is a band that should have developed much more of a following than they did. They were touching on a emotive put powerful blend of rock that would later be replicated by bands like Thursday years later.

 



68-Lords of Acid - "Voodoo-U"

After the hard hitting techno of "Lust" which showed this project were not just buttons pushers , but knew how to throw in a good hook, they came back adding rock guitar to give them a more industrial edge, with songs still focusing on the glories of sex and drugs this was the ultimate part album for many a drug summer.



67-Bjork- "Post"

 One of the heaviest synth lines ever opens this album with her calling card "Army of Me". She go weirder after this but never had the stars align in the same way the did for this album. While vocally Bjork is no slouch, it more how she uses her voice and this album her melodies are pretty flawless.




 66-Morphine- "Cure For Pain" -

Boozy lounge rock held together the groove the bass and drum create for the sax to lay down the kind of atmosphere that would not be out of place on the soundtrack to a David Lynch movie. When I go back and listen to this album is  at times happier than I remember it being, which is why it did not rank higher.


 65- Gwar- "ScumDogs of the Universe"

Their theatrics got you attention, but they prove on this album that they could not only play , but write some really catchy and air tight metal songs, that have stood the test of time though in more of a silly guilty pleasure way.



64- Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds  - "Murder Ballads"

While Cave continues to age like fine wine, this 96 album seethes with the narrative violence that makes this darker in a dirtier back alley way than any other album that might earn the goth tag.


63-Slayer - "Seasons in the Abyss"

Slayer hit the mainstream with this one, they speed things up from "South Of Heaven", gone are the falsetto screams and more straight up drive and groove. Their song writing was fine tuned making this the last great album with Dave Lombardo, they never really got back to this place again.

 

62-R.E.M- "Automatic For the People" 

 This album was darker and more introspective, they captured some amazing sounds on this album and for my money proved their was no contest when it comes to comparing them to U2. Stipe's vocals dip from the nasal tenor into a lower baritone that adds to the somber atmosphere. John Paul Jones also arranged the strings on this album.



61- Failure - "Fantastic Planet"

These guys were an interesting bird, not really hard rock , but not indie rock either, they had a stoned slacker vibe to them , but something otherworldly to their sound as well as if the drugs were coming out fo their pours and dripping onto the frets of their guitars.

 

The Top 100 albums of the 90s : 80 to 71

Here is another installment, you know what we are doing... winding our way down not the albums that sold the most or were even the most critcally acclaimed at the time but what has held up over the years. https://www.facebook.com/abysmalhymns/ 80- Godflesh- "Selfless" Justin reached a balance of industrial pound and musicality with enough room to experiment with more electronic elements. More daring and heavier than Helmet.

  79- Elliot Smith-x/o

If you were depressed and driven to drink in 1998 why would you have wanted to listen to anything else. This morose singer songwriter created the perfect soundtrack for the lowest of swings, was pretty good hangover music , if memory serves me. I got to catch him in concert before he died in 2003. I can't really imagine him doing anything else but dying of a self inflicted stab wound samurai style, take that Bright Eyes. >
&n 78-the Faint-"Blank Wave Arcade" They got darker and heavier and more grandiose, but this album has something sleazy about it that I like and was a sign things were changing in 1999. Brilliant lyrics they predicted the rise of the hipster. Many of today's new wave revival bands could take notes from this album. 77-Monster Magnet -"Dopes to Infinity" At one point in my life all my stories began with "Once when I was tripping..." My weirdest memory was the song below was playing while I was tripping and playing with a ouija board by myself in the hallway of an old apartment. My room mate's door was open and his fan was blowing out into the hall way. Not knowing this I assumed it was evil spirits blowing into my mind and turning me into the re-incarnation of a 14th century French Prince. Sure if had a radio hit on it, but that happened on their own terms. Literally mind blowing. 76-Life of Agony-"The River Runs Red" Their singer's river does run red now, but this album was gritty and desperate . Like if Stone Temple Piolots had been a hard core band before being influenced Pearl Jam influence, since any band influenced by Pearl Jam would suck, they had elements of Biohazard and Type O mixed, with a brilliant story woven into the album. 75-Tears for Fears- "Raoul and the Kings of Spain" If you weren't ready to let go of the 80s by 1995 , these guys released their 5th album, which holds a slight Latin undercurrent, but proved that they were not just a new flux and could make serious music when they weren't shouting to let it all out. 74-Primus- "Sailing the Seas of Cheese" The rubber bass of Claypool, slapped this album that was heavy due to the thick angular groove, but also managed to weave some hooks in with his nasal voice. 73-Lenny Kravitz- "Mama Said" Sure you would eventually go to get tired of hearing this guy all over the radio on the albums that followed, this one was diverse and soulful, pulling from every one from Prince to Lennon to Marvin Gaye and Sly Stone. Slash showed up on the album and it rocked in many different ways. 72-White Zombie-"Astro Creep 2000" When I first heard these guys it was during the 80s off an album called "Make Them Die Slowly" it sounded like a deranged horror version of Iggy Pop, so when "la Sexorcisto" came out I thought how the hell did they turn into Metallica. This album was a breath of fresh air and sounded pretty good when lots of drugs were ingested, the industrial turn worked better than their stab at thrash. 71-Pixies- "Trompe Le Monde" Their final album rocked harder than perhaps even "Doolittle" . It was a fitting swan song with it's incredible guitar tones and the band hitting the perfect balance between poppy and weirdness that flips onto an almost punk craze on a dime. They also cover the Jesus and Mary Chain.  

The Top 100 albums of the 90s : 90 to 81

Here we continue with out Top 100 albums of the 90s a decade generally assumed to be dominated by grunge, while there will be some on here sooner or later its the open door to experimentation that alternative hitting the mainstream that brought out some of the interesting sounds we look at today in 90 to 81.


90- Entombed - "Wolverine Blues"
Continuing to be ahead of their time, this Swedish band also birthed the groove fill death n roll sub genre with this album that slayed things like "Far Beyond Driven". The title track alone was worth the price of the album.Yeah it was back in the days when you paid for albums.

89- Veruca Salt -"Eight Arms to Hold You" No, this is not the album with "Seether" on it. While that one is good, the song writing on this one is more mature , emotive and rocks out, with "Volcano Girls" having way more balls to it than "Seether' which fit more neatly into what was becoming expected of alt-rock at that time.

88-the Get Up Kids - "Something to Write Home About" Emo had been alive and well in the underground and this album pushed it towards a larger audience and prepped kids for bands like Jimmy Eat World who would later bring the word "emo" to mainstream audiences when things went wild with in on Myspace in the 2000s. But when this album came out it was just more thoughtful punk rock.

87- Judas Priest-"Pain Killer" Seeking to redeem themselves from being turbo-lovers, Priest came back to prove they could hit it as hard as all the thrash bands they influenced. A new drummer helped them pull this off and Tipton and KK, showed they had some impressive chops up their sleeves and could shred with the best of them. This album would be one of the last great metal albums before grunge.

86- Katatonia-"Discouraged Ones" They transitioned from being a gloomy doom ridden death metal band to switching over to clean singing and touching on more of a Cure like goth ambiance.

85-the Gathering-"Nightime Birds" Before the slew of symphonic melodrama that bands like Nightwish would be out of Europe, the Gathering brought a more majestic soaring to gloomy doom thanks to the vocals of Anna Maria van Giersbergen or Anneke as she would later be called. This album is way ahead of it's time.

84-Butthole Surfers- "Independent Worm Saloon" Gibby and the boys stopped clowning around and began rockin on this one , though it still retained much of their signature weirdness. Not hard enough to be metal, but to trippy to be punk. They would later really sell out with the album that followed.

83-Warrior Soul - "Drugs, God, and the New Republic" While they saw some popularity in Europe, they deserved to hit bigger in the States as they were better then bands like Tripping Daisy, who you won't see on this list. They toured with Danzig and Soundgarden, which is where I caught on to them.

82-Dj Shadow - "Entroducing" The drums sound is the only thing that sounds that dated to me, there are many other elements on this album they stand the test of time and find this to be an electronica classic.

81- Skunk Anansie "Post Orgasmic Chill" Another album that was an alternative to mainstream alternative.Skin their black lesbian lead singer has a set of pipes on her that take these songs to the next level. The songs held up well with the years as I can go back and easily listen to this one.