Bad Moon Rising [Homestead, 1985]
They're sure to disagree--what else are they good for? But despite the clanging brutality of their late industrial guitars and the sincerity of their manic (if hackneyed) depression, in the end the music merely serves as a backdrop for their usual sociopathic fantasies and the result isn't ugly or ominous or bombs bursting in the air--it's merely interesting. B-
Bad Moon Rising [Homestead, 1985]
Oliver Morgan
Justin Peterson
Jeremiah Cox
Don't Call Me Mama Anymore [RCA Victor, 1974]
How about Fatso? D
Cameron Lee
Master of Puppets [Elektra, 1986]
I feel at a generational disadvantage with this music not because my weary bones can't take its power and speed, but because I was born too early to have had my dendrites rewired by progressive radio. The momentum of this band can be impressive and as with most fast metal (as well as some sludge metal) they seem to have acceptable political motivations--antiwar, anticonformity, even anticoke. Fine. Problem is, the revolutionary heroes I envision aren't male chauvinists too naive to know better, they're not Arnold Schwarzenegger as Conan the Barbarian--all flowing hair and huge pecs. That's the image Metallica calls up, and I feel no more obliged to summon their strength of my own free will than I would the 1812 Overture's. B-
Wyatt Gomez
Van Halen [Warner Bros., 1978]
For some reason Warners wants us to know that this is the biggest bar band in the San Fernando Valley. This doesn't mean much--all new bands are bar bands, unless they're Boston. The term becomes honorific when the music belongs in a bar. This music belongs on an aircraft carrier. C
Van Halen II [Warner Bros., 1979]
Never let it be said that popular styles don't evolve--in the wake of Kiss and Boston, this is heavy metal that's pure, fast, and clean. No mythopoeia, no bombast, and even the guitar features are defined as just that. So how come formalists don't love the shit out of these guys? Not because they're into dominating women, I'm sure. C+
Women and Children First [Warner Bros., 1980]
Eddie VH's quicksilver whomp earns the Hendrix comparisons, and he's no clone--he's faster, colder, more structural. David Lee Roth adds a wild-ass sophistication to the usual macho--no mortal arena singer would even think of the goofy country blues takeoff that provides the title. But the message of the music isn't the exuberance of untrammeled skill, it's the arrogance of unchallenged mastery. Without being pompous about it, which is a plus, these guys show as little feeling for their zonked, hopelessly adoring fans as Queen. They're kings of the hill and we're not. B
Chase Brown
His reasoning ultimately makes sense.
Generally, he doesn’t like wanky music. The metal genre, like the prog one, is often full of wanky bridges of meaningless riffing. It’s not like post-rock/post-metal where there’s a more logical progression structurally.
His take on the hypocritical pseudo-masculine nature of the genre makes sense, too. Like, it espouses strength and stuff but it’s like an insecure, false sense of strength. It was never the hardest genre either. Back in the day, The Stooges went harder than Sabbath, hardcore punk and trappy hip hop both have percussive aspects of their music that’s far more aggressive as well. You can see this in live shows, too. Besides indie stuff, metal usually has the least number of people that actually look fit while these days trap/edm shows have the most fit guys. Also metal attracts other forms of weakness like ppl who can’t into hygiene and ppl too dumb to work a well paying job. Exceptions exist, but this is in general.
Luis Flores
>The Stooges went harder than Sabbat
It's called heavy metal, not hard metal. AC/DC have songs harder than The Stooges.
> hardcore punk and trappy hip hop both have percussive aspects of their music that’s far more aggressive as well.
No they don't, and you're comparing music from the 80s and 2000s to metal from the early 70s
Thrash and death metal of the 80s are harder, faster, and heavier than any hardcore punk or hip hop of the time, and the same goes for extreme metal bands of today vs hardcore punk of today and hip hop of today.
>Besides indie stuff, metal usually has the least number of people that actually look fit
Pic related
>while these days trap/edm shows have the most fit guys
Because one is for negroes and the other is for homosexuals, who are notorious for being fitness freaks
>Also metal attracts other forms of weakness like ppl who can’t into hygiene and ppl too dumb to work a well paying job.
I have been to many metal, punk, and even rap shows in my day....rap shows smell the worst by a long shot, punk can be bad too and literally has a sub genre based on being stinky and disgusting, metal fans are clean cut compared to those scumbag junkies. Also, I know way more metal fans with well paying jobs than rap fans or hardcore punks, who usually do not have jobs period.
You're a dumb suburban fag who doesn't know anything of which he speaks.
Bentley Cruz
>Generally, he doesn’t like wanky music
Except he loves the Grateful Dead for some reason.
Jeremiah Ortiz
Grateful dead have been excellent at marketing themselves as some 'yeah we are like jazz musicians with our longass improv-driven shows' except it's like a super watered down version of jazz which results in nothing more than shitty fusion, all fuzz no content.
However they are white guys playing rawk and Touch Of Grey was a radio hit, plus they are prime boomers so they are a-ok in Christgau's book
Ethan Anderson
Sometimes.
>Blues For Allah [Grateful Dead, 1975]
>I've been hypersensitive to this band's virtues for years. Now I find their approach neurasthenic and their general muddleheadedness worthy of Yes or the Strawbs. C-
>Steal Your Face [Grateful Dead, 1976]
>Their third or fourth live double of the decade is the first one to contain all the sorry earmarks of the genre, namely a lot of stretched-out remakes. And believe me, the Dead can rilly stretch 'em out. C-
>Shakedown Street [Arista, 1978]
>The title cut is the first anthem any of these necromancing rabble-rousers have come up with in years. But even there, Jerry Garcia warns against "too much too quickly" and this album ain't the miracle they need. C
Adam Scott
Especially considering they're from California which he normally hates.
Levi Parker
>Blues For Allah [Grateful Dead, 1975]
>I've been hypersensitive to this band's virtues for years. Now I find their approach neurasthenic and their general muddleheadedness worthy of Yes or the Strawbs. C-
This is a load of barnacles...
Liam Gray
>mid to late 70s Dead after they'd gotten complacent, lazy, and about to be replaced by punk like all their peers
Shocker there.
Jack Stewart
Dressed to Kill [Casablanca, 1975]
I feel schizy about this record. It rocks with a brutal, uncompromising force that's very impressive--sort of a slicked-down, tightened-up, heavied-out MC5--and the songwriting is much improved from albums one and two. But the lyrics recall the liberal fantasy of rock concert as Nuremberg rally, equating sex with victimization in a display of male supremacism that glints with humor only at its cruelest--song titles like "Room Service" and "Ladies in Waiting." In this context, the band's refusal to bare the faces that lie beneath the clown makeup becomes ominous, which may be just what they intend, though for the worst of reasons. You know damn well that if they didn't have both eyes on maximum commerciality they'd call themselves Blow Job. B
Alive [Casablanca, 1975]
There are those who regard this concert double as a de facto best-of that rescues such unacknowledged hard rock classics as "Deuce" and "Strutter" from the sludge. There are also those who regard it as the sludge. I fall into neither category--regret the drum solo, applaud "Rock and Roll All Nite," and absorb the thunderousness of it all with bemused curiosity. The multimillion kids who are buying it don't fall into either category either. B-
Brody Gutierrez
Destroyer [Casablanca, 1976]
Like most hard (not heavy) groups wildly favored by young teens (cf. Alice Cooper, BTO), these guys have always rocked better than adults were willing to enjoy, but pro producer Bob Ezrin adds only bombast and melodrama. Their least interesting record. C+
Rock and Roll Over [Casablanca, 1977]
Those who dismiss them as unlistenable are still evading the issue: they write tough, catchy songs, and if they had a sly, Jagger-style singer they'd be a menace. But they aren't a menace, my wife and my sister assure me; the kids get off on the burlesque. Does this mean that when the cartoon hero in the platform shoes bellows an order to grab the rocket in his pocket all the twelve-year-olds are aware that this is a caricature of sex, and macho sex at that? Really, I'd like to know. But I'm not getting down on my knees to find out. B-
Henry Cox
>Dressed to Kill [Casablanca, 1975]
>I feel schizy about this record. It rocks with a brutal, uncompromising force that's very impressive--sort of a slicked-down, tightened-up, heavied-out MC5--and the songwriting is much improved from albums one and two. But the lyrics recall the liberal fantasy of rock concert as Nuremberg rally, equating sex with victimization in a display of male supremacism that glints with humor only at its cruelest--song titles like "Room Service" and "Ladies in Waiting." In this context, the band's refusal to bare the faces that lie beneath the clown makeup becomes ominous, which may be just what they intend, though for the worst of reasons. You know damn well that if they didn't have both eyes on maximum commerciality they'd call themselves Blow Job. B
It's all intended in a jokey manner, you faggot. Does this dude have any sense of nuance at all?
Blake Bennett
>these guys are a scary rapist menace
>wait now they're not a threat, they're a carnival act
Brody Walker
What amazes me the most is you can never tell what the rating is gonna be, because he talks the same way about everything. He could be like "THESE GUYS ARE FUCKING ASSHOLES AND THEY STINK......A +"
Leo Wood
Reminder that he blacklisted Steve Albini from Consumer Guide because he named one of his bands Rapeman.
Lincoln Ward
Freedom [Reprise, 1989]
For years it seemed pointless to wait until he'd found his bearings--his bearings in relation to what exactly? Maybe he still had great albums in him, but the music world had passed him by and the eccentricity that was his saving grace was no longer an effective weapon against the mechanization of pop, something that had to be ignored altogether or taken to the mat. So apropros of nothing, he comes up with a classic Neil Young album, deploying both the folk ditties and rock gallumph that made him famous, as well as the horn charts and Nashvilleisms that made him infamous. Aside from sad male chauvinist love songs, there's a bunch of good stuff on here, including a song about a subject no rocker white or black has done much with to my knowledge--crack (although maybe having a Yalie in the White House as opposed to a cowboy helped). Does it mean he's found his bearings? Maybe not. Would I still put it past him? Definitely not. A-
Carter Lee
>Aside from sad male chauvinist love songs
He just had to get that in there, didn't he?
Caleb Bell
you sound as gay as cuckgau
Jonathan Bailey
>ppl too dumb to work a well paying job.
would wager metal fans have a higher average income and IQ than trap fans, and also that you and Christgau would both find this argument “racist”
Austin Sullivan
>In a recent profile for Spin, Durst lists the follow albums he considers perfect--Nevermind, Ten, Anaemia, Nothing's Shocking. Perfect. Nirvana for cred, Pearl Jam for reach, Tool for stupidity posing as underground, Jane's Addiction for transgression disguised as ambition. All that's missing are Smashing Pumpkins for ambition bordering on egomania and hip-hop, which whatever its roots in Durst's grayboy humanism and blackface sexism, turns out in this case to mainly be about marketing position.
Jayden Murphy
Robert Christgau [New York, 1942]
Moronic. D
Jackson Diaz
Metalheads are mostly blue collar white and Hispanic bros who work as car mechanics and shit. A lot less autistic and douchey than punk or alternative fans.
Parker Russell
>says he was born too early to be rewired by progressive radio
>dismisses Metallica's politics because he thinks they're male chauvinists
How is he such a fucking retard? He's exactly the same kind of person as the self-hating woke liberals of 2019.
Juan Bailey
The River [Columbia, 1980]
All the standard objections apply. His beat is still clunky, his singing overwrought, his sense of significance shot through with Mazola Oil. He's too white and too male, though he's decent enough to wish he weren't; too unanalytic and fatalistic, though his eye is sharp as can be. Yet by continuing to root his writing in the small victories and large compromises of ordinary joes and janies whose need to understand as well as celebrate is as restless as his own, he's grown into a bitter empathy. These are the wages of young romantic love among those who get paid by the hour, and even if he's only giving forth with so many short fast ones because the circles of frustration and escape seem tighter now, the condensed songcraft makes this double album a model of condensation--upbeat enough for a revery there, he elaborates a myth about the fate of the guys he grew up with that hits a lot of people where they live. A-
Grayson Mitchell
He is the ideological father of P4k.
>smug
>hipster
>glasses
>self-hating white male
>hates any music that is made by and/or popular with working class white men
>inflated album grades if the artist is black or female