When Ministry's Al Jourgensen brought some early demos to Wax Trax! co-founder Jim Nash, Nash allegedly told him "No one's going buy this. It'll take one thousand homo DJs to play this for one person to buy it."
By1990, Ministry was riding on two of the best albums of the '80s (The Land of Rape and Honey and The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste) and laughing all the way back to the Wax Trax! execs, who were happy just to release Jourgensen's outtakes. The result was Supernaut, a four-song EP under the the nom de plume 1000 Homo DJs.
Three of the songs sound like a major talent's outtakes, with even the eight-minute loop of Jello Biafra singing "Hey Asshole" showcasing Jourgensen's deft production. But I'm writing about Supernaut today in honor of its title track, a cover of the underrated Sabbath tune. Other than arguably Faith No More's version of "War Pigs," no tribute to metal's most-covered band has ever come so close to topping the original.
As we've learned through Sabbath's lineup changes, every member of the original band was integral. But even with one of rock music's most iconic frontmen and heaviest rhythm sections, Sabbath was all about the riffs. The onomatopoeia "Supernaut" shifts and shakes until it sounds like it's going to break free from your listening device, especially when emphasized by Jourgensen's tone. The vocalist, uncredited on the album, is one Trent Reznor. For industrial fanatics, it's like hearing John Lennon sing with Keith Richards.
One of the only "supergroups" that ever lived up to that adjective was Fantômas, the avant-metal quartet starring Faith No More and Mr. Bungle's Mike Patton, the Melvins' King Buzzo, Slayer's Dave Lombardo and Mr. Bungle/Secret Chiefs 3's Trevor Dunn.
On 2001's The Director's Cut, they drastically reworked movie scores from a lineup that reads like a Kim's Video Employee Picks section. Some of the most acclaimed movie composers in history get turned into experimetal (sic) freakouts--would you like some grindcore with your "Godfather?" How about Mike Patton's creepiest, child-like singing for "Rosemary's Baby" or "The Night of the Hunter?" Stream it here and see how many of the scores you can recognize--it's about as hard as finding old blues songs in Led Zeppelin II.
How does one make a political metal mix for someone who already has "War Pigs," "Peace Sells," "Cult of Personality" and "Bring the Noise?"
Dissidents
Metallica, "Blackened"
System of a Down, "B.Y.O.B."
Faith No More, "We Care a Lot"
Living Colour, "Pride"
Guns N' Roses, "Civil War"
Suicidal Tendencies, "Send Me Your Money"
Marilyn Manson, "The Love Song"
Saul Williams, "List of Demands (Reparations)"
Lamb of God, "As the Palaces Burn"
Revocation, "Pestilence Reigns"
Megadeth, "Symphony of Destruction"
Ministry, "Thieves"
Gojira, "Vacuity"
Motörhead, "God Save the Queen"
Sepultura, "Kaiowas"
Rage Against the Machine, "Wake Up"
Body Count, "Cop Killer"
Misery Index, "Traitors"
Answer: It's hard, but not for lack of songs. How to pick just one selection from Rage Against the Machine or System of a Down? Is Tool's "Ænima" political enough? Is Saul Williams' "List of Demands (Reparations)" metal enough? There are already enough political metal mixes, with names like Psalm 69 and As the Palaces Burn. How can anything compete with those?
I ended up pulling up a little from everything. This is for someone who probably agrees with Cattle Decapitation philosophically if not melodically, so I'm throwing down the biggest metal trump cards. I picked "Blackened" over the other ...And Justice for All contenders by virtue of the fact that it rocks the hardest, and "Symphony of Destruction" for not having a verse about the Punisher, plus being still sadly relevant in an era of Morsis and Putins. Sepultura's "Kaiowas" landed here for proving that a metal band didn't need amps, or even lyrics, to send a message about forced evictions of natives in Brazil. I also dug up "We Care a Lot" from Faith No More's pre-Mike Patton days, a gleefully incisive takedown of the Live Aid and "We Are the World" celebrities which I'd still pit against anything Bono and Bob Geldof are doing today. I'll add that "We Care a Lot" predated The Book of Mormon ("I am Africa") and Get Him to the Greek ("African Child (Trapped in Me)") by at least 20 years.
More recently, the Political Metal flag has been raised by French progressive environmetalists (sic) Gojira and relentlessly confrontational deathgrinders Misery Index, the latter of whom earn the Thomas Paine and John Brown references on "Traitors" by being one of the only metal bands to put as much care into their lyrics as their music. But my favorite is Revocation, whom match their politically-charged lyrics (they recently debuted a song called "Fracked") with the most sophisticated metal that these ears have found over the past few years. "Pestilence Reigns," a chilling depiction of air raids, solves all of my problems with neo-thrash and technical death metal, giving the former a death metal makeover and the later a sense of songwriting direction.
Finally, I couldn't put together a political metal mix without including the most controversial metal single of all time. If you haven't heard it, that's because it's been banned from CD release since 1992.
20 years ago this morning, GG Allin was found face down in a New York City apartment. His cult has expanded significantly since then--it'd be unthinkable to hear his name on VH1 or see his likeness on a bobblehead during his lifetime. He'll probably make more money as a 7" toy than he ever did as the most antagonistic frontman to ever pick up a microphone.
It's almost unfathomable that he could have lived another 20 years, or that America could have put up with him for that much longer. But it's fun to wonder about. He still wouldn't on the radio, but he'd probably pop up in Pitchfork, The A.V. Club and Vice frequently. People would forward his life escapades and onstage antics (was there much of a difference?) to each other with "NSFW" in the subject line. Maybe he'd even use his Todd Phillips connection to score a walk-on in a Hangover movie.
Maybe he's on his way to an Information Age revival, but for now he's still an underrated songwriter. From his early pop-punk records (Always Was, Is and Always Shall Be) to his misanthropic hardcore era (Hated in the Nation) to his nihilistic noise rock (Freaks, Faggots, Drunks and Junkies) to one of the first and best alt-country records (Carnival of Excess), Allin was both fiercer and more versatile than anyone in American Hardcore or on any Vans Warped Tour. Remember him today with Hated, the awesome documentary on his life filmed by then-NYU junior Phillips.
I wouldn't have guessed that Kris Kross's music had much to do with the Deftones, who were all in their teens and 20s when "Jump" broke, and were presumably already into Faith No More. Yet here they are, blowing minds again in St. Louis with a tribute to the late Chris Kelly during "Engine No. 9." Turns out that "Jump" packs a wallop under an alterna-metal arrangement. You wouldn't be able to say the same thing about Naughty by Nature or Arrested Development.
What are the best Iron Maiden and Metallica songs about famous
literature? How does Axl Rose make a small group of people cry in his
presence? What happens when you play Faith No More's "Epic" on a tavern
jukebox? Turn the e-pages and find out.
Great songs can happen to mediocre bands. We hear it all the time in music, less so often in metal, where "hits" are scarce and most metal bands with one actual high-charting single (Faith No More, Living Colour, Queensrÿche) support their place in history with a few great albums. But near the top of the mediocre band/great song heaps sits Rose Tattoo, barely remembered today as the Australian metal band that isn't AC/DC.
Most of Rose Tattoo's songs are routine hard rock fare without the leery charm of Bon Scott and the Young brothers. However, on "Nice Boys," they hit it out of the park, with the band's usual slide guitar riffs and badder-than-thou lyrics coming together for one solid jukebox anthem.
Rose Tattoo's version isn't all too different from Guns N' Roses' more famous cover on G N' R Lies. But why is it inferior?
To these ears, Rose Tattoo are trying too hard. The guitar playing feels labored next to Slash's, the vocals sound strained vs. Axl's feral interpretation. Both versions are great, and both bands have chemistry, but only one of them is iconic.
Chuck Klosterman, the literary world's most vocal GNR fan, might agree. "Because rock is so tied to the abstract concept of 'cool,' it seems distasteful when anyone tries too much," he once wrote in Spin. "Bands that are unpolished and lazy (the Replacements, Pavement, Motörhead) are always more likeable than groups that do 'whatever it takes' to achieve a modicum of success (Bon Jovi, Jimmy Eat World, Flickerstick)."
Now that we know that Axl can spend decades working on a song, it's clear that Guns N' Roses are neither unpolished nor lazy. But on "Nice Boys," they played the part with the finesse of a Scorsese cast.
Frank from Metal Injection once told me that he thought Testament deserved to be in Metal's Big Four and not Anthrax. This seemed like it was worth fighting over, so I informed him that he was wrong. I stand by my case, but he did make one point that I could not counter, which is that Anthrax's best songs are all covers.
Recorded metal covers don't usually do much for the original or the interpreter. Watching the Dillinger Escape Plan roar into Nine Inch Nails' "Wish" in person is a favorite memory for anyone who's been so lucky, but no one who owns Broken needs another version. It takes some extra character to successfully reimagine a song with a tape rolling, and for that we salute these five.
1. Anthrax
Anthrax have no shortage of great originals, but it was their charisma--Scott Ian's tones, Charlie Benante's blast beats, the entire band's penchant for comedy, comic books and Stephen King--that edged them past Testament, Exodus and Overkill. They elevated Public Enemy with "Bring the Noise," spanked Trust with "Antisocial" and topped themselves with this d-beat breakdown of of Joe Jackson's "Got the Time." Flea once observed that this song "made my kidneys flip upside down."
2. Faith No More
FNM won metal hearts in 1989 with a take on "War Pigs" that remains the best cover of the most-covered metal band in history, then proceeded to weird out listeners with faithful, unironic takes on the Commodores' "Easy" and John Barry's Midnight Cowboy theme. Check out their video for the Bee Gees' "I Started a Joke" and keep waiting for the punchline. There isn't one.
3. Guns N' Roses
They did "Live and Let Die" better than Paul McCartney, "Mama Kin" better than Aerosmith and "Since I Don't Have You" about as well as the Skyliners. Other than the obvious choice of Hendrix's "All Along the Watchtower," I have never heard a better Dylan cover than GNR's "Knockin' on Heaven's Door." It reminds me of Nick Hornby's take on pre-sellout Rod Stewart in 31 Songs*.
4. Metallica
It takes more than original songwriting to become the greatest metal band of all time. The $5.98 E.P: Garage Days Re-Revisited did more for underground metal than any fanzine ever did, and its '90s sequel is Metallica's most underrated release. Who knew what a great song "Breadfan" by Budgie was until James Hetfield's downstrokes invigorated it? When Hetfield retires, his right hand should be enshrined in a museum, next to Axl's larynx and Ozzy's liver.
5. Rage Against the Machine
On their last studio album, Renegades, RATM ran Dylan, Springsteen, Eric B. & Rakim, the Stones, Minor Threat, EPMD, Devo and more through Tom Morello's effects pedal wizardry and Zack de la Rocha fiery delivery. It all sounds like Rage; in short, it's fantastic. Any other metal band would be laughed at for taking on Afrika Bambaataa's "Renegades of Funk," but with Rage at the helm it's as potent as "Bulls on Parade."
*On Stewart's version of "Mama You've Been on My Mind." "Stewart's evident love for the song rescues it, or at least spotlights it: where Dylan almost throws it away, with the implication that there's plenty more where that one came from, Stewart's reverence seems to dignify it, invest it with an epical quality that Dylan denies it. I probably like both version equally now, but if it hadn't been for Stewart, I never would have been able to spot that there was anything there."
Usually my take on band reunions is that you get one comeback tour before you need to start releasing new music. I'm happy with one extensive reunion tour (At the Gates, Faith No More), fine with bands releasing new music, no matter how bad (Stooges, New York Dolls) and disappointed when artists wade in year after year of nostalgia with no new product (Pixies, My Bloody Valentine). However, since the Refused's Williamsburg show was rained out and I couldn't get into their make up club show, I'd be OK with them stopping by New York again very soon.
Punk rock was on life support in 1998 when the Refused released The Shape of Punk to Come. There has never been a more aptly-titled record, both in defiantly sticking up for a dying genre and aligning their adventuresome tendencies with Ornette Coleman's. Five Swedish hardcore kids showed up to the Vans Warped Tour era with an actual punk record, one made good with the Sex Pistols' ideas not as much in sound or style as in innovation. 14 years later, it still sounds like The Shape of Punk to Come, a direction that punk music will take, but not for a long time.
"New Noise" may be the only song here that could have appeared on a Punk-O-Rama comp, but even at their tightest, the Refused sound unhinged. Blasts of proto-mathcore get thrown in with some Dischord-worthy melodies. If there were a verse-chorus-verse structure, it'd be compared to the Pixies, but instead it stands as one of the first glimpses of punk as something that jazzheads would play. Converge and the Dillinger Escape Plan would go on to fuse some of these ideas with metal, a genre already known for its musicianship, but with the Refused it's still strictly punk. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
"There's nothing fucking 'mere' about drawing." --Albert Dorne
David Foster Wallace once took a shot at defining the word "Lynchian" as "a particular kind of irony where the very macabre and the very mundane combine in such a way as to reveal the former's perpetual containment within the latter." To me, that's Faith No More and "Midlife Crisis."
The song is from the record Angel Dust, named for the dehumanizing drug with a pretty name. The album cover, a lovely image of egret, opens up to display a cow hanging from a meat hook. Watch for the white horses in the video above, then stick around to see what they're doing.
See if you can also catch snippets of Simon & Garfunkel in the intro and the Beastie Boys in the bridge. Other than a New York base, the two don't have much in common, but they're snug together inside Faith No More's original score.
As with all FNM songs, I can't figure out what this one is about. They've always been more concerned with the sounds of the words in the melody than the meaning behind the lyrics, so don't try to make head or tail of couplets like "You're perfect, yes, it's true, But without me you're only you/Your menstruating heart, It ain't bleedin' enough for two." Just hear how they roll off Mike Patton's tongue, with the range of a choirboy and the lungs of a demon.
One of my favorite moments in any song I've heard comes right after the pause at 2:38. With brilliant aptitude, the band layers the vocal melodies from the verses and chorus on top of each other in perfect synchronization. When writers gab about how musicians see the world differently from the rest of us, this is what they should be talking about.
Two summers ago, I caught Faith No More's U.S. reunion tour and fell into ecstasy. I screamed along to every word while gearing up for my favorite moment of "Midlife Crisis." After two-and-a-half blissful minutes, the band drew out the pause almost longer than I could stand. They returned with "Sir Duke" by Stevie Wonder instead.
Years ago, Richard and I caught a movie in Times Square. As was our tradition, we celebrated the event by visiting Dave's Tavern, the area's last surviving dive bar, and enjoying the free peanuts, pool table and company of the heavily-tattood bartender, Reina. We punched some of our favorite songs into the jukebox.
As each one of our tunes came on, a patron in the back, near the pool table, shouted his approval. "White Zombie, that's what up!" "Beastie Boys, you guys rule!" Each time, we acknowledged his kind words and went back to our Yuenglings. That was until the unmistakable first chords of Faith No More's "Epic" blared through the PA. Our fan lost his mind.
"FAITH NO MORE!" he screamed. "FAITH NO MORE! Yes! Yes! Youuuu wannnt it alllll..."
Flailing his arms, pulling all stops on his air instruments and struggling to hold on to his beer, our new companion looked like too much fun to ignore. Richard and I sang along with the chorus and flashed horns at him while he went completely nuts to Jim Martin's mind-bending solo, each one of Mike Patton's voices and of course, the greatest question of them all, "What is it?"
As the instruments cut out, leaving Roddy Bottum's piano outro to clean up the mess, our friend lost a few steps and dropped his pint, which shattered on the floor amongst the peanut shells. He looked back up at Richard and I. "That's all there is to life," he said in an amazed tone. "You just die."
