For whatever reason, I never really got into earlier Soundgarden albums including Badmotorfinger. I don't know why I never connected to it, but it took Johnny Cash covers to bring me around, I guess. Sometime in 1994, Black Hole Sun hit the airwaves and the MTV. I was hooked and while I hadn't amassed a huge CD collection yet, this album entered the chat.…
This album has the unique distinction of having been in my collection as both a cassette and compact disc. When the grunge era hit in the early 1990s, a lot of teens were flocking to the smelly spirit of Nirvana, but I liked me the gruff vocals of Mr. Edward Louis Severson III, better known as Eddie Vedder. Little did I know that the…
This is one of those albums that comes out of nowhere and then proceeds to melt your soul from the inside. I don't even know exactly how I came about buying this CD in 1998, but after listening to it once, I was hooked. I was definitely exposed to Tricky, Portishead, and trip-hop before 1998, so it wasn't some sort of radical new sound…
It was the late 1980s and my sister had the cassette of this album by Tears for Fears. I listened to it from start to finish numerous times. While it is notable for the big radio hit singles Shout and Everybody Wants to Rule the World, it's impossible to find a bad track among the 8 songs. What I really liked about it was…
I first heard the song Hooting & Howling somewhere online and was really taken aback at how simple and emotionally effective it was. The falsetto singing elevated it to a higher level. It begs the question: "Who can sing that high with so much presence?" Also, "What happened to that guy's balls?" LOL, JK. Sorry, not sorry. Upon listening to the rest of Two…
I am sure you have heard the song One Thing Leads to Another by The Fixx. Who hasn't? And maybe you've heard the other single called Saved By Zero, but probably not. On the surface, The Fixx seems a lot like a one hit wonder band that doesn't require anything more than an occasional spin of the well known track(s). You'd be mistaken to…
While De-Loused in the Comatorium was a great first album, The Mars Volta decided to discard any sort of formula and re-invent their own wheel by asking the question: "What if we make a 5-song concept album about a drug addict in search of his biological parents?" Turns out they wanted it to be 6 songs, but CDs couldn't hold all of it, so…
From the ashes of the punk/emo band At the Drive-In rose the phoenix of The Mars Volta, the prog rock brainchild of Cedric Bixler-Zavala and Omar Rodriguez-Lopez. In 2003, they released this, their first album and hoo boy was no one ready for it. The energy and extreme rocking still crushes to this day. It's got bass work from Flea of the Red Hot…
My sister bought the cassette tape of this album and listened to it on repeat. I was still pretty young at the time, but the music definitely made an impact on me. It is notorious for the hit singles: "Personal Jesus" and "Enjoy the Silence." I think it is solid from start to finish. It manages to kick in full gear where needed and…
The year was 2005 and Coheed and Cambria released their most ambitious rock opera album about violence and a writer trying to understand his story that has grown bigger than himself. It is also the album that always comes to mind when talking about long album titles. If I had to pick one word to describe this album, I'd say it should be "Epic,"…
