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Bathory, “Song To Hall Up High”

Black metal pioneer Bathory (which was pretty much just Quorthon) pivoted away from the pure black metal of their earlier albums towards Viking metal, more or less establishing that genre too. Hammerheart is one of the key albums of that genre, and if you wanted more bombast in your black metal, Bathory can help you out.

Nine Inch Nails, “Gave Up”

After Pretty Hate Machine, there wasn’t any new music from NiN for several years, due to label disputes. When the dry spell lifted, it brought a six-song EP (not counting the two bonus tracks that weren’t really connected) of fury. Broken sounded to my ears like a totally new direction for the band, which was actually OK with me, as I had really moved away from industrial dance. It really was a preview of what The Downward Spiral was, and is just an excellent set of tunes.

Helmet, “Better”

Helmet’s debut album on Amphetamine Reptile Records was a savage and self-assured record, and they backed it up by touring heavily and blowing people away. Then, Nirvana blew up huge and the major labels started looking for heavy rock acts to sign to satisfy a market suddenly hungry for them. Every single one of them landed on Helmet, and a ferocious bidding war erupted. Interscope were the winners, signing Helmet to a million dollar deal and sending them into the studio. As a teaser, they released a CD single with three of the songs from the upcoming album (including this one) along with one live track, and I got to see what Helmet would sound like with serious dollars behind them. The answer? Helmet!

Son Volt, “Back Into Your World”

Can I talk about some of the strange artifacts that my music collection has accumulated over the years? Oh, that’s right, you can’t stop me! The process of ripping CDs (often with dodgy info databases), matching via iTunes and Amazon Music, storing and then re-downloading from Amazon Music, moving from computer to computer, and a bunch of other things have caused mutations in a lot of this stuff. It’s mostly harmless, but every now and again a tic is interesting or odd. This album has one of those mutations: the album name is recorded as Straightaways (Warner Bros) for some reason, suggesting that someone once input it that way into a database and these tracks picked it up. And you may think, well, did they release this album on multiple labels? Nope, every version in Discogs is from Warner Bros. Somebody apparently just annotated all their album names with labels for some goblin reason, and it got swept up into some aggregated database, and now it’s here perplexing me.

Built to Spill, “Conventional Wisdom”

Probably the best song on You In Reverse, it’s also one of the longest. But Built to Spill were often at their best when they take the time to really elaborate on a melody and play around with it. The first half of this song sounds like a good Dinosaur Jr. track, and then it mutates into a very Built to Spill thing during the second half, and both halves are very enjoyable.

BADBADNOTGOOD & Ghostface Killah, “Stark’s Reality”

This tune is very like David Axelrod, especially in the engineering of the recording and the strings. I would have loved to hear Ghostface actually rhyme on top of it.

Oranssi Pazuzu, “Uraanisula”

Looks like the first time we’ve had Oranssi Pazuzu around here - they’re a Finnish black metal band that plays around a lot more with psychedelic stuff than a lot of other bands. They can sometimes feel pretty spacey as a consequence, which can be fun, or maybe a little proggy. I guess you can just listen to this! There are many variations of people howling over guitars out there, folks.

Mighty Mighty Bosstones, “Hell of a Hat”

Let’s Face It is the album that broke through for the Bosstones, but I think their previous record (Question the Answers) is easily their best. The songwriting is both sharper and rougher, which suits them well. Take this song, for instance. The “sharpest motherfucker” stuff leading into the chorus is great, they aren’t afraid of some huge guitars during the chorus, they have a noisy breakdown to conclude things, and this song that could have just been a smirk is actually much more interesting than it initially seemed.

The Maytals, “Daddy”

The first Maytals album, 1965’s The Sensational Maytals, was later re-issued with a bunch of extras and alternate takes as Sensational Ska Explosion. The extra junk is unnecessary, but the album is a great view into the early career of one of ska and reggae’s great acts. As this was very early in the development of the style, there is a fair bit of R&B on the album, such as this track.

Ministry, “Just One Fix”

Psalm 69 represents the last time Ministry was fun and not just a repetitive mess. “Jesus Built My Hotrod” is the highlight, but the album is chock full of similarly punishing industrial metal. I think the way to approach Ministry is to probably start with this album and then work your way backwards until it stops appealing, and just pretend that this is their last album.

Earth Wind & Fire, “Help Somebody”

There are several bands that I really only knew from later radio hits that were on when I was a kid. So, to me, they were just these bands that had some corny hits that I didn’t think much about. Kool & the Gang are absolutely in that cateogry, and Earth Wind & Fire is another. This is both an unfair evaluation of the hits that they had on the radio, but also fails to account for the long careers of these bands. Take EWF’s first album! It’s a fantastic blend of funk, R&B, jazz, and rock, and is incredibly impressive for a debut.

Hey, a quick note here before we get to the main act - we went all of November with a post every single day! NOT BAD

Nickel Creek, “Somebody More Like You”

One of my favorite Nickel Creek songs, with the acid lyrics really carrying things, and of course the lovely harmonies are as fun as always. One of the things that I really like about Nickel Creek is how percussive the playing is, so you don’t even really notice that there’s no drums.