On my travels thru the twisted world o’ the internet i managed to stumble ’pon a rabbit hole surrounding some nazi Vtuber ( not surprising ) who calls herself the “Alex Jones of Vtubing”, whate’er that is ( ¿does that mean she’ll end up getting sued to bankruptcy & losing her anime fox girl to the company that owns The Onion, toounfortunately some other bidder, ’cause the judge hates funny trolls? ), & seems to exist as goon material for sad fascists & some Vice article that used to exist on her, but was taken down after she threatened a lawsuit, ’cause Vice came to their senses & realized they were wasting their time writing articles on fucking Vtubers when they could be writing ’bout much mo’ important topics, like… ¿sexy clowns? You know what, ne’er mind.
Anyway, unlike Vice, I’m not interested in or surprised by this edgelord’s racism, transphobia ( which, given her hiding ’hind a fake anime girl, very well may be self-hating projection ’bout her own fetishes from someone a transphobe would insist is a “man” ) or the laughably pathetic keyboard katana-swinging regarding killing communists from someone who, again, cowardly hides ’hind a fake anime girl & would probably be too timid to look a real communist in the eyes outside the bedroom she spends all her time in, much less stab 1; all I care ’bout is the hilarious photo by an apparent fan o’ hers:
Surrounding & ’bove a bunch o’ Nazi literature, including a beautifully hardcovered copy o’ In His Own Words: The Essential Speeches of Adolf Hitler ( tho also, only I noticed, a 1 weird copy o’ The Philosophy of Marx — tho after closer inspection I found it wasn’t the popular 1 by Étienne Balibar, but some goofy woo-filled critique arguing that Hegelian dialectics “was not a mystical, external force, but rather an organic element of life”, whate’er that means, by a guy literally named “Giovanni Gentile” with the words “NO NO NO NO…” repeated all o’er the cover, which sure shows intellectual seriousness — which just goes to show that e’en now the Nationalist Socialists can’t thrive without parasitically stealing from socialists, since they can’t create anything original themselves ) are 2 gooner anime dolls, 1 showing off her pretty pink panty shot, while in the bottom left are Yu-Gi-Oh manga & in the upper left are good ol’ Breaking Benjamin vinyl. Bitch, e’en I don’t have vinyl for Breaking Benjamin: I love this band, but good luck getting anything more out o’ its o’erproduced sound that you couldn’t get thru digital formats. Also, it’s their shitty new albums. That just means you like wasting money.
on the night o’ may 10 & the morn o’ may 11, 2025, I had several interesting dreams:
most o’ them tied round an imaginary surreal dark comedy cartoon mostly revolving round a young child heavily inspired by nasrin, including wearing sweatpants, but far braver & with a childlike lack o’ any sense o’ morality beyond their own desires, exploring seemingly infinitely sprawling surreal architecture probably inspired by anthology of the killer. i think this series was called “dollhouse” or something, but it’s fuzzy. they are part o’ a family o’ 20 kids — 10 boys, 9 girls, & the aforementioned young child, the youngest o’ the family, who also like nasrin rejects being gendered, but unlike nasrin, also claims to have infinite dna & infinite chromosomes that no existing computer has the memory to process for some reason, whate’er relevance that has — who mostly do their own things: the father is always out “working” or @ home sleeping, & the mother spends all her time trying to clean the e’erexpanding home or passed out after spiking on some drug with a name that sounds like “animephidesinal”, which she gets by essentially prostituting herself to dealers ( dreams, i think you’re trying too hard to be tritely edgy here; ¿why can’t she just find the animephidesinal in the e’erexpanding home? ), she takes to try keeping herself up to clean the house. the kids mostly take care o’ themselves, entertaining themselves & feeding themselves on what they find in the e’erexpanding home. save for the youngest child, my dreams didn’t focus on them much. for the parents, there were the following exchanges:
[ both sitting in bed together, staring straight into the void, not looking @ each other ]
mother: husband, I truly do not feel comfortable with you going out “working” all the time. we do not need the money: the e’erexpanding universe provides us with infinite resources. i wish you would spend mo’ time @ home not sleeping helping me clean this e’erexpanding home.
father: i understand your concerns, but i am afraid my need to go out & work is a boundary o’ mine that i cannot just drop. with full honesty, i do not understand why you feel the need to clean our infinitely-sized home, when this is a clearly impossible endeavor &, to be fully honest, i am not comfortable with your reliance on pharmaceutical drugs in order to facilitate you in your task, tho i understand why you feel the need to do so.
mother: ok, i understand, & i hear your concerns. but nobody can say that we do not communicate with each other.
i don’t remember the context o’ this exchange ’tween the father & the youngest child. i think ’twas seeing the child reading or maybe after learning o’ the child’s explorations thru the e’erexpanding universe:
father: child, do not think that you must strive to be a rich inventor or sexy celebrity. it is perfectly ok for you to have an ordinary job & an ordinary life.
the dreams mainly focused on the youngest child, who unlike their lazy siblings who mostly sat around in the center o’ their e’erexpanding home watching tv or playing with toys, would oft venture out into the outer realms o’ their e’erexpanding universe. i remember there being 3 episodes:
1. the pilot, which, weirdly, had multiple variations, & was quite different from the rest, including the lack o’ siblings, them living in a normal home, not an e’erexpanding 1, & them not being trans yet. it’s a snowy day & the youngest child walks down a suburban sidewalk to some neighbor’s house to complete some challenge. i think the neighbor somehow realized the youngest child’s precocious brilliance & invited them o’er. the neighbor has a creepy aura to which the youngest child is oblivious. ( indeed, there is an unnerving pattern o’ adult men creeping on the youngest child, including while they’re exploring the city in the 3rd episode, tho thankfully nothing e’er happens to them & the youngest child themself is ne’er sexualized in any way ). the youngest child is challenged to race thru the neighbor’s house full o’ bizarre architecture trying to collect all 70 orbs on the way. @ the end they reach an open town square & when coming up to a large temple, a lion statue comes to life, jumps in front o’ the youngest child, & offers them a ride. they take it & race thru the inside o’ the temple, ending with them dismounting & meeting back up with the neighbor, as well as their parents, the former o’ whom lets them know they won. there are mo’ variations, — including 1 where the youngest child goes inside a different temple without the lion statue or riding the lion — seemingly attempting to beat earlier records, but failing, presumably ’cause they’re rushing too much & missing orbs & having to suddenly turn back to get them.
2. probably the most characteristic o’ the series, & the longest. the youngest child explores the outer realms o’ their home, with bizarre architecture going in seemingly e’ery direction. the youngest child begins fearing for their own life & is immediately met with absurdly coincidental circumstances that seem aimed @ harming them, including 1 man suddenly rushing in & spraying a pump into the air while crying out, “¡it’s poison spray time!”, causing e’eryone to drop to the floor, tho with bored expressions that indicate a lack o’ concern with their impending demises. the youngest child, howe’er, manages to crawl away under desk, guarded from the poison. the youngest child then vies to find an isolated corner by themself, away from anyone who could harm them. howe’er, when they think they find 1, a seemingly innocuous hippo balloon tries to follow. wanting to be alone, the youngest child keeps shoving the hippo balloon back, only for it to morph into a stocky gremlin, who, annoyed @ the youngest child’s rejection, tries to attack the youngest child. howe’er the youngest child manages to escape.
3. the parents go out & the youngest child uses this opportunity to sneak out into the big city, only to be frustrated as they try to explore. for whate’er reason, their movements are sluggish, especially while trying to cross the street, & the traffic lights are erratic, changing from green to yellow to red to yellow to green to red without any warning. luckily for them, the cars seemed to have become sluggish, too, & they are able to make it to the other side before the cars race thru. the youngest child discovers that there is a game going on — a kind o’ easter egg hunt, but for teddy bears, strewn thruout the buildings. howe’er, as they try to climb buildings, they are frustrated. all they want to do is go from rooftop to rooftop. then they remember they know a way to mix together chemicals to give themself the power to make great leaps &, after doing so & drinking the vial o’ green liquid, they begin leaping from roof to roof, snatching up as many teddy bears as they can. howe’er, they start to see rooftops without any teddy bears. soon after, they run into a man on a jetpack, who, seeing the youngest child collecting teddy bears, also, tries to attack them, grabbing their bag in mid jump & flinging them @ another building’s wall in the hopes o’ killing them. before their new foe looks down to see if he achieved his goal, the youngest child clings tightly to the wall & scrambles round to the other side before he can see them on the wall. while behind the foe, they jump up & knock him from behind, causing him to crash down to the pavement to his demise. they then climb down & take their teddy bears & take them to the content attendant, who is surprised by just how many teddy bears they were able to get, & they are declared the winner.
analysis:
while people like to focus on the surreal aspects o’ dreams, what most fascinates me are the logical parts — not in terms o’ trite freudian implications o’ the dreamer’s emotional or psychological state, as the only psychological state most o’ my dreams imply are those o’ a storyteller wanting to tell an interesting story, but the seemingly conscious thematic aspects that my subconscious manages to compose.
there is a clear theme o’ domestic satire to this series’ family, with the parody pharmaceutical drug name or the absurdly cliché way the parents act in their traditional gendered roles, despite neither being useful in the postscarcity world in which they seem to live, where the father’s “work” offers nothing for the family — &, in fact, seems to be implied to not be real work, but just a ’scuse to escape his family, or perhaps escape the ignominy o’ being a stay-@-home father. indeed, it seems that the parents’ fixation on following traditional parental roles, ironically, causes them to neglect what emotional roles they may still offer their children, with whom they seem to ne’er interact. it’s hard not to conclude that the children would thrive just as well without their parents now, which makes me wonder if their absurd clinging to their traditional gendered parental roles is a desperate way to force themselves to fit a role & justify an existence that seems redundant in this scary postscarcity anarchy o’ infinite expansion & change.
contrast that with the youngest child, the main character, who doesn’t seem to find this new anarchist universe scary, but exciting, embracing it in a nietzchean way, exploring this infinity for the pleasure o’ fulfilling their just-as-infinite curiosity & will to power for success by taking advantage o’ their precocious brilliance greater than e’en most o’ the adults in this radical world o’erturning social hierarchies. contrast that with their complacent siblings, so incurious & dull-minded that they stay in their same normal center o’ the home, mostly sticking to their traditional form o’ entertainment in the form o’ tv. unlike their parents, they do not seem to be clinging to tv out o’ any conscious yearning for getting back tradition, but out o’ thoughtless default: they’d been getting satisfaction from tv for as long as they’ve remembered; ¿why stop now? ¿what do they need outside their small, safe center? if the youngest child is the nietzchean übermench, their siblings are the poster children for nietzche’s “last men”.
&, ’course, the youngest child goes to the other extreme o’ their parents’ insistence on keeping to traditional gender roles, rejecting gender completely with the boast that they are too infinite to be any gender — as nasrin would say, paraphrasing nietzche emself, being “above male & female”. i love the brilliance o’ my dreams starting by splitting the children into an even 10-10 male-female, like an e’en mo’ exaggerated version o’ the brady bunch, but then going back & breaking that evenness by making the youngest child be nonbinary. the rebellious youngest child clearly refused to submit to their father’s appeal for them to get an ordinary job & live an ordinary life, e’en if it their supernova expansion intruded on their family’s orderly pasture: the rest o’ their family can want order all they want; they insist on chaos. interestingly, i don’t think anywhere in my dream ’twas e’er specified what any o’ their family thought o’ their transition & whether or not they respected their pronouns; they certainly ne’er showed any concern for what any o’ their family members might think o’ it.
despite this labored analysis, hardly any o’ these themes or satire required much thought, which is how my dreams managed to compose such themes — & i don’t e’en know if the breakage o’ the gender balance was intentional or just my dreams forgetting 1 thing & rushing forward into the next idea. indeed, much o’ it is cliché & obvious, sometimes falling into needlessly gruesome trite forms o’ sexist sexual violence gainst those traditionally interpreted as women that my conscious mind would avoid composing. it’s notable that despite how seemingly anarchic this e’erexpanding universe it is, the need for women to give up sex to buy material needs still exists, as do child predators going after who they think are li’l girls. these by themself could be an ironic commentary on the uglier side o’ traditional gender roles that reactionaries prefer to ignore; but mo’ damning is the implications o’ the youngest child needing to give up their gender to liberate themself, to be “infinite” — they themself frame it mo’ as escaping the millstone o’ gender rather than a positive affinity toward nonbinariness itself. ( then again, given the pathetic model their parents provide for masculinity & femininity, having to go out & pretend to work to be a “real” man or drug oneself up to be a “real” mother, it’s not surprising such an impressionable child would see nothing worthwhile in either being a woman or a man ).
&, ’course, some o’ it is just lazy rehashing o’ images imprinted on my mind with questionable relevance: the youngest child being clearly heavily based on my consciously-created character nasrin ( i should note that i don’t e’en remember if the youngest child doesn’t share any other features, like hair color, with nasrin, nor that they use “they” as a pronoun instead o’ “e”: i just didn’t want to make up similarities that didn’t necessarily exist in my dreams ), the infinite expanse being inspired by anthology of the killer architecture, the prominence o’ the city in the 3rd episode probably inspired by my constant travels to seattle, the seemingly arbitrary focus on collecting things to “win” in episodes 1 & 3 being inspired by my fixation on collectathon video games, — they strikingly run on logic that only makes sense in video games, despite ostensibly not being a video game itself — & the focus on a loner exploring strange environs, also a fixation o’ mine.
¿Remember Saliva? They did that song “Click Click Boom” & the album Every Six Seconds, which apparently went platinum. While not as popularly hated as the big nu-metal lolpigs like Limp Dick, Staind Boxer Shorts, or since their recent crashout brought them back to attention, Trapt Being Fascist Edgelords for Scraps o’ Attention, there are quite a few people who’ve memed on them, & my main rival in meming ’bout 2000s rock, Rocked’s “Regretting the Past”, covered the aforementioned Every Six Seconds.
I, howe’er, will not be covering that album, but what is apparently their least-selling album, Cinco Diablo, which, as this post’s title says, is just Spanish gibberish that translates to “5 Devil” & which no Spanish-speaking person says — which is why Google searches for that term just show this album or some sandwich — ’cause it sounds dumb as hell. Yes, that’s right: we’re digging e’en deeper than Rocked & going after the bottom o’ the bottom o’ the barrel.
¿Why did I pick this album? Where, I’ll just reveal how the sausage is made & give you my 3 ( nonbinding ) guidelines I follow when deciding what albums to review:
Ideally, Rocked hasn’t already covered it in “Regretting the Past”
Ideally, it’s not something that e’eryone on the internet talks ’bout
Ideally, it’s something I actually listened to in the 2000s & for which I harbor some nostalgia/embarrassment
While Every Six Seconds only fits 1 o’ those 3 criteria, unfortunately, Cinco Diablo fits all 3. I remember I stumbled ’pon this album @ my local library where I checked out albums instead o’ buying them, ’cause ’twas too broke & cheap & lol on the idea o’ e’en high school me paying money for fucking Saliva, & checked it out ’cause I remember this band as the “Click Click Boom” “Your Disease” — I actually preferred that song as a teen — band. I haven’t thought ’bout this album much since then beyond seeing it sometimes when digging thru my ol’ MP3s.
1. Family Reunion
¿Where do I e’en start? I love how the singer, Josey Scott, sings all tough & badass, but covers up his filthy mouth by saying “motherlovin’”. For all the flack they get for their goofy emo lyrics, Linkin Park were able to avoid swearing on their 1st 2 albums without anyone really noticing, ’cause they didn’t have to resort to words like “motherlovin’”, but for Saliva that would’ve taken actual creativity, so let’s just replace common profanities with substitutes your grandma would say instead for no reason.
Add to that the fact that this song is yet ’nother “let me make a big deal ’bout how I’m singing a song as the topic o’ the song itself”, clearly made to get crowds going in concerts, with Josey telling the audience to “sit back while i wrestle this microphone” — yeah, you show that microphone who’s tough. This song also sounds like the most halfassed attempt @ cultlike emotional manipulation o’ trying to pretend your crowd o’ randos are a “family” having a “reunion” & how them all coming together to watch a C-list nu-metal band sing 1 o’ their least successful singles will “make you feel all right” & make you “forget the world’s confusion”.
But forget the lyrics… That chorus… If you made the wise decision to avoid partaking o’ this song into your ears yourself, imagine a high-pitched squealing voice singing some hoedown-type ditty: “’cause here we come agiiiiiiiin / everybody get all your friiiiiiiiiiends”. People who are used to my reviews will note that I am by no means a full-on hipster: I’ve defended songs by Nickelback. Hell, I kinda like “Click Click Boom” & “Your Disease” in all their goofiness. So it says something when I, who grew up listening to this crap on the radio thruout the 2000s, wonder to myself how they e’er let this on the radio. I don’t e’en have anything to say ’bout the guitars & drums other than that they’re there, I guess.
Grade: F
2. My Own Worst Enemy
Believe it or not, this was a song I willingly listened to — & off the radio, too — back in high school, & possibly e’en burned to a CD from a CD I checked out from the library. In a world where I knew o’ far less music than I know now & now have @ the tip o’ my fingers much better music than the slop I’d happily take from mainstream radio, when I could tolerate any song with heavy drums, chugga-chugga riffing, & a man growling o’er it, I guess I could see myself liking this in the background.
&, you know, e’eryone hates on Josey Scott’s nasally voice, but I don’t think it’s always terrible. I think he does fine when singing the prechorus in this song. I mean, the lyrics are vague trash ’bout how “you” ( which guess is the protagonist, since he’s calling himself his own worse enemy ) made him bleed & killed his dreams. ¿What dreams? ¿What the hell are you talking ’bout?
But his singing gets much worse in the chorus proper, where he enunciates “you’re gonna be dead & gowan” in such a goofy way, &, as if mocking the listener begging for a reprieve from the sound o’ ass — & I think that’s a humble request IMO — the music becomes quieter & you get to hear him much mo’ clearly enunciate that “life goes owan”. As this album promised, this is, indeed, diabolical.
I should add that the rest o’ this song’s lyrics are no better: “i’m outta control”, “i sold my soul”, “i dig this hole”, “abomination”, “hesitation”, “revelation”, “devastation”. People oft say AI generated something when they call something low-effort slop, but I actually think AI would’ve made better lyrics.
Grade: D
3. Best of Me
See, this song isn’t so bad. I kinda like the somewhat menacing way Josey sings the verses, only to burst into thoughtless shouting ’bout how he’s bending & breaking. Howe’er, we get a sharp turn into balladlike crooning just afterward, “out of the best of me / you took everything”, which e’en a mental breakdown couldn’t ’scuse. E’en the music isn’t too bad, especially the way it builds from the weird chants @ the beginning.
Grade: C
4. How Could You?
¿How could you follow that decent song with this lame-ass nu-metal ballad? Ugh, the twinkling plunking guitar strings starting with possibly the most cliché post-grunge phrase e’er, “i’m addicted to [every single thing] you [do]”, only to build into melodramatic bombast during the chorus.
Just read these poetic chorus lines:
¿how could you cheat on me? then turn your back on me you told me all the lies & hypnotized & I believed
Yes, Josey, if she successfully hypnotized you then, by definition, she made you believe — that’s how hypnotizing someone works. Pure lyrical filler.
¿What is with nu-metal & post-grunge bands & being unable to do e’en the bare minimum o’ not just stating outright what kind o’ song you’re writing? This is why people shit their pants @ Deftones making the most basic o’ abstract imagery: ’cause it’s legitimately shocking to see baseline competent lyricism in a genre where it’s OK to just write, “that bitch cucked me with my friend / now this is the end”, which I’m pretty sure is a real Theory of a Dead Man song.
Grade: F
5. Hunt You Down
A bunch o’ generic riffs, a pause, & then, “¡HUUUUUAGGGHHH!”. Brilliant.
But it doesn’t stop there. Next we get Josey in his squeaky voice valley-girl-rapping ’bout how “i am the master of this game / & everybody knows my name” & how “you have thrown the gauntlet down” & how he’s the “one who wears the crown” & how “when you chose to raise your hand / that’s when a boy messed with a man”. This sounds like shit a sword collector on YouTube would write. But then he ends the chorus by growling, “i will always hunt you DOOOOOOWWWWN…”.
This song sounds like ass with its sputtering drums & weird beep in the background during the verses & basic guitar chugging during the choruses… But it does make me laugh, so I’ll save it from a F grade with an emoji grade:
Grade: 👑
6. Judgment Day
OK, this is where e’en my high school self had too high standards to keep listening, so the rest o’ these are mo’ blurry to my memory. I can say that I’m already starting to get a headache from the thick, textureless guitar riffs that fill e’ery 1 o’ these songs, clearly falling into the philosophy that louder is better. I can only assume that if I were to look @ the wavelengths o’ these songs in Audacity they’d just show blue rectangles. The annoying chorus o’ “BANG BANG BANG / another body goes”, both hokey sing-songy & thudding, a terrible combination, doesn’t help.
Arguably, this is a better song than any o’ the previous songs, a’least lyrically, as it’s mo’ than just vague boasts ’bout how tough the singer is or whining ’bout some ex, but is instead the cliché hard rock trope o’ a song ’bout the troubles o’ soldiers in the war & how they just want to go home & raise their families. It’s something, I guess — it’s something weaker than the average song off Disturbed’s Ten Thousand Fists, which I considered 1 o’ their weaker albums, so not much. Then again, the western style matched with the description o’ desert-like weather — presumably referencing the middle east — is kind o’ an interesting mix.
Sonically, this song’s only reprieve is the weird noodly faux-southern guitar solo during the bridge.
Grade: D
7. Forever And a Day
Another shitty love ballad. ¿Why would a band named “Saliva” make so many love ballads?
The music’s what you’d expect, — a blend o’ the worst elements o’ pop moaning & tweening with stock hard rock elements for “flavor” — so I’ll focus on the lyrics, which are the worst on this album so far. You know it’s all downhill when you start with the lyrics, “the complicated ways of love / become all you’re thinking of”. Later we get an e’en better rhyme pair with “compromises” & “eyes and”.
E’en this song’s concept is stupid: “forever and a day” is both inane in itself, being no greater than just “forever”, & yet still a cliché. ¿Couldn’t you come up with something mo’ creative, like “till the day i learn to write good lyrics”? I’d argue that that would hammer in the eternity angle e’en better.
Grade: F
8. I’m Coming Back
This song’s beginning is just storebrand “Down with the Sickness”, with the bland marching drums & the whispered, “¿are you ready?”, but without all the funny stuff afterward. Instead, Josey whines ’bout some vague badness going on now like an ol’ man yelling out clouds, crying, “¿what happened to the world we grew up in? / ¿was it this serious?”. It’s all stock clichés with agonizingly corny rhymes: “road’s too long to follow”, “pain’s too much to swallow”, “seems there’s no tomorrow”. If they needed a 4th rhyming line I would bet money it’d be “feels like my time is borrowed”.
Meanwhile, the verses have the other problem o’ not e’en trying to rhyme, “rhyming” “dangerous” with “serious”, & then “serious” again, which is rhymed with “back to us”.
& then in the bridge they do the generic marching drums & “¿are you ready?” & I’m like, dude, this isn’t a hard song, stop adding this weird bravado shit ’tween whining ’bout how much pain you’re feeling. It’s like if partway thru “Crawling” Chester Bennington suddenly shouted, “¡now i’m slappin’ ya with my big dick!”, ’cept that would actually be funny & probably would’ve made that song better.
Grade: F
9. Southern Girls
¿Do I need to review a song called “Southern Girls”? ¿Do you think a song called “Southern Girls” by Saliva has any chance o’ being good? No, I don’t need to hear Josey in his valley-girl country accent jizz all o’er me with lines ’bout girls with “baby faces” ( CERTIFIED LOVERBOY CERTIFIED PEDOPHILE WOP WOP WOP WOP WOP ) & “orange knee-high hips” — hold it, ¿what the fuck does that mean? 1st, ¿why is the girl orange? 2nd… ¿“knee-high hips”? ¿DO YOU IDIOTS KNOW WHAT HIPS ARE? HIPS ARE BY DEFINITION NOT UP TO YOUR KNEE BUT WAY HIGHER. AUUUUUGGGGGHHHH.
If that kind o’ alien doesn’t turn you on, Josey also talks ’bout wanting a girl who will “milk your cow” & “climb your tree” — you know, as all the bros say when talking ’bout their lays down @ the pub: “Aw, man, she totally milked my cow, dogg”.
I refuse to listen to anymore o’ this song to hear what it sounds like, but it’s ass. You can listen to yourself & dare tell me I missed some great guitar licks somewhere or just accept that a song with the line “they can milk your cow” could have the riffs from “War Pigs” & still not make up for it.
Grade: F
10. So Long
¡Thank god!
¿Why does this song start with weird spacey electronic notes? ¿Who said to themselves they wanted fucking Saliva to do space rock but shitty? Well, good news, it ends soon & is replaced by the same generic soft riffs & crooning on all the other lame ballads — tho they do add some goofy spacey filter that makes his voice sound far away @ the start o’ the 2nd chorus for no reason.
Grade: F
Final Verdict
Tho the Hollywood Undead album was far cringier, I honestly would rather listen to it, given that it had a’least some catchy moments. This album was shockingly bad, e’en by the standards o’ what we normally listen to. I’m not surprised this album was the worst-selling Saliva album: e’en if you liked Saliva’s hits like “Click Click Boom” & “Your Disease”, hardly any o’ the songs on this album e’en match their caliber. ¿Who would listen to Every Six Seconds & think, “this band should do schmaltzy emo ballads & fake country shit”? ¿Who do you think you are, Saliva, Machine Gun Kelly?
S’posedly 2 reviewers called this band Deftones the “Radiohead of metal”. Now, I don’t know anything ’bout music beyond what my early 2000s radio stations let me listen to, so I don’t know what this “Radiohead” is or why it’s been detached from its Radiobody, but we can assume it must be cheesy & lame, given that Deftones is a nu-metal band, & e’eryone knows all nu-metal bands are silly & lame.
So we’re going to look @ their biggest album, White Pony.
1. Back to School (Mini Maggit)
We start with the greatest song Deftones has e’er made. ¡Just look @ that amazing music video!
This song, which shows off Chino Moreno’s amazing rippity rapping skills with these hard bars ’bout the street thug life in high school:
while everyone’s out trying to make the cut (what) & when you think you know me right, i switch it up behind the walls, smokin’ cigarettes and sippin’ vodka i hop a fence to catch a cab, ain’t no one can stop us
Yeah, ¡cracka! ¡We be smokin’ cigs & jumping the fence to catch a cab! Paragraph to yo’ auntie.
Then in the chorus he boasts ’bout how back in school, we are the leaders o’ all. ¡Yeah! ¡Fuck being an adult! I’m going back to school to be a leader! ¡Push back that square!
Unironically, this song is musically excellent, especially thanks to those opening high-pitched noodly strings & those menacing low-tuned guitar riffs that bounce up & down thruout the verses while less low guitar noises break thru.
Grade: S
2. Feiticeira
Sadly, we don’t get any mo’ hippity hop songs & the next song is some droning song with super clear, clacking drums that’s ’bout… ¿a Brazilian woman being kidnapped?
Chino Moreno sings here from the perspective of a person who has been kidnapped. He explained on Deftones World: “It’s named after a Brazilian female, but its lyrically about a kidnapping scenario. It details a few hours of being held captive. There’s a lot of dialogue in there that was fun to write.”
That’s, um, an interesting topic to write ’bout. Glad you had fun writing ’bout it.
Tho it’s not as amazing as their previous magnum opus, this song has some great music itself, including the aforementioned super clear, clacking drums, the revving opening strings, & especially the bellowing low notes during the interlude ’tween the 1st & 2nd verses.
Grade: S
3. Digital Bath
Still doing this weird slow, droning singing instead o’ that amazing rapping from “Back to School” for some reason… O, well, this song’s all right with its beautiful imagery o’… ¿somebody leading a girl into a bathtub & murdering her by electrocution by throwing a toaster in it & then standing her corpse up & dressing it? OK, Deftones, ¿what the fuck? Real talk: ’tween these 2 songs & that album cover leering down @ a woman’s cleavage, this band are starting to sound like those weird edgy incels that women avoid in school. ¡You’re not going to be leaders back in school like that, Deftones! Ironically, the fact that this song is so much better written than the average misogynist nu-metal song — & there are a lot — with its strong imagery & detail contrasted gainst the average nu-metal bands’ generic, abstract word salads makes it sound worse.
& for a song with such imagery, ¿who the fuck decided to make the music video just trite footage o’ them playing on stage, them screwing around in their tour bus, crowds cheering, a few scraps o’ unclear imagery — I think there’s 1 shot o’ a bubbling bathtub — &… ¿a custodian mopping the floor? We really needed that clip. Good o’ Deftones to show some support for the underappreciated blue-collar worker, I guess.
Anyway, despite all those flaws, this is a very nice-sounding song, especially its opening smoky whistle noises, more o’ those super clear drums, & those moody notes. I might e’en go far ’nough to say that the bizarre droning singing that goes from tired to loud moaning works well for a bizarre song ’bout killing a woman with a toaster in a bathtub.
Grade: S
4. Elite
I was going to criticize this song as a forgettable banger where the singer just keeps shouting in his whispry voice — ¿where is that rapping, Chino? You’re wasting your Eminem-like skills, man — with a clunky, repetitive melody in both singing & playing, mixed up only with unimpressive filter effects that make the singer sound like an alien. But then I read the lyrics, which are impossible to hear thru Chino’s singing, & they’re amazing: any song with lyrics that go, “stop parading your angles / ¿confused? you’ll know when you’re ripe”, deserves an S in my book. He’s right: people should stop parading their angles; angles aren’t special — e’eryone’s got ’em, folks.
Grade: S
5. Rx Queen
I was going to joke ’bout how I think Deftones is like Radiohead in that they just pull random lyrics out o’ a hat to sound deep, which is how we get lines like, “we’ll stop to rest on the moon”; but to be fair, other than that & most o’ the lyrics from the previous song, this song’s lyrics actually serve a clever metaphor o’ parasitical insects stinging another, killing it for sustenance, for a toxic relationship involving drugs, which fits well with the wasplike low drone o’ this song & the title o’ this song — presumably referring to his girlfriend. I know this song is still falling into the “dead girl syndrome” trope o’ cheap dark drama, but a’least this is a mo’ relatable problem, not just the singer out o’ nowhere coming up with the idea o’ women being kidnapped in Brazil or electrocuted in a bath tub. Plus, this time the song mostly works in abstract metaphors, & this time to the song’s benefit. So, sure, have ’nother S. ¿Why not?
Grade: S
6. Street Carp
Ah, now here we go; now we’re on familiar territory: a man whining ’bout his bitchy ex-wife.
Actually, being 100% honest, this song kinda blows ass. The way Chino sings, “ohhhh, well, here’s my new aaadrehhhhs / ¡6! ¡6! ¡4! ohhhhhh, I forgehhhhht”, sounds so terrible it actually impresses me. Like, you have to be very creative to come up with something so sonically toxic. Meanwhile, the singing & music are just repetitive, bland versions o’ what’s done better on other songs & the opening, where we have grinding guitars filtered thru what sounds like Game Boy Advance speakers & a sudden, “¡nyaaaaaah!”, is just goofy as hell. “It’s not that I care”, indeed. But this song makes me laugh, it has a funny name like “Street Carp”, which Genius tells me is probably this song’s protagonist calling his ex a ho bag, &, most importantly, I have already settled on my joke o’ giving e’ery song on this album as S rank for the memes, so here ya go.
Grade: S
7. Teenager
Not gonna lie: considering how creepy & weird this band has been ’bout women, I felt dread when I saw a song called “Teenagers” that I’d get a good ol’ fashioned Beatles-type “well, she was just 17…”. Luckily, in this case, the protagonist is also a teenager, & this is probably the least creepy song Deftones has e’er wrote ’bout a woman.
I’m a sucker for record player texture — which is why my hipster ass has a vinyl record player & such classics as 3 Three Days Grace albums, Korn’s Issues, & 311’s greatest hits on vinyl — as well as the weird alien sucking noises near the end & those soft drum beats, so have ’nother S.
I made up this fake scenario of some kind of underworld society of knives, people who just get off on these erotic fantasies…or something like that. An ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ kind of thing.
OK, sure, yeah. ¿Does e’ery song need to be ’bout sex, tho? Like, you could just have the “underworld society of knives” without the sex & not make it weird.
Also, you have this weird-ass premise, ¿but you couldn’t come up with a better chorus than, “go get your knife, go get your knife”? ¿& why couldn’t you spell “knife” correctly in the title? ¿Did your “I” key on your keyboard fail to fire like mine keeps doing?
I do kind o’ like the muffled guitar notes that show up @ the beginning & keep coming back, but nothing else is all that interesting. I guess some woman is singing mo’ than halfway thru the song ’cause some woman happened to be singing in the next room. Yeah, that sounds like the reason this random part o’ the song is here.
Unfortunately, I can’t hear the lines, “’cause in here, we are all anemic”, which I’m sure are super deep &, uh, deep, but I can’t hear that line without hearing that e’en mo’ fantastic line from Young Thug: “i’m like i’m anemic too / a Neiman Marcus shoppperrrrr”. & by, “unfortunately”, I mean, “unfortunately, I have to give you an S grade for that”.
Grade: S
9. Korea
The only interesting part o’ this song is that we finally learn the reason this album is called White Pony: it’s cocaine. It’s too bad this is the least interesting song on this album, talking ’bout doing drugs & partying. It doesn’t sound bad, mind you: it has the same crisp production with sharp drumbeats & heavy guitar riffs; I’m just saying, if I had to remove a song, it’d have been this & not “Back to School (Mini Maggit)”.
While the album was released in 2000, Deftones have not toured South Korea until 2009. Unless they traveled there within that era, the title of the song seems to be unrelated.
Bro, ¿how do you name an entire song “Korea” & not tour in a’least 1 o’ them for nearly a decade? Unless this band did tour in North Korea, which would be pretty bad ass & would immediately merit an S grade, but also hard to believe, I’m afraid I can’t in good conscience give this song an S grade, so I’ll just give it a South Korean flag emoji instead:
Grade: 🇰🇷
10. Passenger
I’ve heard a lot o’ people lavishly praise on this song, presumably ’cause it features Maynard James Keenan, lead singer o’ Tool, e’ery hipster’s favorite prog-metal band, & A Perfect Circle, the band that people list when they want to be e’en mo’ hipster, & the guy whose name I always mix up with the economist John Maynard Keynes. I think it’s all right, I guess. Genius says, “this slow-burning ballad is rife with metaphorical imagery and atmospheric musical arrangements”, ¿& who am I to argue with them? I’ll tell you who I am: J. J. W. Mezun, certified nu-metal specialist. I don’t really see much metaphorical imagery in this song’s lyrics, which mostly seems to describe parts o’ the inside o’ a car mo’ than anything. I also don’t see what’s so atmospheric ’bout the repetitive “nuh-nuh-nuh nuh nuh” riffs thruout most o’ this song, broken off by the sparse, seemingly arrhythmic drum beats ’hind the verses. I do kind o’ like Keenan’s vocal performance on the choruses, I guess. I also find it funny that the Genius note assumes this song is ’bout people having sex in a car, ’cause presumably e’ery Deftones song needs to be ’bout weird sex.
But if e’eryone else is saying this song is amazing, I must be wrong, so here’s ’nother S:
Grade: S
11. Change (In the House of Flies)
You know, it’s ironic that the labels apparently pushed Deftones into making a new song that eventually became their magnum opus, “Back to School (Mini Maggit)”, ’cause this album s’posedly had no hits ( my apologies for the eye-searing white text on red background ), only for this other song to become a far mo’ iconic & successful hit for them. As amazing as “Back to School” is, this song truly defines this band, with its iconic opening notes, ghostly wind sounds, & following foreboding drums, followed by a perishing voice calling out, “i watched you chaaaaange”. Best o’ all, this song takes a break from this album’s typical thematic obsessions with sex & violence gainst women — a’least I think it does — & instead focuses on the classic literary trope o’ someone transforming into an insect like Gregor Samsa. There’s not much imagery to this song’s lyrics — or many lyrics @ all — but that sparseness fits well with this sparse song, which, like Franz Kafka Metamorphosis, is a mystery that is mo’ ’bout what isn’t said than what is.
There. ¿See? I can be just as good a hipster lyrical analyst — I just noticed how goofy that word looks, including the word “anal” in it, as if it meant “somebody who studies rectums” — as any upper-middle-class liberal arts college cracker who won’t shut the fuck up ’bout Tame Impala.
Grade: S
12. Pink Maggit
The acceptance o’ this song by critics & not “Back to School (Mini Maggit)” is proof that critics will love any slow, dreary song, no matter how inane, as this song literally has the same goofy-ass chorus as that song, ’cept now it’s trying to sound serious when saying “pushed back the square” & “’cause back in school / we are the leader of it all” — ’cept in this song we also get some extra violence gainst women with “now that you need her, but you don’t” replaced with “now that you kneed her in the throat”.
The title comes from a Kool Keith song. We just thought it was some funny stuff. The song is meant to be triumphant. I’m trying to spread a little confidence. Lots of artists try to make songs for the kids who are tormented in school, telling them it’s okay to be tormented. But it’s not okay. Don’t be ridiculed. Become the leader of your surroundings. Confidence is one of the most important things in life. If you are confident, you can do whatever you want.
Chino Moreno
That’s good advice to people being bullied: “¡just stand up for yourself & stop letting yourself be bullied!” This super deep album literally ends with fucking pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps self-help bullshit. Thank you, Deftones, for the best April Fool’s joke.
All that being said… I’m a sucker for the slow build up, with Chino sounding like he’s being strangled like a squealing horse — ¿a squealing white pony? — near the end o’ the intro just to hold it back e’en mo’, only for the song to finally stop edging & finally start cumming with its blast o’ rock-hard guitar riffs that make me rock hard, similar to Tool’s “Parabol” leading into “Parabola” — & therefore turning my cock into a parabola… Wait, I don’t think that’s the right shape.
Having said that, ironically I think this song ending the album only makes it make mo’ sense for this album to start with “Back to School (Mini Maggit)”, giving this album a bookends feel that wouldn’t be there when starting with “Feiticeira”, which also doesn’t start with nearly as iconic an opening as “Back to School”.
Grade: S
Final Verdict
White Pony is a 1-o’-a-kind album, instantly recognizable but impossible to copy, with lyrics taking sharp turns on e’ery song, e’en if many o’ those sharp turns are kinda dumb. ¿But does it have an angsty song ’bout The Wizard of Oz? Because it doesn’t, I’m afraid it doesn’t quite meet an S grade, but will have to settle for a, “白子🐎”.
(həd)p.e., which has the weirdest punctuation o’ maybe any band name, is a criminally underrated nu-metal band, especially their classic 2000 album, Broke, which is still an absolute banger, blending in punk & mo’ believably hip hop elements than most nu-metal bands for a much wilder sound.
1. Killing Time
We start with what I think is the best song, starting with those memorable noisy notes, 1st sparsely broken up by long, awkward pauses, & then building into droning regularity. Then we get verses where the singer ironically smoothly croons in his raspy voice ’bout what a fuck up he is, laying around all day doing drugs & watching Jerry Springer, before repeating, “just killing time…”, in an eerily calm voice & then breaking out into a manic snakelike screaming during the chorus, “¡KIIIIIIIIIISSS THE WOOOORLD GOODBYYYYYYYE!”. Then in the 2nd verse we get a different singing style: now the singer is pleading excuses for his empty life. & then during the bridge we get a hammy incoherent rant that seems to vaguely references the 2012 apocalyptic theories based on ( a misinterpretation o’ ) the Mayan calendar & Christian eschatology:
i keep my eyes on the stars that’s where i come from belt of orion son of a sun god you know my name i’m a conqueror the lion king kamehameha come 2012 come 12 tribes come 12 strands come 12 lives 12 steps 12 months 12 motherfuckas will all make bail kicked ’cause o’ the crowded jail sex & violence sells 12 serial killers 12 dead without a trail or a trace it’s prime time the fight night pay per view suicide the bee sting butterfly
Grade: S
2. Waiting to Die
“Waiting to Die” continues the nihilist theme o’ “Killing Time”, but is, if one could believe it, e’en mo’ unhinged audibly, with the singer growling the profanity-laden verses with weird up-&-down rhythms followed by screaming @ the edge o’ his voice, “¡EVERYBODY DIES!” repeatedly. It’s not quite as interesting as “Killing Time”, but I certainly love its frantic energy.
Grade A
3. Feel Good
This is the most well-known hit from this album, probably partly thanks to the accompaniment o’ System of a Down frontman Serj Tankian adding his own unhinged energy as they both singing in what sounds like a parody o’ duet sing-alongs, singing in pleading voices how they don’t care if the sky is falling, they just want to feel good, while the verses are made up o’ deep-voiced, mainly monotone rapped verses describing how the world is falling apart much like the previous 2 songs, as well as an inner skit o’ part o’ a conversation o’ someone doing drugs & having sex, & this bizarre section where the singer just says 1-word insults o’ increasing vulgarity sparsely separated by pauses & with particularly heavy, hammy pronunciation, especially on “mothafuckaaah”.
Despite the thematic repetition from the past 2 songs, the lyrics & medley o’ styles sounds distinct, with the lyrics being an anachronistic mix o’ Biblical prophecy — mo’ somber & coherent than the rant @ the end o’ “Killing Time” — & contemporary hiphop boast talk.
In essence, this is yet ’nother crazy-ass song.
Grade S
4. Bartender
This was the other hit from this song — apparently bigger back then, as it actually has a music video. This song goes back & forth from sleazy, smooth, jazzy verses o’ the protagonist trying desperately to get with a woman in a scuzzy bar with footage o’ strippers dancing on poles & standard nu-metal shouting choruses with the typical footage o’ the band playing ’hind a wire fence in front o’ cement walls with graffiti & plenty o’ red light, whose shouts o’, “I JUST WANT YOUR COMPANY”, only emphasize the protagonist’s desperation. The bridge then slows down into a hango’er-like slow slump, repeating the beginning o’ the 1st verse, “ain’t nothin’ working / ain’t nothin’ right / there’s a hole in me that i can’t fill / no matter how hard i try”, showing how li’l the protagonist’s vying for hedonistic excess has gotten him. None o’ this revolutionary artistry, ’course, but this song’s storytelling & the way it matches the music is much mo’ competently done than most o’ the nu-metal I look @. Just compare to something like Hollywood Undead’s magnum opus, “Everywhere I Go”.
Grade: A
5. Crazy Legs
I guess this is the party song, which weirdly remixes the chorus to The Notorious B. I. G.’s “Hypnotize” as its chorus. I think this would’ve worked better coming before “Bartender” instead o’ after: it’s a weird sequence to go from a dour song ’bout the emptiness o’ hedonism to an unironic celebration o’ sex parties. The singer’s performance on the 2nd verse & especially the bridge are great, but this song does feel like 1 o’ the less memorable songs on this album that treads themes that were better done in earlier songs; it kinda just feels like a weaker version o’ the 4 songs preceding.
Grade: B
6. Pac Bell
Thankfully, that song is followed by a much mo’ different song. Yes, it’s an angsty song ’bout troubled relationships & how it’s led the protagonist to suicidal depression; but albums almost entirely dedicated to that theme are hardly rare in nu-metal. Like many o’ the other songs, it’s the singer’s performance in the verses & how he twists his voice in such a deranged way, e’en when saying something as mundane as “¿why the fuck you fucking with me?”, that makes the difference.
E’en mo’ different, howe’er, is the chorus, with its autotune-sounding emotionless singing, “we used to drive all the time”, that sounds mo’ like the kind o’ songs you’d hear in the 2010s, not anything like what I’d hear in nu-metal albums.
To add to the surrealism, this song’s title is “Pac Bell”, the title o’ an ol’ phone company that 2 years later would be bought by AT&T. It’s relevant, since this song is ’bout someone trying to call his ex, & the song does start & end with the robotic voice o’ an automatic operator asking the protagonist, “if you’d like to make a call, please hang up & try again”.
Grade: A
7. I Got You
Wait, ¿this song had a music video, but not “Feel Good”? I ne’er e’en heard o’ this song before now. Granted, listening to this song, I can imagine this song was probably played @ many concerts, as it seems particularly made for such, with the following lyrics in particular seeming to call out to people to dance:
all my people come on choose your side you’re a long way from home but not alone
To be honest, this song’s doesn’t have as much as the others on this album, with much vaguer lyrics — tho I do like the line, “yeah, eat the rich / but pay me motherfucker”. But, ’gain, I just love this singer’s performance, such as the way his voice dies out a li’l in his throat when he says “afraid” in “they are afraid of you” @ the beginning o’ the 2nd verse &, ’course, the houndlike way he barks, “yeah, I got you” in the chorus.
You can most clearly hear Korn’s influence on this bad in this song, with its music-box low, dreary start to the verse & the singer’s low, raspy, menacing sing-songy voice starting, “Mmm mmm mmm mmm…”.
Grade: B
8. Boom (How You Like That)
¿This had a music video, too? ¿How did all these songs have music videos & not “Feel Good”? That must’ve been some blacksheep hit then.
This song has a couple o’ highlights. For me the best being during the bridge when the singer calls out various people to say, “¿how you like that?”, & asks whiteboys to say it & a bunch o’ super honkey voices say it. That’s pretty funny.
That said, while the song in itself is a fun banger, compared to other tracks on this album it feels less interesting, repeating the same themes, with the same vague social commentary you’d find from many lower-tier nu-metal bands like Papa Roach: “we’re so desensitized, we were raised on TV, something something, American Dream”. E’en the call out for various people to shout, “¿how you like that?” goes on too long: ¿did he really need to ask virtually e’ery city in the US? Nothing in this song is cringe a’least.
Grade: C
9. Swan Dive
I’m surprised this song got a music video; but unlike the previous 2 songs, this time I have listened to this song before & this time it’s a pleasant surprise, as I always liked this song with its jazzy verses with the protagonist poetically describing himself climbing up a building, “putting distance between I & I & the ground”, only to then shout ’bout how it’s ’cause he wants to jump off & “swan dive” into the asphalt. In a genre where suicide is typically described either abstractly or with the cliché emo imagery o’ wrist-slitting, a song with the mo’ concrete ( pun not intended ) imagery o’ the very, very brutal death o’ smashing one’s body gainst the street from several stories high is refreshing.
& then in the bridge the protagonist seems to answer — well, maybe not really answer, given how incoherent it is — why he’s suicidal with rants up @ the sky ’bout all the evils in the world, which would be trite if ’twere just him asking, “¿where is the compassion?”, but is made mo’ interesting with bizarre questions like, “tell me, ¿who can control the floods?”, hinting @ the mental disturbance going on in the protagonist’s head, amplified by the bearlike growl the singer employs when answering, “¡NO ONE!”, after each question in the 2nd half.
Grade: A
10. Stevie
( Laughs ). What a weird-ass song:
come on, I’m not deaf or dumb I’m not little Stevie Wonder whatever ¡No more lies!
Yes, that’s the chorus & the basis for this song being named “Stevie”. The fact that he caps that imaginative comparison with the bland, “¡No more lies!”, only adds to the absurdity.
Other than that, this is 1 o’ the mo’ middle-ground songs on this album, neither relatively strong nor weak. I do like the jazzy, smooth, & sing-songy 1st 2 verses & the particular way the singer becomes unhinged round the 2nd half o’ the 3rd verse.
Grade: B
11. Jesus (Of Nazareth)
¡✝-rock jump scare!
Actually, unlike corny bands like Thousand Foot Krutch or Skillet, with their Kroeger-brand mass-manufactured WASP evangelism with generic celebrations o’ how wicked ( ¡in a cool way! ) Jesus is & fairy tales o’, um, a psychologist convincing a couple to hold a funeral for the woman’s aborted fetus… this song is much mo’ complex: the singer doesn’t seem to really believe in Jesus, saying to the crucifix on his wall, which inspires paranoid fear rather than hope or comfort, “I can’t believe a single word that you’re saying / I see your lips moving, but nothing’s coming out”, & seems to only be turning to Jesus out o’ pure desperation. & the song ends with the singer expressing doubt that it’ll work:
they’re telling me to take my own life breathe my last breath, eat my last meal you got what you deserve ¿how’s that feel?
This deliberate comparison to Jesus with “eat my last meal” makes it ambiguous whether or not the protagonist is criticizing himself or criticizing Jesus, including the line earlier, “mass murder, court convicted, terroristic creature of the night”. I mean, Jesus was convicted by a court; & if Jesus is God in human flesh, there was that whole flood that killed nearly e’ery human; & I would call passover, wherein God killed the 1st-born o’ e’ery non-Jewish-person in Egypt round midnight to scare Egypt into freeing Jewish people the act o’ a “terroristic creature of the night”… I’m probably reading too much into this… Still, a’least I can do that instead o’ just making jokes ’bout Thousand Foot Krutch making a song ’bout being sorry one wasted one’s life just jerking off all the time.
While not mindblowing, I like the shifts from the eerie sparse piano notes — which sound a lot like the ones on “meet the grahams”, just so I can keep talking ’bout that year-ol’ beef — with low bass notes & tired vocals vs. the loud choruses.
Grade: A
11. The Meadow (Special Like You)
( Note: this song also has a music video, but it’s just mo’ concert playing & hanging round their tour bus & doesn’t include the whole 9-minute track ).
This is a nice song, especially with the funk notes in the background, which was not something you saw much in nu-metal. The way the singer’s voice rasps out a bit during the chorus is a nice touch.
E’en better, this song ends with some woman babbling ’bout elephants thru a fast food speaker box.
To add to the absurdity — ’cause e’en this otherwise nice ballad can’t be normal — this track’s dour ending is flipped after a pause with a secret track that’s just outtakes & goofing around. Such is the emotional complexity o’ nu-metal.
Grade: B
Final Verdict
This album unironically holds up much better than most o’ the albums I’ve looked @ in this series, blending some o’ the weirdness o’ nu-metal with much less cringe edgy elements & a much wilder less polished sound. Tho thematically it does get a bit repetitive, stylistically it has mo’ variance & does mo’ that other nu-metal bands didn’t do. It’ll probably ne’er warrant the critical acclaim o’ bands like Sevendust or Deftones; or bands I’ve ne’er heard o’ that are probably only acclaimed on Rate Your Music because they’re obscure like The Shiznit, Ikd-sj, or Stepa; or… ¿Incubus’s S.C.I.E.N.C.E., ranked as the 10th highest rated on Rate Your Music? That’s actually pretty based. I’ll definitely be talking ’bout that 1 eventually…
Anyway, I think this album should be remembered mo’, especially since it makes a better balance o’ being mo’ fun than the drearier o’ acclaimed artists while being less embarrassing than your Limp Bizkits — up there with, like, Korn, maybe.
