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
