Jack Johnson - On and On

For a thankfully-short while, Jack Johnson was very cool. I came back from university for the summer after the first year and all my friends had started listening to him - I don't know how they came across him, but I strongly suspect he had some songs on a surf video that a friend had. That summer, we listened to him a lot - I mean pretty much every car journey, and every time we sat around at someone's house. It was strong summer music.

At the end of the summer, I found this copy of his second album in a shop in Southampton and snapped it up. Of the two we'd been listening to, I preferred On and On - both had some great songs, but there were a few less-poppy ones on this album, and I felt that gave it an edge over the other. I eventually got a copy of his other album at the time, Brushfire Fairytales and picked up his newest, In Between Dreams, not long after it came out, at the end of the second year of university (using an HMV voucher I'd got for taking part in a survey, strangely). Essentially, there was a year when Jack Johnson was a big deal, but my next year in Australia taught me more about this sort of laid back indie-pop and the moment passed.

In the years since then, I've rarely listened to Jack Johnson; like all good summer memories, it was best left as a memory. Occasionally, my wife has suggested playing his albums, and they're pleasant reminders, but not what I'd consider "good" music. All three albums have some good songs, but I can't help but imagine I would find Jack incredibly annoying if I met him in person. I've met people who I imagine would get along with him brilliantly, and they all pissed me off.

But, like I said, On and On isn't a terrible album - the moments that aren't pop are good and make you think he could have had a different but interesting career had he avoided pop a little harder. Taylor and Cookie Jar have something a little dark about them. I like it. When I say "dark", I mean relatively - this is a surfer-dude singing songs on a beach, it's never going to get that dark. There are a few little, short, throwaway songs that I could do without - 16 songs is too many by a long stretch. Taylor, Holes to Heaven and Cocoon were always the highlights.

All that said, when I see this spine in my record collection I never feel the urge to play it, but it reminds me fondly of that summer in 2004, and I like it for that.

Format: 12", gatefold sleeve
Tracks: 16
Cost: £11 new
Bought: FM Music
When: 23/09/04
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

System of a Down - Toxicity

A year and a half after the album came out, I found this 7" single of Toxicity at a record fair in Southampton for £3. It seemed rude not to buy it, and I was certainly drawn in by the promise of an "extremely rare" b-side.

Toxicity itself is a strong song, and clearly one of the best songs on the album other than Chop Suey!. Storaged is not as exciting as I'd hoped for, but I knew nothing of the context until just now - it appeared on a demo cassette for the first album, but had never seen the light of day otherwise. It's short, and I can see it working well live.

Again, the sleeve is pretty minimal - also featuring stills from the video on the reverse.

Format: 12", numbered #5604
Tracks: 2
Cost: £3 second hand
Bought: Record Fair, Southampton
When: 25/01/03
Colour: Red
Etching: none
mp3s: no

System of a Down - Chop Suey!

When System of a Down released Chop Suey! I, for some reason, bought all the versions of the single - the two and cds and, a day later, the 7". I don't know if I was planning on building up a complete SOAD collection or not, or maybe it was just because it was just after my birthday and I was feeling relatively flush. The cds had some live tracks as b-sides, along with the new song here, Johnny.

Chop Suey! was, without doubt, System's breakout hit. It took them to levels of fame so many steps above where they were, and where they would have been had the second album not featured it. It's still quite fun, despite having heard it played to death in rock clubs over the years. It did everything you wanted the band to do in one song, was sufficiently weird, and has a few "movements". In a lot of ways, it was their Bohemian Rhapsody. The b-side is nice enough, and has a strong chorus.

The cds were minimal in their artwork - featuring a clear case and the cd only printed as far as there was music, leaving a clear band of plastic for most of its 5"s. Fittingly, the 7" is on clear vinyl, and numbered. The reverse just shows images from the video for the song, which is an unusual route to take - a type of promotion I'd not seen before.

Format: 7", numbered #2161
Tracks: 2
Cost: £1.50 new
Bought: FM Music, Southampton
When: 24/10/01
Colour: Clear
Etching: none
mp3s: no

System of a Down - Steal This Album!

System of a Down were one of the bands you had to like if you were into nu-metal around the year 2000. They somehow were the edgy, cool band to like, especially if it was before their second album came out. The first one, released in 1998, felt like the closest thing to an "underground hit" that the genre had, at least amongst the people I knew (which is obviously bollocks in hindsight, but felt like it at the time. Like I've said many times, the early 2000's was a dangerous time to be a teenager). Their second album, Toxicity, came out in 2001 and suddenly they were everywhere.

I got a copy of the first album in 2001, just weeks before Toxicity came out, but I'd borrowed it from a friend earlier and made a cassette copy, so knew the songs very well. On top of that, I'd bought a copy of a limited edition tour cd from a distro that a guy someone had met at a record fair was running – it had three of the album tracks twice each, the studio version and a live recording. Toxicity dropped the day after they played a great set at Reading Festival on the main stage, almost certainly winning them many more fans (I distinctly remember the maniacal look in the bassist's eyes as they walked out on stage to a song about how they're all on drugs). An enterprising record store owner who routinely had a stall at the festival stayed open until midnight to sell copies of Toxicity and Iowa, the new Slipknot album released on the same day; they must have made a killing with that festival audience.

SOAD enjoyed a lot of success from Toxicity, especially from the single Chop Suey!, which became an instant classic in rock clubs all over the country. Then they had the awkward follow-up, the difficult second album (except, in this case, the difficult third album). In 2002 they released Steal This Album!, an album I always believed to be a b-sides/rarities album, but I've just read online that it was more along the lines of leftovers from Toxicity, or even tentatively a sequel to the album. Either way, it wasn't billed as a regular album, so I certainly never listened to it as such.

The cd was released with four different designs on the cd itself, which given that it didn't have a sleeve was basically the cover of the album. I bought the one with the skull on it, which was my favourite of the lot at the time – I think the shop had at least one of each. A few months later I was in Nottingham after an open day at Lancaster University, and found this double picture disc of the album for a bargain £9.50. It was appealing in itself, but I liked that each side had one of the four covers on; it made me feel better about having picked just one of them on cd. That price seems like even more of a bargain given that copies on Discogs are now around £75.

As an album, I remember liking it less than the first two, but that was almost to be expected, given that it wasn't an album proper. A.D.D. was always the highlight and still has a huge chorus. It could have been a huge song had it been on either of the first two albums, although that awkward transition between the verse and the chorus probably needed some more work. Otherwise, there were some nice enough songs (Highway Song has the second best chorus on the album) and a few slower moments (good ones, like Mr Jack and unnecessary ones, like Roulette). A common theme was one of half-heartedness, or incompleteness - Chic 'n' Stu and I-E-A-I-A-I-O both had that fast-paced singing that Serj could so uniquely do, but piss-poor lyrics; Boom was a political song with none of the subtlety they'd shown in the past. All in all, an odd collection, but a nice enough record to own.

Format: Double picture disc 12", insert
Tracks: 16
Cost: £9.50 new
Bought: Selectadisc, Nottingham
When: 20/02/03
Colour: Picture disc
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Unwritten Law - Elva

This album is just Very Bad. I don't think I've ever taken any real enjoyment from it. Every now and again, if I'm in a particularly shitty toilet in a bar or pub, I think to myself "I really hope I don't die here; I'd be so embarrassed for people to know that this was the last place I was alive". Listening to Unwritten Law in 2017, I'm thinking "god, I hope I don't die listening to this; I'd be so embarrassed for people to know this was the last music I heard". What if people thought the last music I heard was so important to me that I wanted it played at my funeral. What a shitty funeral it'd be, soundtracked to this album. Urgh. If you're reading this, I didn't die listening to Unwritten Law (at least, intentionally) so that's good.

When I was at school, we pretty much all had copies of each other's cds collections on tape or minidiscs. Nick had Unwritten Law's third, self-titled album, and I remember having a minidisc of it (in fact, I still do, but either my minidisc player is broken, or all of my minidiscs have broken themselves). I guess I enjoyed that album at the time, but I couldn't tell you much about it. I was never a huge fan of that California-punk, and it'd be a long time before I started listening to other genres of punk.

A few years later, I was in Nottingham and found this for £4 in Selectadisc. I bought so many records in there that day that I was putting some back because I couldn't carry them all. Luckily, I can't remember what I put back, because I'd almost certainly be kicking myself. It's hard to imagine what could've been less enjoyable than this. According to Wikipedia, Unwritten Law made a conscious choice to move away from punk towards a more "accessible hard rock" sound. I wish they'd put that on the fucking sticker, rather than boasting about two singles I now know to be shit.

There are many crimes on this album, but one of the worst is the first song - Mean Girl is the worst song on the album, and opens the album for reasons I can't fathom. Up All Night isn't terrible in comparison - it's probably not a good song, but compared to the opener it's quite the relief. There are other lows (Actress, Model... is appalling) and some moments that aren't as shit as everything else, but it's all relative. It's also far too long. In two words: stupid and pointless.

Format: 12", insert
Tracks: 17
Cost: £4 new
Bought: Selectadisc, Nottingham
When: 15/03/04
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Billy Talent - Fallen Leaves

I wrote about Billy Talent a few years ago with this post about a shaped-7" of Devil in the Midnight Mass. They were never a band I was hugely into, but I do seem to have a lot of their 7" records (three, to be precise). I'd enjoyed Try Honesty from their first album (which I eventually bought, around the time the second one was out) and found myself buying all the singles from the second, despite never hearing the full album.

Fallen Leaves was the third and, thus, the last I bought. I think I knew by this point that I wasn't going to be a huge fan of the band, but it was £1 and I enjoyed the clear picture disc. I found this around the time it was released in my local HMV, a few weeks after buying the shaped picture disc in Paris. The song is catchy enough but a little repetitive. The b-side is a live recording of the same song (lame) from MTV, but sounds terrible. I know picture discs aren't known for their quality, but this is really bad. Still, you can't argue with that price.

Format: 7", picture disc, insert
Tracks: 2
Cost: £1 new
Bought: HMV Lancaster
When: 19/02/07
Colour: Picture disc
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Billy Talent - Red Flag

Red Flag was the first Billy Talent release I bought. A few of the singles from their first album had been plastered across MTV a summer or two beforehand, so I knew the name and knew what they sounded like. About a month after buying this, I bought a cheap copy of their debut album. I never heard any of the subsequent albums.

Red Flag has a huge chorus, as you'd expect from the band, but the extent to which I find the singer's voice annoying was stretched on this song. I knew what I was getting into, so that's on me really. The b-side is a demo of what I assume is an album track. It's an ok song, but only a fraction as catchy as the single itself. I went on to buy a few more singles from the second album, but I think they were never really going to be a band for me, so that's about where I left it; everything I own by them was bought within a five-month period, after which I was done. That says a lot.

Format: 7", gatefold sleeve
Tracks: 2
Cost: £1 new
Bought: HMV, Winchester
When: 11/09/06
Colour: Red
Etching: none
mp3s: no

LostProphets - Last Train Home

Again, see here for the obligatory prefix on the band. Last Train Home was the second single from the second album, and came out a couple of weeks after the album did. I bought the album, but have so few memories of it that I barely remembered owning it. I was 19 and the appeal of a band like this was wearing off. On top of that, these songs now feel miles away from the debut album and the version of the band we'd got into. I don't remember thinking that at the time, I just didn't enjoy them so much. I think they released further albums, but I stopped paying attention shortly after buying this record.

The appeal of this 7" was almost certainly in the b-side - an acoustic version of Shinobi Vs. Dragon Ninja from the first album. For £1.50, I was mostly just curious about how that'd sound. To save you all the wonder, it sounds bad. I've always been a sucker for acoustic versions, but this just doesn't work. The riff holds up ok, but the changes into the chorus just jars. They've tried to cover it up with some faint strings, but it sounds wrong. Since I'll almost certainly never listen to the band again, it seems rather fitting to leave it on such a dud.

Format: 7"
Tracks: 2
Cost: £1.50 new
Bought: HMV, Lancaster
When: 16/02/04
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

LostProphets - Burn Burn

I wrote everything I need to say about LostProphets in this post about their debut album - please refer to that. I'll get this over with quickly.

Burn Burn was the first single from their second album and I bought it when it came out, not long after starting university. It was quite different in sound to the debut - less going on and felt like whoever produced it wanted them to be a very different band to the one they were on the debut. I wonder how this song would have sounded had it been on the first album. The b-side is a demo, and sounds horrendous on flimsy 7" vinyl, but had more going for it as a song than the single, I felt. I have no idea if a non-demo version of it ever appeared.

Format: 7"
Tracks: 2
Cost: £1.80 new
Bought: HMV, Lancaster
When: 03/11/03
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

LostProphets - The Fake Sound of Progress

Christ, I have not been looking forward to writing about this album. There's a bunch of things to say before the needle even hits the record. Ian Watkins is, without doubt, a truly despicable person; the things he did were so far beyond any notion of human decency that I can't even. I've not listened to this album since before the news broke about his arrest and I doubt I'll ever want to listen to it again after today. When the full details came out after his trial I felt sick. I'd spent so many years listening to his music - the thought that maybe he wasn't such a sick fuck when they recorded this provides no comfort, because there's probably no truth in that idea. I rarely say such things, but I really hope prison is every bit as bad as television makes out it is for him; he deserves a thoroughly horrific time.

I'm reluctant to play this (partly for fear people will hear me and judge me). Like many people, I spent a lot of time in my teenage years listening to LostProphets - we went to see them a bunch of times and the t-shirt I had of theirs was one of my favourites (I remember consciously choosing to wear on my first day at university, a decision I doubly regret now). The Fake Sound of Progress is an album I have fond memories of. It doesn't stand anywhere near the worst things Watkins did, but he has more than tainted those memories. By the time they released the second album, I was getting into other genres and not so interested in the music they were playing. But, for three years, they were a band I liked and I listened to a lot - so much so, I bought this vinyl when it got re-released about two years after the album came out originally.

Here we go, dropping the arm onto the vinyl now. The opening riff used to be the sign of an enjoyable 40 minutes of music, but now I'm just feeling uncomfortable. Watkins' Mike Patton-impersonation used to be enjoyable, but now he just sounds like a nasally, strange man (which barely touches on the names he deserves to be called). I want to write about the nostalgia and the feelings I had back in the day, but it's really difficult.

Needless to say, the turntables haven't aged well, but I think we all knew at the time they wouldn't. As a song we used to throw ourselves around to in the mosh pit, Shinobi Vs. Dragon Ninja (ridiculous title) was huge - the outro that almost brings the song back in but then just stops was great. The title track was categorically a better song, and pretty representative of the rest of the album, longer and more varied than Shinobi. In a lot of ways, I'm feeling entirely disconnected from the music, certainly at a conscious level - I'm trying to listen to it but I don't want to take any enjoyment from it anymore. On the other hand, the riffs and breaks for the choruses just take me right back to all those times we saw them, throwing myself around and having a great time - my heart and head say no, but my body is right back there somehow. Strange.

...And She Told Me To Leave has aged better than I expected, mainly for the guitars in the chorus, and I always liked the layered vocals at the end. Kobrakai was one of the highlights too, the drop-D tuned guitars working their nu-metal magic. The turntablist's throaty vocals throughout The Handsome Life of Swing caught me off-guard back in the day, but now provide a welcome break from the regular vocals. A Thousand Apologies was peak-Faith No More for the band, a connection it'd take me a few years to fully realise.

Have I ruined this album and my memories further by listening to it now? Probably not. I didn't want to listen to it, but my own ridiculous rules for this blog meant I knew I was going to have to at some point. I think I can keep my memories of it separate from my opinions of playing it in 2017. I remember thinking An Ode to Summer was a great song, and there's a very good chance that my opinions on it would have changed by now anyway. It's a shame they've changed in the way they have. I really can't think of any reason why I'd ever play this album again.

Format: 12", picture sleeve
Tracks: 11
Cost: £14 new
Bought: Virgin Megastore, London
When: 07/03/03
Colour: Clear
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Him - Buried Alive By Love

Him were always terrible; I knew that even when I bought this record, but when I was 16 I thought their logo was kinda cool, and so having it on a shaped picture disc was too good an opportunity to miss (plus, even the notion of a shaped picture disc seemed cool at the time). I think I also hoped that they'd end up being huge, and that a shaped picture disc of their logo would be worth something. That, obviously, didn't happen.

When I was 15 we went to see Alice Cooper for Hugh's 15th birthday. On the way in there was a person handing out promo cassettes (yes, cassettes) publicising Him's newest album, Razorblade Romance. It had snippets of four songs, including their cover of Chris Isaac's Wicked Game. I can't remember thinking much of the other songs, but I enjoyed the cover, having vague memories of the original. I'd also read a few bits about the band in Kerrang! Magazine and toyed with the idea of getting their album and becoming a fan. However, I never found a copy for a good price and quickly realised that they were probably shit, and that goth-rock wasn't a genre I wanted to be a part of. I dodged a bullet really.

However, in that short period of thinking they could be an interesting band, I did become quite fond of their logo, which adult-me knows to be thoroughly ridiculous. That, combined with the fact this record was only £1, made me decide to buy it. If, I reasoned, the music was terrible, it's not much to spend on an interesting shaped record purely the sake of looking at it. As it happened, the music was terrible, so I'm pleased it wasn't expensive. I've not spent that much time looking at it over the years, having filed it away it amongst my 10" records. The a-side has an objectionably catchy chorus, but the b-side is pure drivel.

Format: Shaped 7" picture disc

Tracks: 2

Cost: £1 new

Bought: HMV Winchester

When: 07/05/03

Colour: Picture disc

Etching: none

mp3s: no

Incubus - Talk Shows On Mute

This single is from Incubus's fourth album. In hindsight, I should have stopped after their second, but I've never been very good at that. I think for most people, when a band releases an album they're not into (let's call it Morning View) they stop listening to a band, assuming they've "gone shit". I've always been willing to give bands the benefit of doubt, which usually means buying the album after the shit one too. In almost every case, this has been a mistake as, invariably, the next is even worse (let's call it A Crow Left of the Murder). I'll never learn, but one day it'll pay off and I'll be glad of it.

Talk Shows On Mute was from A Crow Left of the Murder, an album I'd bought a few months beforehand, which means I knew the song wasn't very good. However, it's quite likely that when I saw this 7" in my local HMV I couldn't remember exactly which song it was; playing it now, it is remarkably unremarkable for a single. It's unmemorable for a b-side, let alone a late-album filler track, so how it ended up a single I don't know.

How it ended up in my record collection is an easy mystery to unpick - it's on coloured vinyl, and has a live version of Vitamin, a song from the era of them being the band people wanted them to be. That said, the bongo solo emphasises that they were just preppy dicks really (something I should've noticed much earlier). Somewhere in there, apparently, is a cover of Hello by Lionel Richie, but if there is it's just a verse and hard to pick out. Side B is basically just one song, so implying there are two on the sleeve seems a bit misleading.

Format: 7"
Tracks: 3
Cost: £1.50 new
Bought: HMV, Lancaster
When: 07/06/04
Colour: Yellow
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Incubus - Are You In?

This is one of the worst purchases I've ever made. The worst part of it was that I wasn't even planning to buy it, but I was too British not to. I was at a record fair and pulled it out of the box to have a look at - it was 2003, so I was still kinda into the band - and before I really had time to think about it, the guy manning the stall said "that'll be £5 please"; I panicked and handed over the money, buying a record that had I a few seconds to really think about, I would have known was going to be junk, and definitely not worth a whole £5. Such a stupid mistake.

There are three versions of the same song here - the song being Are You In? a fairly unexciting song from towards the end of their unexciting third album, Morning View (I had the album, so knew the single was far from good - makes the purchase even worse). The original and "new mix" sound identical, except that the mix is shorter. Not sure what got cut, never cared enough to work it out. The final version is a Paul Oakenfold remix - he was famous for remixing stuff around the time, if I remember correctly. As far as I can tell, he's just made the snare drum louder. I'm sure he got paid handsomely for essentially just leaning on one fader on the panel.

I've never been one for remixes of rock songs, which really makes this purchase even more frustrating. Nothing of interest here at all, but perhaps a lesson learnt?

Format: 12", die-cut sleeve, promo
Tracks: 3
Cost: £5 second hand
Bought: Record Fair, Southampton
When: 25/01/03
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Incubus - Drive

There was a while when Incubus were a Very Big Band. They were from what I'm calling the "second wave of nu-metal", but in their case the record label execs went full boy-band rather than over-the-top post-Slipknot nu-metal. If you heard Drive without hearing the rest of the album Make Yourself, you'd never know they were from the same scene as Deftones, etc. Drive was the real turning point away from S.C.I.E.N.C.E and the heavier songs on Make Yourself, and marked the beginning of the chilled Incubus who would go on to make increasingly unlistenable albums (or maybe the fact I found the subsequent two albums so hard to listen to was because I'd got older instead of/as well as them getting shittier).

The a-side here is a live "orchestral" version of Drive, the song that made them famous outside of the circles of people who read Kerrang! who thought A Certain Shade of Green was good (as an aside, I suspect A Certain Shade of Green might still be enjoyable now; it was a huge song). If anything, I think the song sounds worse for the additional strings, but maybe it's because I wanted them to be strange nu-metal band, not a boy band.

On the b-side we're treated to two live songs - Favourite Things from the first album and Pardon Me, one of the highlights from the second (at least, that's what it was in my memory - it's much smoother and more over-produced than I had thought, but the chorus is still huge, even if the guitars are far too quiet in this recording). At the time, I remember being excited to hear the live versions, but in reality they don't add much. Much like many of my old 7" records, I paid £3 for this at a record fair in Southampton.

Format: 7"

Tracks: 3

Cost: £3 second hand

Bought: Record Fair, Southampton

When: 27/10/01

Colour: Black

Etching: none

mp3s: no

Various Artists - Load Rocks [Promo]

Oh dear. Few things highlight the horrible pinnacle that nu-metal reached as shameless hip-hop/metal crossovers like this album. So you fully understand the grim extent of it, this record contains RHCP-stealing Crazy Town (a band everyone had blissfully forgotten about), Sevendust with Xhibit, Butch Vig for some reason, Black Sabbath trying to stay relevant by working with Wu-Tang, otherwise respectable Sick of it All with Mobb Deep, and the boy band of the era, Incubus.

Anyone who bought this album when they were a teenager (because no one else bought it) will notice that I've only listed the second half of the album. That's because I only have the second LP (and thus I've never been treated to what a collaboration between System of a Down and Wu-Tang sounds like). I bought this in a second hand record shop in Reading. I think, looking back, they might have had both discs there, but for sale separately. At the time, I thought it was the same LP twice, but it makes more sense that it was both LPs on their own. That said, this one has a sticker over the words "side C" and "side D", which was what made me notice when I got home that I only had one disc. Neither had the original sleeve, just the words "Loud Rocks Sampler" in biro on the corner. I paid £2 for this record, and I think at some point I might have had £2-worth of fun from it.

That fun, if any, feels like it must have been a very long time ago. This record has not aged well. Side C is appalling - Crazy Town and Sevendust you expect that from (the smooth chorus on the Sevendust song is cringe-worthy), but Butch Vig I expected better things from. He produced Nevermind and Siamese Dream for Christ's sake. It sounds like Asian Dub Foundation went horribly, horribly wrong. I'm just going to keep on pretending that song didn't happen.

I lied above when I said Black Sabbath were involved, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward dodged a bullet by not putting their name to it. I have a lot of time for the first two Black Sabbath albums, and I've greatly enjoyed them every time I've seen them, but that's because they only really play songs from the 70's, which everyone agrees is the best idea. This song doesn't work well. SOIA's Lou Koller's vocals are the only highlight of the whole record, and that's only because they're at such odds to everything else around it. Annoyingly, the chorus is the only place he sings and the transition between it and the verse is jarring. It's almost like they couldn't be bothered to write the transition. Who can blame them? The second the Incubus song starts you just want them to fuck off; such a clusterfuck of pop, rap and funk. Writing this, I'm very tempted to take the needle off the record, but that's against what I started the blog to do. I mean, it must be over soon, they can't stretch this shit out that far, surely? Still going, but this break surely means we're at least half way? Still going. Urgh, another chorus. The outro seems to go on forever. Oh, thank god. It's over.

Final critical thing to say about this album - have you seen the actual cover? It's fucking terrible. I'm lucky that mine just has a white sleeve. Record label execs in the late 90's/early 2000's were really taking the piss on many levels.

Format: 12", promo

Tracks: 7

Cost: £2 second hand

Bought: Reading

When: 27/12/02

Colour: Black

Etching: none

mp3s: no

Slipknot - Left Behind

I wrote a very long post about this record, but my computer over-heated and crashed, deleting my ramblings. Truth be told, there's really very little of interest to say about Slipknot - everyone knows their story, and my story of how I started listening to them is the same as that of every other kid who turned 16 in 2000 - everyone was going mad for Slipknot and you pretty much had to like them; plus, it was hard not to be bought into their gimmick. I spent a while tracking down an original pressing of their self-titled album to get the tracks that had to be removed (in hindsight, I wonder if such a scandal was really just a publicity stunt). There's a live dvd filmed in London that I spent ages trying to spot myself in the crowd of. They were a big deal back then.

However, half my life has since passed, and my feelings towards them can be assumed from the fact I can't be bothered to rewrite this post. By the time I went to university, I remember making a conscious choice to leave my Slipknot cds at home. The strange thing is that for people a few years younger than me, they aren't an embarrassing band - at ArcTanGent festival last year, Slipknot came on at the silent disco and people went mad; I didn't even know the song - this record was the last Slipknot release I bought, a few months after Iowa came out. Iowa did less for me than the debut, and by the time the third album came out I was exploring other genres. I don't know how many albums they have released by now.

16-year-old me would be disappointed to hear of my ambivalence to Slipknot, but these things happen. Left Behind was a fine song, but listening to it now, I don't remember it particularly well. I had to check the tracklisting, but I think The Heretic Anthem was the big lead single from that album? The b-side is a live recording of Liberate from the first album, a song I remember fairly well, but not as well as I'd expect given how much play that debut album got back in the day. It could well be that over the last 16 years I've repressed all memories except for Wait and Bleed. The live recording sounds like shit, but that might be the picture disc doing it's wonders.

Format: 7", picture disc
Tracks: 2
Cost: £1.50 new
Bought: Bournemouth
When: 30/10/01
Colour: Picture disc
Etching: none
mp3s: no