Three 65, Day 21
Fishbone, Give A Monkey A Brain And He'll Swear He's The Center Of The Universe

Heh - my friend John is going to hate that I picked this album as my first Fishbone record review for the new blog. John hates this album, and I can perfectly understand why. After three albums of perfecting ska-punk-funk to a level bands like the Red Hot Chili Peppers only dream of, Fishbone kind of threw it all away here, focusing on their metal side instead.

But, Monkey was my first Fishbone album, and I'm extremely nostalgic about it. The opening track, the crushing "Swim," was my first introduction to Fishbone, and it remains one of the band's more unique numbers. Under a punishing guitar riff, the band's singers - of which there are multiple, although Angelo Moore is the principal voice - wax eloquent in growls and groans about the wonders of moshing. It's an odd choice for the band's opening number, but Pantera would kill to have this kind of groove.

The next two tracks hurt the band's usually care-free stance even more: "Servitude" thrashes like Living Colour and "Black Flowers" - which John absolutely, totally, cannot stand - is a full on power ballad. But after that, on "Unyielding Conditioning" (one of the last songs founding member Kendall Jones wrote, before going fucking nuts and leaving the band for a cult), something amazing happens: The metal completely disappears. Over a vigorous horn section, the band bops and weaves its way through a delightfully sunny song that dispels all of the clouds summoned on the first three tracks. Pity record label Columbia chose to cut the song off towards the end, just as it gets going. "Conditioning" is still quite often the opening number at most Fishbone concerts.

Other highlights include the Mr. Bungle-esque "Drunk Skitzo" (on which Branford Marsalis lays down a killer sax solo), the ferocious "Warmth Of Your Breath" (I love any song that eviscerates cops, especially one that ends with a policeman licking his K9's ass), and the warm "Lemon Meringue." Also of note is the glorious P-funk of "Properties Of Propaganda" and the mellow "They All Have Abandoned Their Hopes."

I hope I've done a good job of pointing out the album's strengths here, um, John. Fishbone would go on to make more albums, and some of them were quite good. Try to catch them if they come to your town - despite their age, or perhaps because of it, they have the kind of veteran live experience few bands possess.

Three 65, Day 20
Nine Inch Nails, The Fragile

I really, really meant to start covering Nine Inch Nails' albums with the Broken EP, their second record (and finest distillation of their sound), but after listening to The Fragile on a drive earlier today, changed my mind. Considered by critics to be NIN's worst album, and lambasted by the musical press at large, the fans still love it, and so do I.

The Fragile was a turning point for Nine Inch Nails (which is basically the recording name for one man, Trent Reznor). Coming off of the previous album, The Downward Spiral, it seemed like things couldn't get any more hopeless. In contrast to that nihilistic record, The Fragile is (a little) more optimistic. Both "We're In This Together" and the title track hint at the possibility that things might work out.

But elsewhere, shit remains bleak. "Somewhat Damaged" is a stop-start anthem for the disenfranchised, with Reznor screaming "Where the fuck were you?" towards song's end. "The Wretched" is furious in its self loathing, "No, You Don't" shreds itself to pieces, and "The Great Below" is as dark as NIN gets. On the second disc, Reznor laments "try to save myself but myself keeps slipping away" on "Into The Void" and retains his anger at the outside world on the immortal "Starfuckers, Inc."

Of note is the abundance of instrumentals that fill (some would say pad, but I disagree) out this album. Most of them, like "Just Like You Imagined" and "The Mark Has Been Made," are like Reznor's other instrumentals: variations on a basic theme, spiraling outwards into complexity before returning to their root sound at the end. But "La Mer" and "Pilgrimage" step outside of that zone, the former being a piano ballad and the latter sounding like Nazis on the march.

The album is a concept record; it chronicles things falling apart, the collapse of systems. Unlike many such records, there is no concrete resolution at the end - if anything, the protagonist (if there is one) dies at its conclusion, on the instrumental "Ripe (With Decay)." Nine Inch Nails was never about easy answers or conflict resolution, so if you're looking for the type of conclusion that bookended, say, Pink Floyd's The Wall, you'd best look elsewhere.

Three 65, Day 19
Failure, Magnified

Failure are anything but. I first caught the band opening for Tool in 1994, and they nearly blew them off the stage. Their mix of feedback-y, shimmery guitar and bass-driven songwriting floored me, and throughout their (admittedly short) career, I have treasured the fact that no one else seems to know about them. It's a barometer of a person's musical taste, to me, if they've even heard of Failure.

A lot of people swear by the album that follows Magnified, Fantastic Planet, and I wanted to write about that, but decided on this record instead, partly because I'm a perverse fuck and partly because I like it better. Fantastic Planet is almost too ambitious in its scope, and the band occasionally loses sight of its goals there. Not so on Magnified; every track is a keeper.

The album opens with the gritty "Let It Drip," and it's there that we get our first taste of the Failure sound: bottom-heavy bass that leads the song, with guitar sounds to accentuate the central melody. Vocalist/guitarist Ken Andrews has a wonderful singing voice, both melodic and forceful, that complements the music greatly.

"Moth" and "Frogs," the latter about mental illness, go together and flow into one another seamlessly; "Bernie" is an ode to copping drugs from a remembered dealer in the park; and the title track, with its chilling lyrics about burning ants ("the sun's just a big glass / we're all ants / I love you"), is a perfect noise-pop masterpiece.

The band was comprised of two central members: Greg Edwards, who brought the bass, and the aforementioned Andrews. And they really were larger than the sum of their parts. After the band disbanded in 1997, Edwards went on to form Autolux, while Andrews (in addition to fronting some forgettable bands) became highly sought after for his production skills. Here's to hoping this is one more band that attempts the nostalgia trip, because nothing they've done since has measured up.

Three 65, Day 18
El-P, I'll Sleep When You're Dead

El-P used to be one half of influential underground rap group Company Flow; he's also well known for his role in developing Definitive Jux, one of the most important hip-hop labels of the 21st century. His solo work hasn't been perfectly consistent: His first album, Fantastic Damage, was a great piece of noise-rap, but it's admittedly off-putting (in the best possible way), and there are a lot of mixtapes, remixes, and collabs out there that don't always cast him in the best light.

I'll Sleep When You're Dead changed all of that. A rap album with a solid, post-apocalyptic focus and an absence of irritating skits, Sleep shows enormous growth on El-P's part, both as a producer and as a rapper - amazing, considering the fact that he was already well-respected when the record came out.

I don't want to talk about his rapping too much (his lyrics aren't great, but his flow's amazing); I want to focus on the music underneath. The album is chock full of guest spots. Cedric Bixler-Zavala of The Mars Volta croons the outro to "Tasmanian Pain Coaster," which also features the guitar talents of Matt Sweeney; Aesop Rock turns up on "Run The Numbers"; Cat Power appears a siren on "Poisenville Kids No Wins / Reprise"; and the elusive Trent Reznor lends his vocals and production talents to "Flyentology" (even though his contribution is little more than yelling "No!" every three seconds or so). These guest spots keep the album from becoming another run-of-the-mill hip-hop release.

The beats come fast and furious on "Up All Night," which carries its jittery braggadocio well. "The Overly Dramatic Truth" rides a solemn bass line and swelling strings to convey its message of frantic frustration. "Habeas Corpses (Draconian Love)," a science-fiction love story about the relationship between prisoner and jailer, is replete with sound effects and narrative dialogue that convey the story in a way no rapping can.

This was El-P's most recent album, so I can't discuss his future... but I'm looking forward to anything he may release, and to seeing him open for The Streets this summer.

Three 65, Day 17
Slayer, Reign In Blood

What more can I write about this, the heaviest and fastest of all metal albums? Reign In Blood was the first album Slayer worked on with producer Rick Rubin, and the change in their sound is evident from the moment the album starts: Instead of a doom-inspired slow heaviness, the riffs and drumming come at you with lightning-like speed, like a wall of blades flying into your face at Mach 10.

The whole record is like that. It's almost like a Tom & Jerry cartoon, actually: Everything happens at the speed of light, people die in horrible ways, mutilation and carnage reign supreme. I always have to emphasize this fact when people talk about Slayer in disgusted tones, like: "Ugh, Slayer, those guys are Nazis." Or, "Ugh, Slayer, those guys are into Satan." Yeah, they open the album with a song about Josef Mengele, the Nazi doctor who experimented on Jews during the Holocaust. Yeah, they frequently invoke the name of Satan and perform with an inverted cross rotating above the drummer.

Folks, it's all spectacle. There's nothing in the classic "Angel Of Death" that specifically endorses Josef Mengele, and the only reason the band flirts with Nazi propaganda is because it sells records and aggravates controversy. And as far as Satanism is concerned, the band had mostly abandoned that stance by the time of Reign In Blood, favoring concepts like death, disease, insanity, and religion - more "street-level" fare.

Keeping with the theme of cartoon as album, the record clocks in at a scant 30 minutes. When Rubin informed the band of this fact, their blank expressions were the only answer he needed. All of the songs run into another, creating a masterpiece of blended thrash that doesn't let up during its entire run - until the final song, "Raining Blood," which, when performed live, featured fake blood drizzling down on the band. Spectacle? It's all part of the show, folks.

Slayer have a lot of great albums. They slowed down their sound for South Of Heaven, varied it up with Seasons In The Abyss, and produced a near-classic in the recent Christ Illusion. But Reign In Blood isn't just Slayer's masterpiece; it's the finest heavy metal album of all time.

Three 65, Day 16
Fugazi, 13 Songs

It took me a long time to come around to Fugazi. I went to one of their concerts once, in an abandoned warehouse (typical), and held my ears for the duration of the show. I just wasn't getting it. I liked my punk rock straightforward and hated the sound of Guy Picciotto's voice.

But, eventually, I came around, first to Fugazi's later albums, which incorporate a lot of varied styles to them, and then, finally, to their landmark record, 13 Songs. Comprised of two EPs (the Fugazi EP and the Margin Walker EP), 13 Songs is Fugazi's first full-length release, and in my opinion, their finest hour.

A lot of guff has been made about Fugazi's monk-like existence. They don't smoke (not true); they don't drink (not true); they discourage moshing at their shows (very true). I think these are excuses made by people who don't want to open up to their sound and their lyrics, which are as potent as any in the punk rock omniverse.

Take "Waiting Room," for example. It sounds, at first, almost like reggae, but nothing could be further from the truth - that's just Fugazi appropriating other styles to serve their own purpose. Then, about a third of the way through the song, the bottom drops out, and the fury kicks in. In perfect call-and-response, dual vocalists Ian MacKaye and Guy Piciotto wax rhapsodic about waiting for things in life, instead of going out and making things happen. Theirs is a call-to-arms for a community of alternative slackers too apathetic to do most of their thinking for themselves.

"Suggestion" is powerful too, as MacKaye steps into the role of a woman, and how they are forced to deal with men on the long-term. Over a laid back guitar note, MacKaye croons: "We sit back like they taught us... We keep quiet like they taught us..." and closes with the assertion that "we are all guilty." Powerful stuff.

The second half of the album is equally powerful, especially the closing song, "Promises," which features the immortal couplet "Promises are shit / We speak the way we breathe." Fugazi would go on to release a lot of great, great albums before finally (and unofficially) calling it quits in the early 21st century. 13 Songs was just the beginning.

Three 65, Day 15
Jane's Addiction, Ritual De Lo Habitual

One of the first bands to bridge the gap between metalheads and college rock radio, Jane's Addiction were alternative with a capital A. They founded Lollapalooza, among other things, and put attention-hungry frontman Perry Farrell on the map as the spokesperson of disaffected youths everywhere. Never mind that he and the rest of the band were incorrigible heroin junkies; never mind that guitarist Dave Navarro grew up to be a shirtless sex God with nothing between his ears but visions of bouncing boobies. In 1990, Jane's Addiction was the first and last stop for above-ground tourists seeking underground thrills.

Ritual was their last album before breaking up for several years, and it was their last good album. An ambitious 51:30, Ritual is divided into two parts: the first half, a clutch of five unrelated rock tunes, and the second half, a series of truly otherworldly prog-rock numbers meant to evoke the memory of Xiola Blue, a friend of Perry's who died of a heroin overdose at the age of 19.

The first half is good. "Stop!," "Ain't No Right," and the immortal "Been Caught Stealing" are all great songs. But they pale in comparison to what the band does with the second half of the album, which starts with the epic "Three Days," almost 11 minutes of shifting and building rock fury that, by its end, threatens to set the world on fire. "Then She Did..." is a poignant reminder of Perry Farrell's mother, who committed suicide when he was young; "Of Course," often considered the most annoying song in the Jane's Addiction catalogue ("La la! La la! La la!"), carries a strong Middle Eastern influence. And "Classic Girl" is, well, "Classic."

The whole band brings something to the table on this album. There's the fiery guitar leads courtesy of Navarro, and Stephen Perkins' eclectic drumming. Farrell is, always, the consummate showman, but the real show here belongs to the bottom-heavy bass of Eric Avery, who also co-wrote many of the songs on this album. Avery is often considered the least essential member of Jane's Addiction, but I disagree, and if you care to argue the point, just listen to the abominable Strays or any of the live material released with other bassists.

The band would go through numerous line-up changes during multiple reunion and "relapse" tours, and a new album is expected this summer. I think they're wasting their time. Most bands only get to release one great album, and for Jane's, it was Ritual De Lo Habitual.

Three 65, Day 14
King Crimson, In The Court Of The Crimson King

Simply put, the best progressive rock album ever made. Yes may have been more popular, and Pink Floyd may have written better songs; Rush may have more bombast, and Genesis may have been more complicated. But for prog-rock heads, this album is where it's at.

Largely the brainchild of guitarist Robert Fripp, King Crimson has had many line-up changes over the years, but for this first, crucial album, it was Fripp on guitar, Greg Lake (of ELP) on vocals and bass, Michael Giles on drums, and Ian McDonald on everything else - from flute to keyboards. Which isn't to say McDonald's contribution is to be understated; if anything, he is responsible for some of the loveliest sounds on this album, which heavily features the ultimate in prog-rock instruments, the Mellotron.

The opening track, "21st Century Schizoid Man," is one of the first heavy metal songs ever recorded. Over shrieking horns and buzzsaw guitars, a heavily distorted Lake sings about cat's feet, iron claws, and neurosurgeons. Just when the song can't get any hairier, a free jazz interlude is dropped into the middle, and the effect is like dropping a nuke into a lake: Everyone gets wet. This track has influenced more artists than I can list, even making it so far as to be sampled on Kanye West's "Power."

"I Talk To The Wind" and "Moonchild" are beautiful, quieter English pastoral numbers, but the real treat here is the last track, "The Court Of The Crimson King." After a very brief drum opening, the Mellotron kicks in, and if anyone out there thinks such an instrument is, well, "mellow," this song proves them wrong. In fact, it sounds positively apocalyptic, especially when layered with Lake's vocal harmonics on the choruses.

A brief album at just under 45 minutes, Court would go on to influence nearly everyone. The band would go through many stylistic and personnel changes, ranging from instrumental prog to new wave to metal, with Fripp the only remaining member to survive every incarnation. And many of those albums are suggested, but none of them holds a candle to their debut.

Three 65, Day 13
Tomahawk, Tomahawk

For unlucky day 13, we take a look at Tomahawk, Mike Patton's first straight-up rock ensemble formed after the destruction of Faith No More and Mr. Bungle, his two primary projects.

When Faith No More broke up, Patton seemed a little lost in the wilderness: He took on some guest spots, and formed Fantomas, a death metal supergroup that utilized (some would say squandered) his insanely varied vocal talents. It wasn't until Tomahawk released their self-titled debut in late 2001 that his rock and roll flower finally bloomed again.

Loosely a concept album about the life of a serial killer, a Patton-esque topic if ever there was one, Tomahawk is more than just a showcase for the singer's brand of bizarre ability. It also features Duane Denison, of The Jesus Lizard, on guitar; John Stanier, of Battles and Helmet, on drums; and Cows bassist Kevin Rutmanis. And all of them totally bring their A game. Denison's guitar leads are loose and greasy, with plenty of the angular playing that made his Jesus Lizard albums so much fun. Rutmanis is, as always, an exceptional player in an unexceptional role, holding down the bottom end while Stanier does what he does best: intense, almost heavy metal drumming.

And then there's Patton, whose wild vocals and sound effects rule the day. On "God Hates A Coward," which is performed live through a gas mask, he truly does sound like a twisted serial killer ruing his fucked up early life. He shifts from crooning to shrieking on "POP 1" ("this beat could win me a Grammy" he screams), and generates hair-raising creaks and groans over the course of "101 North," the chilling second track.

Tomahawk released two other albums: the excellent Mit Gas and Anonymous, a clutch of covers of Native American chanting. And of course, Patton went on to do everything under the sun, including a Faith No More reunion. Unfortunately, Rutmanis left the band (with no official explanation) around the time of Anonymous, and there hasn't been an album since, although rumors continue to float that the band is considering a fourth release.

Three 65, Day 12
Ween, Pure Guava

Ween is regarded in certain circles as a joke, a comedy band, but there's a lot more to them than that. The joke itself wouldn't work so well if Gene and Dean Ween weren't consummate professionals; their musicianship is always spot on, they can ape any style, and in doing so, they often make that style their own. Their best regarded album is Chocolate & Cheese, but I find the one that came before it, Pure Guava, to be my favorite.

Maybe it's because Ween was still in a state of transition while recording this album. They hadn't blown up yet, they were still relatively underground, and they were still recording to four-track in empty barns throughout the Northeastern Corridor. But there is a definite change on this album from their previous work, which had a very "demo" feel to it. Here, the band takes hold of their destiny, and applies all of their know-how to make something that successfully straddles the line between homegrown and professional.

There's a lot of gags here, to be sure, and that's necessary for a Ween album; when they forget the ha-ha, the music suffers (just listen to Quebec for an example). "Little Birdy" is a drugged out slow-mo poem about, well, a little birdy, set to drunken, fucked up music. "The Stallion Pt. 3" and "Don't Get 2 Close (2 My Fantasy)" are perfect imitations of prog-rock in all its bombast and glory. "Push Th' Little Daisies," a helium-soaked song about death that blew Ween all over the map after it was featured on an episode of Beavis & Butt-head, remains one of the band's finest moments. "Pumpin' 4 The Man" is a straight-up rocker, and "Sarah" is a beautiful ballad. A Ween album wouldn't be complete without a fully offensive moments, and "Reggaejunkiejew" fits the bill perfectly. And of course, there's the classic "Poop Ship Destroyer," 2:16 of sound effects that live usually lasts over half an hour.

Ween would go on to greatness and glory with albums like The Mollusk and the underrated White Pepper (a hilarious send-up of Steely Dan), but in '92, when they were still struggling, they recorded their definitive statement in Pure Guava. To sum it up perfectly, the album liner notes read: "When Ween comes to your town, bring us hot meals. No more junk food, thanks." I'm not sure how that ties in here, but that's the scattershot beauty of Ween.

Three 65, Day 11
Cypress Hill, Cypress Hill

In honor of today's date (4/20), we're going to take a look at a truly marijuana-influenced album, Cypress Hill's self-titled debut. I was first introduced to the hip-hop group before ever smoking pot, and I didn't know what to make of it at first. The beats sounded odd and distant; the music was a queasy, almost seasick mix of samples and sounds; the vocals are delivered by rapper B Real in a nasal, cartoonish voice. And of course, there's the subject matter, which boils down to two topics: getting high and getting killed.

Of course, when I finally did pick up a blunt, things began to make a lot more sense. Because Cypress Hill, as cartoonish as it seems, perfectly replicates the aural experience of getting high. Just check out the song titles: "Stoned Is The Way Of The Walk"; "Something For The Blunted"; "Light Another." Of course, when they're not getting baked, they're shooting at people: "How I Could Just Kill A Man"; "Hole In The Head"; "Hand On The Pump." (They're also obsessed with a cop named "O'Malley," but we'll just leave that one alone.)

Which would seem like a ridiculously narrow amount of topics for a full-length album, but I'll be damned if Cypress Hill hasn't made a career out of it. Not only did their stoned musings influence Dr. Dre's The Chronic, but they were one of the first hip-hop groups to actively court Alternative Nation, appearing at Lollapalooza and on the Judgment Night soundtrack alongside other acts like Pearl Jam and Sonic Youth.

A review of this album would be amiss without mentioning the group's clever knack for sampling. "Hand On The Pump" samples Gene Chandler's "Duke Of Earl" to great effect, Kool & The Gang are ripped off several times throughout the album, and dialogue from the film Car Wash appears on the track "The Funky Cypress Hill Shit." Cypress Hill would release more popular albums, including Black Sunday (which included their hit "Insane In The Brain"), but for those who want to get blunted - or want the next best thing - their debut is where it's at.

Three 65, Day 10
Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Slow Riot For New Zero Kanada

Rateyourmusic.com ranked this as the best EP of all time, and they just might be right.

Slow Riot is a bit of an enigma at first - just look at the packaging, which opens backwards (in honor of the Hebrew on the cover, which is read from right to left); the band's name, and the song titles, are nowhere to be found, and the title exists only on the spine. To make things even more threatening, the back (front) cover has a diagram for making a Molotov cocktail... in Italian.

So what gives? Godspeed You! Black Emperor has never been one for easy answers, and that's the point: There are no easy answers, especially for music as complicated and intriguing as that found here. A large ensemble instrumental group, Godspeed specializes in orchestral music - from a basic rock band format - that builds and builds to a crescendo, and then levels off, often with found sounds and samples thrown into the mix.

The first of two tracks, "Moya," follows the band's usual pattern: quiet-quieter-loud-LOUD-deafening. As the music grows, so does the emotional resonance, even though the song might not be specifically about anything in particular. The strings mount, slowly but surely, until what began as a quiet semi-classical piece takes on a swirling roar of its own. Of even greater interest is the follow-up track, "Blaise Bailey Finnegan III." Although the template is the same here, the song is given time to slack off near the end of its 17-minute, 45-second length. This, and the quiet opening, finds room for the samples, which feature an interview with an angry man who recounts the tale of paying a parking ticket and berating a brow-beating judge. Later, he reads a "poem" he wrote, only to rattle off the lyrics to Iron Maiden's "Virus."

What does it all mean? Who the fuck knows? Godspeed have always been stridently anti-commercial (their last album featured a diagram linking four major record labels to various arms manufacturers), even, at one point, calling Radiohead to task for their willingness to play ball with EMI. The anti-American sentiments on "Finnegan" - which, mind you, are made by the song's subject, and not the band - strike a chord with me, but the music is strong enough to stand on its own merits without requiring any kind of message. Which is sort of the point.

Three 65, Day 9
Rush, Moving Pictures

For the longest time, I couldn't get behind Rush; I just couldn't stand the sound of vocalist Geddy Lee's high-pitched, elvish voice. I liked the instrumentals well enough (especially loved "La Villa Strangiato"), but that voice! Like nails on a blackboard.

But eventually I came around, and Moving Pictures was a large part of that. Often considered Rush's best album, this is where the band's attempted synthesis of hard rock and new wave paid off its biggest dividends. A solid piece from start to finish, Moving Pictures will long hold a strong place in the pantheon of great albums - prog/metal or otherwise.

The album starts with the inimitable "Tom Sawyer," whose riff was later lifted by Metallica for their track "Welcome Home (Sanitarium)" (see Three 65, Day 4). Awash in synths, the song is a tribute to epic bombast, the kind of perfect album opener most artists only produce one of. This is followed immediately by what I think of as the album's strongest track, radio mainstay "Red Barchetta" - kind of a buddy comedy set in the future, and based on the short story "A Nice Morning Drive" by Richard S. Foster. Rush was always at their best when they were telling a story, and "Barchetta" paints a fascinating picture of a world without cars, and the boy who dared to race against "a gleaming alloy aircar... two lanes wide."

Other highlights include the always popular "Limelight," the instrumental "YYZ" (which I first heard in cover form, at a Primus concert - the song is about Toronto's airport, and the opening notes are Morse code!), and Rush's last epic longform multi-part suite, "The Camera Eye." The last two songs, "Witch Hunt" and "Vital Signs," are decent, but in comparison to the rest of the album, they're just not as good.

The musicianship on this album is just rock solid. Geddy Lee (vocals aside) can manhandle a bass guitar with the rest of them, while Alex Lifeson's guitar leads are explosive, and Neal Peart's drumming and percussion is a polyrhythmic display of sheer virtuosity. Later Rush albums would prove to be more monochromatic, and not as dynamic as Moving Pictures, but in 1981 - and still, today - this was the shit.

Three 65, Day 8
Them Crooked Vultures, Them Crooked Vultures

Supergroups don't always work - too many egos in too little space, too many voices fighting for constant recognition. Everybody wants to be a star of the show. A refreshing reminder that sometimes, supergroups do work, is the debut self-titled album from Them Crooked Vultures, a three-piece consisting of Foo Fighters-founder and Nirvana drummer extraordinaire Dave Grohl, Queens Of The Stone Age frontman Josh Homme, and Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones.

From the opening strains of the double entendre-laden "No One Loves Me & Neither Do I," it's clear this is a powerhouse of a record. Everyone is on point here: the drums kill, the bass is spry and nimble, and Homme has never sounded better as both a vocalist and a guitarist.

But there's more to this album than mere musicianship; the songwriting is top notch, too. (Sure, the lyrics are mostly forgettable fluff about drugs and sex, but hey, that's rock and roll. No one goes to a group like Them Crooked Vultures expecting the lyrical insight of, say, The Mountain Goats. It's just not required.) The stuttering guitar on "Mind Eraser, No Chaser," the opening notes of the crushing "Elephants," and the intricate band interplay on "Gunman" all point to professionals doing what they do best: writing great songs.

Also of great interest is "Interlude With Ludes": if this song doesn't make you feel like you're on drugs, you might be dead. Ahead of a woozy bass line and bizarre electronics, Homme intones lines like "On the good ship Lolligag / LSD & a bloody pile of rags / I hate to be the bearer of bad news / But I am..."

Unfortunately, the band hasn't yet recorded anything else, but another album is, according to Jones, in the works. Something to look forward to!

Three 65, Day 7
Prodigy, The Fat Of The Land

...And we come up on a week's worth of albums with Prodigy (or The Prodigy, or whatever). Highly touted as the album that would break electronica through to the masses, something which thankfully never happened, The Fat Of The Land was one of the most highly awaited releases of 1997, and stood proudly alongside a number of other distinguished records released during that summer (Radiohead, Ween, Faith No More... what can I say, it was quite a fucking year).

Preceded by the singles "Firestarter" and "Breathe," the latter having dropped to MTV almost a year before the album, The Fat Of The Land was a change in tone for Prodigy. Their previous albums had been almost straight-up rave techno, with little to no guitar or live drumming to distinguish them from the other electronica albums dribbling out of the UK at the time. This new album, however, changed all that.

Things kick off with the controversial "Smack My Bitch Up," which features a sample of the Ultramagnetic MC's "Give The Drummer Some." A lot of people bitched (pun most definitely intended) about the content of this song, including the Beastie Boys - who proved themselves to be the worst kind of hypocrites - which is funny, because the song has no content. It's just a techno instrumental with a couple of hip-hop samples thrown in for good measure. Please, people, don't get your panties in a bunch.

The next track is "Breathe," one of the few tracks featuring vocalist Keith Flint. A furious stomp of Wu-Tang Clan samples, kung-fu noises, and whirlwind guitar, "Breathe" is probably the band's best moment. Elsewhere, "Diesel Power" features rapper Kool Keith, who, thanks to the popularity of the recently released Dr. Octagon album, was the go-to guy for hip-hop guest appearances.

The album does get bogged down toward the middle; I can't lie about that. "Serial Thrilla," "Mindfields," and "Narayan" are just boring tracks, no two ways about it. But things pick up again with the aforementioned "Firestarter," which was considered controversial at the time of its release due to its supposed glorification of pyromania and "threatening" video. Again: don't get your knickers in a twist, people. It's just a techno track.

The Fat Of The Land closes with a cover of L7's "Fuel My Fire," an apt selection and another blend of guitar and beats that works well. After the album's release, this sound was mostly abandoned by the band, and their follow-ups have been pale imitations of this record. Which is sad, because The Fat Of The Land proved that electronica, when done with the right bit of flavor, could be a viable genre in the US.

Three 65, Day 6
Ministry, Psalm 69

I was initially hesitant to pick up a Ministry album, mostly because I was warned by high school classmates not so. "Don't truck with Ministry, man!" they'd say. "You'll wind up doing heroin! That shit is made by the devil!" And this was coming from guys who liked Metallica and Slayer, so I figured this stuff was extreme, and at the time I stashed it away with the kind of brutal material now produced by bands like Burzum.

But my curiosity finally got the better of me, and so I picked up Psalm 69, Ministry's fifth album and the one that got them the most radio rotation and MTV airplay. I hadn't heard a single song before that, and as I walked home from the mall listening to the opening strains of the battering-ram-like "N.W.O.," I thought, "Holy shit! Someone has combined my two favorite things: heavy metal and disco."

That's an oversimplification, to be sure. Ministry's sound is a lot more than heavy metal and disco: it's got elements of post-industrial, punk, and techno to it as well. But that was my defining thought of the day, so we'll go with that. Psalm 69 is, if not the finest distillation of Ministry's trademark caustic noise, at least the most accessible point of entry.

Starting with the aforementioned "N.W.O.," a toxic screed against the first President Bush's imperialist policies in the Gulf War, Psalm 69 leaps out of the speakers in a visceral way that no album I had heard before ever did. Surrounded by klaxons, pounding drums, and demented guitar riffing, Al Jourgensen's distorted vocals issue lyrics about clowns and destruction, while Bush blabs on in the background, courtesy of the numerous samples peppered throughout the song. Then there's "Just One Fix," which features another sample, this one of Courtney Love croaking from the film Sid & Nancy: "Never trust a junkie." (She's never sounded better, by the way.) "TV II" and "Hero" carry the metal theme forward, while "Scarecrow" is a terrifying slow and brutal uptake on the chord progression from Zeppelin's "When The Levee Breaks."

But no analysis of Psalm 69 would be complete without mention of the album's centerpiece, "Jesus Built My Hotrod" - the Ministry money shot. Over a blazingly fast guitar lead and washed out drums, Butthole Surfers vocalist Gibby Haynes (the liner notes read that he appears "courtesy of his own bad self") scats and gibbers maniacally about trailers and country livin'. It doesn't make any sense, and it doesn't have to; the song hits like a punch to the solar plexus, all power and force and fury.

This would, I'm afraid, be Ministry's last contribution to the pantheon of major works by industrial artists. They would go on to abandon their sound in favor of a slower, doomier approach (at least until co-conspirator Paul Barker left, at which point Jourgensen became obsessed with George W. Bush and recorded a trilogy of tasteless speed metal albums about him), leaving most of the samples behind and focusing on musicianship instead - of which Ministry had little, if any.

Three 65, Day 5
Alice In Chains, Dirt

Simply put, Dirt is the best and most harrowing musical statement about heroin addiction ever recorded. It's also one of the finest metal albums ever put to wax, and one of the best records released in the 1990s.

Alice In Chains started out as a kind of threatening glam-metal band, and when Nirvana and Pearl Jam put Seattle on the map, attention soon focused on them as progenitors of the so-called "grunge" sound. But that isn't entirely accurate; they were never a grunge band (neither were Pearl Jam or Nirvana, for that matter), they were a metal band. Their first album, Facelift, is as metal as it gets, especially towards its second half.

For the follow-up, Alice In Chains went into the studio with producer Dave Jerden, best known for making Jane's Addiction sound larger than Godzilla. The move was a good one, and they came out with thirteen songs that sum up the misery, remorse, pain, and anguish of heroin addiction better than anyone not named Cobain ever has.

The album starts out with two hard rock numbers: "Them Bones" and "Dam That River," both of which ponder mortality and hopelessness. From there, the album sinks into a true kind of hell, as the protagonist suffers from depression ("Down In A Hole"), self-hatred (the title track), and fury (the awesome "Angry Chair," whose opening drums make the oncoming song sound like an approaching thunderstorm). The only relief from these themes comes in the form of a reminiscence about the protagonist's father (the Vietnam ballad "Rooster") and the closing track, a brief song about returns and healing called "Would?"

The overall band is good on this album, but the real kudos go to vocalist Layne Staley and guitarist/band-head-honcho Jerry Cantrell. Staley has a yowl that could shatter glass, and it's perfectly suited to this kind of material. Cantrell, who also contributes vocals and wrote much of the material, wrests sounds out of his guitar that makes it sound like the walls are melting.

Unfortunately, time and drugs would destroy this line-up of Alice In Chains. Layne Staley and Mike Starr both died of overdoses, proving that the band walked the walk as well as they talked the talk. Cantrell pushed on recently with the decent Black Gives Way To Blue, but without Staley to provide that blood-curdling shriek, it just isn't the same.

Three 65, Day 4
Metallica, Master Of Puppets

The question was recently posed to me: Master Of Puppets or Ride The Lightning? And I really had to think about that, because both albums are so close in tone and structure (especially the latter) that they're almost indistinguishable. This is not to detract from either album; both of them are stone cold classics, and I think Ride The Lightning may actually be a smidge better than Puppets, simply because it came first and established a sound that has become rote in the heavy metal world. But for me, I'll take Puppets over Lightning any day.

Why? Well, whereas Ride The Lightning comes first chronologically, I was first introduced to Metallica via Master Of Puppets, which remains the ideal starting place for the neophyte who wants to explore the band's discography. A perfect album in every respect, Puppets cemented the band's reputation as the premier godfathers of thrash metal.

A lot of people deride Metallica for their bullshit, and that's okay: The band has plenty of skeletons in their closet. There's the Napster thing, which showed Metallica up for the rich assholes they really are; there's also the whole hazing of bassist Jason Newsted, which showed Metallica up for the exclusionist assholes they really are; and finally there's drummer Lars Ulrich's endless rich-guy bullshit, which showed Lars Ulrich up for the all-around asshole he really is. These issues aside, once the personalities are divorced from the music (and once the discography is divorced from the sub-par blues-grunge that made the 90s such a bad time to be a Metallica fan), you can really begin to appreciate just how talented these guys really are.

Master Of Puppets was the last album to feature original bassist Cliff Burton, who died in an auto accident while the band was on tour in Europe. He went out with a bang, and I'm not talking about the tour bus that fell on him. Starting with some deceptively pretty classical guitar, things get started early on "Battery," the album's first track, and the speed only picks up from there. The title track, a chilling indictment of addiction and cocaine abuse ("chop your breakfast on a mirror"), remains one of Metallica's finest moments on an album thoroughly riddled with them.

All of the songs on Puppets are about insanity in some way (except for "The Thing That Should Not Be," which is about H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos): the insanity of war ("Disposable Heroes"), the insanity of religion ("Leper Messiah," which features a killer bass groove underneath the usual thrashy strumundrang), the insanity of insanity ("Welcome Home"). True to form, there's also an instrumental, the almost-forgot-the-album-was-on-until-the-song-picks-up "Orion," which, while dismissed by many hardcore fans, is, in my opinion, their finest instrumental in a career surrounded by them.

Things would go downhill for Metallica after this, at least as far as quality was concerned. The follow-up, recorded after Burton's death, was ...And Justice For All, which is a good but overly complex development on the sound found on Puppets. The follow-up to that was The Black Album, which features a poppier refinement on the band's signature noise. And, of course, who can forget the lost decade that followed? But in 1986, when they released Puppets to universal critical acclaim - at a time when metal was firmly a forbidden, underground treat - they had the world by the balls, and that, I think, is what makes me choose Puppets over Lightning, time and time again.

Three 65, Day 3
Ice Cube, Death Certificate

Once upon a time, I told my mother I was listening to Ice Cube. She made a disgusted face and said, "You know, he doesn't like Jews." I responded (rather flippantly), "That's okay, I don't like black people." Which isn't really true; I like to think of myself as enlightened enough that I don't suffer from the ingrained aspect of the human condition that causes racism. But - and this is true - I'm sure Ice Cube could appreciate the sense of confrontation that I brought to the table.

That's what Ice Cube is all about, really: confrontation. Although many people know him now as a consummate family entertainer, once upon a time, Cube was a full-on thug. And growing up in South Central Los Angeles, he definitely knew firsthand what he rapping about: guns, drugs, poverty, and hos.

Death Certificate remains his shining masterpiece (people will differ me on this point, probably pointing their own guns at The Predator, which is a good album, but a little too mainstream for me). Divided into "Death" and "Life" sides, the album starts with a funeral, and concludes the first half of the album (the "Death" side) with the protagonist dying of a cop-inflicted gunshot. Along the way, we cover the full melange of Cube topics: thuggery ("My Summer Vacation"), sex ("Givin' Up The Nappy Dug Out" and "Look Who's Burnin'"), and death (uh, "Death"). The best song on this side, "A Bird In The Hand," is about being poor and black in early-90s America. Check the lyrics:

Always knew that I would rock G's
But welcome to McDonald's
Make I take your order please
Gotta serve you food that might give you cancer
But my son doesn't take no for an answer
Now I gotta pay taxes
That you never give me back
What about diapers, bottles, and Similac?
Do I have to sell me a whole lot of crack
For decent shelter, and clothes on my back?
Or should I just wait for help from Bush?
Or Jesse Jackson, and Operation Push?
If you ask me the whole thing needs a douche
A Massengil what-the-hell cracker-sell on the neighborhood...

In this context, Cube actually humanizes the thug lifestyle - as the only way out of a trap constructed by white America. Cube walked the walk and talked the talk, which is more than I can say of today's bullshit gangsters.

Moving on, the "Life" side (which isn't too different from the "Death" side, and probably should have been called the "Racist" side) calls to tasks Asians on "Black Korea" for being suspicious of black people in their stores, and puts his old "Jew" manager on the carpet during the closing track, "No Vaseline." Whatever. The beats are solid So-Cal bounce, produced a few years before Dr. Dre puked that sound all over the hip-hop map, and the lyrics are often insightful. Confrontational? Shit yeah, but the man had something to say.

Ice Cube would go on to become a caricature of himself with movies like Are We There Yet? and albums that glorified an empty ghetto lifestyle that didn't have 10% of the meaningfulness that Death Certificate had. But in 1991, he wasn't just the best former member of N.W.A. out there on the streets; he was the best West Coast rapper, period.

Three 65, Day 2
Various Artists, A Clockwork Orange: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

I was first turned on to this one in high school, by a good friend named Danny who had also brought Pink Floyd's The Wall to my attention. (And if you don't think we'll be covering The Wall in the next 363 days, you really don't know me at all.)

Say what you want about Stanley Kubrick's movie, but the soundtrack just takes the cake. I'm not a big fan of classical music, which I typically find too quiet and background-y for my tastes, but the selections here slay, especially Gioacchino Rossini's "Thieving Magpie" (used to great effect during the gang battle that comes early on in the film) and Beethoven's "Ninth Symphony, Fourth Movement." Talk about spectacle! Talk about grandeur! Talk about bombast! The cuts on this soundtrack have all of that.

Also of note are excerpts taken from Wendy Carlos' original score, which is so baroque and alien that it does more to set the futuristic mood of the movie than all of the set pieces combined. Carlos (who started out life as William Carlos, actually) was obsessed with converting classical pieces to more modern counterparts with the use of synthesizers, and the result is some of the finest keyboard work ever done. "Timesteps" alone is worth the price of entry.

The soundtrack isn't perfect by any means - I could do without two different sections of the stately "Pomp And Circumstance," and "I Want To Marry A Lighthouse Keeper" is a bit o' British fluff that could have been left on the cutting room floor - but it's a gem in the rough, that much is sure. Closing with "Singin' In The Rain" - a contribution made chilling by its use in the film - the soundtrack for A Clockwork Orange is Kubrick's finest contribution to recorded music.

Three 65, Day 1
Mr. Bungle, Mr. Bungle

Believe it or not, I owned this album before I ever picked up a Faith No More album, and the reason for that is simple: the creepy pyro-clown on the cover. This is back before I even bought CDs, when I was out trolling for cassette tapes (before the hipsters made them into the "retro" accouterments they are today). I saw the album, saw the clown, and decided, "I have to have this."

More on the album in a minute - first, we talk more about the art, much of which is culled from the first issue of Louapre & Sweetman's comic book Beautiful Stories For Ugly Children, "A Cotton Candy Autopsy." It's basically a lot of clowns getting trashed on booze and doing things like scaring children and driving drunk (think Shakes The Clown without the ha-has). Besides that interesting introduction, there were also the intriguing song titles - "Squeeze Me Macaroni," "My Ass Is On Fire," "The Girls Of Porn" - to make me want to part with my money in exchange for the album. So, sold, I took the tape home and nearly wore it out trying to make sense of the thing.

Look, there has never been a more schizophrenic album than this one. Genres come and go like so many objects caught in a tornado. Sure, it sounds like metal on first listen, but there's a lot more to it than just that: lounge, acid jazz, punk, funk, and disco all make appearances. The musicians are so good at their individual tasks that the combination of their work makes it sound like an orchestra playing. How they managed to pull off most of these songs live (which they did, for years) is beyond my ability to comprehend.

But hats off to the true star of the album: vocalist Vlad Drac, also known as Mike Patton. When I first heard the record, I thought there were two singers, because I refused to believe anyone could pull off that kind of range without having two heads. Nope, only one singer. Patton goes from threatening growl ("Travolta," also known as "Quote Unquote" after the actor got wind of it) to sinister croon ("Slowly Growing Deaf") to motormouth rapping ("Squeeze Me Macaroni"), and that's just the first three tracks.

Also of note is the band's ability for incorporating found-sound aesthetic into their inter-song segues. The aforementioned "Deaf" ends with what sounds like a man shitting his brains out, and the epic "Egg" closes out the first half of the album with audio of the band (as teenagers) trying to hop a freight train. Listen closely to "Love Is A Fist" and you'll hear a skinhead beating up his son - no shit!

The result of all this work is a truly frightening piece of art. I'm almost numb to it now, after almost 20 years of constant rotation, but if this is your first time with the Bungle, strap in tight and feel the Gs. You won't regret it.