Welcome to the Album Nerds podcast with your hosts, Andy, Don, and Dude.
Andy's back.
Yay.
Aw, shit.
This is the Album Nerds podcast.
I'm Dude.
And of course we got Andy and Don with me.
Andy, welcome back from Safari, my friend.
And you're part the adventurer.
Thanks guys.
Yeah, I missed you guys.
It was rough out there in the outback.
My thoughts and prayers are with you guys.
So, glad to be back.
Sometimes when we were doing the show, I could like feel you moving through me.
That's why I was so brilliant on those episodes.
Yeah, I set mine in spirit as a little guide for you guys.
I kept calling everyone sell-outs.
That's how I knew.
Okay, yeah, that was me.
Don, how are you doing, my friend?
Well, when I was a kid, we had a dog that if you went away on vacation or something,
when you got home, he'd ignore you.
So, I'm going to give Andy that treatment.
That is a unique dog.
I like it.
All right, so this is the Album Nerds podcast.
We love albums in the album format.
So we've got a great show for you this week.
We're going to be talking about some albums that feature Anger.
So we'll each pick one and present them.
Don's going to ask us a deep question.
We're going to have some shout outs to some albums and album related items that we're
digging and then we're going to spin that wheel of musical discovery to find out what
we'll talk about next time.
This week, it's all about the anger.
That's what I'm talking about.
Anger has long been a powerful driving force in music, fueling some of the most iconic
and influential albums across various genres.
From the raw aggression of punk rock to the searing social commentary of hip hop, albums
that channel anger have resonated deeply with listeners, often becoming cultural touchstones
that reflect the frustrations and discontent of their times.
So today, each of us will present an album that expresses anger.
God damn it.
Wow, he's even angry now.
Yeah, so anger is definitely fuel for the fire and can create some great art, right?
It also can create destruction and war and other things, but it being channeled healthily
and it's through music.
So how'd you guys do?
Find some other stuff that didn't quite make the cut?
Yeah, I got a couple things here.
Well, the first one that came to mind and I think has often appeared on lists for various
shows here is NWA's Straight Outta Compton, 1988.
I'm sure you guys remember this record, Fuck the Police, kind of being the calling card
of the anger.
But it's all of the good tracks on that record too.
Still a solid, listen, an hour solid of pretty angry dudes.
It also was an opportunity to shine light on why they're so angry for those that maybe
were unaware of what was going on.
You would think Ice Cube would cool things off.
Oh, that's awful.
That's awful.
That's why they were so angry, because of jokes like that.
The other one I mentioned is from Boston, Massachusetts punk rock group Converge and
their 2004 album You Fail Me, which is a very dark album kind of about personal failures.
It's more of a deep depression kind of anger, which I got a lot to stay away from.
But it is a good record as well and deals with some pretty raw emotions there.
How about you, Don?
Well, I keep returning to that Phil Ox record.
You guys remember we did that, the protest album, I Ain't Marching Anymore?
Yeah, where it's like, I'm really mad.
I'm really, really mad.
It's like, are you?
Yeah.
Well, the lyrics are pretty rough.
The lyrics are, yeah, pretty in your face.
I was quite shocked by it.
I think a metal band should make a cover of that entire album.
Oh, yeah.
A crowd of anger.
Yeah.
And another one I checked out was Black Flag, their album Damaged, which I haven't spent
a lot of time with.
I knew the song Rise Against, but that's actually a really good album.
And of course, Henry Rollins is the front man and he does anger well.
Yes, he does.
He does.
He does anger, but it's somehow kind of civilized for a couple of minutes and then it ain't
so civilized.
How about you, dude?
I mean, I thought of a funny one.
I thought that'd be funny to talk about St. Anger by Metallica, but we talk about Metallica
so much and this isn't the reason to talk about that album.
It made fans pretty angry.
Yeah, I was going to say, if you want to instill some real anger on the show.
But that would be a better discussion for something along the lines of career fails
or whatever that, you know, whether you like it or not.
I mean, I enjoy the album, but I'm saying it loud and proud right here.
I also considered Power Trip, Nightmare Logic, their 2017 album.
They're a thrash metal band and a modern day one.
Their lead singer passed away tragically, so their career is kind of in a holding pattern,
but lots of anger, frustration and more about the current world we live in.
So I thought that would be fun.
So it seems like there's a lot of anger out there.
Why don't we get into our three angriest picks?
You choo choo choose me?
For my angry selection, we're going with...
Could you crank up the angry?
You sound very friendly and likable right now.
Come on.
For my angry selection, we're going with this.
Now we're going with the Oakland, California four piece groove metal band Machine Head
and their debut 1994 album, Burn My Eyes.
That sounds like it'd make a guy pretty angry.
Yeah, sure.
Playing with eyeballs.
All right, let's put the opening cut here.
This is the video.
Now I believe that was a line in the original Star Spangled Banner.
That was right there.
Yes.
The first draft.
Live Freedom Ring with a shotgun blast.
Yeah.
Eventually got edited out.
That song is about the branch Davidians.
I just remember them in Waco, Texas back in the early 90s.
David Koresh.
Yes.
Who was also a musician.
Oh, was he really?
I didn't know that.
Yeah.
So was Charlie Manson.
What's up with these psychos being musicians?
It's a fine line.
Yeah, it is.
All right, let's see.
So that song, the album as a whole, I would say deals with different forms of anger, different
ways of...
The lead singer, who is Rob Flynn, the founder of the group, has experienced anger in his
life.
My clickbait headline for the album is Flynn and crew makes angry s'mores with my sweet
roasted eyeballs.
I mean, I don't like s'mores, so I guess...
Yeah, I mean...
They're overrated.
At least that sounds like an interesting ingredient.
Marshmallows are pretty gross in the room.
That'd be a fun Halloween treat, you know, marshmallows that look like eyeballs.
Yeah, that was a good idea though.
Yeah.
Why don't you put that on Pinterest, dude?
Let's see here.
So yeah, Flynn takes on a variety of different institutions, including church, economic oppression.
The only other thing that really struck me listening back to this album now, it's just
how much unrest there was in the early nineties.
I think that has been such a nostalgic, kind of like peaceful, good time, you know, good
time to be alive.
There was a lot of really kind of extreme stuff going on just out in the public.
The three of us were lucky enough to be in living situations where most of that was over
our heads.
You know, it was stuff on the news, you know, the younger you are, the more you can ignore
stuff.
But then you look back, it's like, damn, there's some dark times.
I was like, woohoo, and then there were people suffering.
Yeah.
All right, why don't we dig into another track here.
This is towards the end of the album.
It's called I'm Your God Now.
I feel like that's the calm before the storm does.
Yeah, it is.
I think that's maybe what drew me to the track.
So it does start out kind of, I mean, quiet relative to the rest of the album.
So it's kind of like a brooding intro.
And that's some of the only, I guess, what you would say clean singing on the album.
But yeah, it ends up rocking out as much as the other tracks eventually.
Kind of reminded me of Tool there, you know, like it has the vocals and that little groove.
It's not on Alice in Chainsey either.
Yeah.
And, you know, it builds an intensity, which, you know, I love songs like that.
So Flynn dedicated the song to a friend who died from a heroin overdose.
And so the metaphor is just that the drug becomes like an all consuming, godlike force
in an addict's life.
Yeah.
That'll make you angry.
It will.
So my clickbait headline is Introduction to Groove Metal Pushes Dawn One Step Closer
to Full Headbanger Status.
Whoa.
So this kind of this journey I've been on, you know, slowly getting into thrash.
I planted the seeds 20 years ago.
Slowly getting there.
Slow germination process.
And so now I hear about this groove metal stuff, which is kind of, I mean, I knew, I
had heard of Pantera and Sepultura and that stuff.
And I didn't know the difference before, but I do kind of hear it here.
So I guess like your thrash is more typically fast and aggressive, whereas the groove is
in the heart.
It's more mid tempo and it's, I'm not sure that it's more elaborate, but more, what's
the word, like syncopation?
Well, it's just consistent.
It's more consistent, I think.
Yeah.
Seems like the guitar riffs are maybe a bit more loud or harder.
I'm not sure.
Crunchy.
Yeah.
So my understanding is that this is kind of like a hybrid between sort of the two styles.
Yeah.
It feels like kind of a bridge between the two areas of the, of I guess the bay where
these genres were kind of established.
A bridge over very troubled waters.
Yeah.
Yeah, totally.
So also, you know, my understanding is that the lyrics are a little different from, you
know, what other groove metal bands would have been singing about at the time, you know,
where they're dealing with like fantasy oriented stuff, whereas this is about what's going
on in reality and the harshness of it.
It's, it's if Marvin Gaye went metal.
No, there you go.
Wow.
What's going wrong?
I would love to hear that.
But yeah, you know, social disorder and urban decay, political corruption, substance abuse,
you know, it's heavy.
Check, check, check.
It's all there.
It's all, what's going on right there.
One thing I would say about the lyrics, I mean, I, well, I do think they are pretty
good and pretty interesting.
They're also, I would say they're metal lyrics.
They're pretty vague.
They don't go into a lot of detail.
It doesn't really offer a lot of solutions to these problems.
It's really just kind of like pointing them out.
But that's good though, right?
Like I think sometimes that's the problem.
When, when, you know, we talked about John Lennon a few weeks ago and pointing things
out is one thing, but trying to say what the solutions are, it's like, are you qualified?
Let us know to think about things.
You don't need to tell us how to fix it.
And anger is a good first step in the process.
I think.
Yeah.
All right.
Why don't we dig into the second to last track here?
This one's a little different.
It's called Realize, Realize and Realize.
Yeah.
I picked it just so you'd have to go through that.
I really appreciate it.
So Realize, Realize and Realize was inspired by the 1992 LA riots.
The song reflects the racial tensions and violence following the acquittal of the four
white police officers for the beating of Rodney King.
And it captures the intense social unrest.
So they used police radio and news samples from the riots, heightening the sense of urgency.
So it's kind of an instrumental mostly, except for the clips and then the screaming.
So Rob Flynn, who was influenced by industrial bands like Ministry used sound bites to help
create that contrast with white supremacists, black nationalist views, all emphasizing those
extreme perspectives.
And I guess the title comes from Oakland Graffiti, where it was Realize, R-E-A-L-E-Y-E-S.
I can see that.
The word realize and then real lies.
And it struck a chord.
I think it's a really cool title and a cool way to get the title.
So someone probably could sue for copyright on that.
My clickbait headline to describe Burn My Eyes, the metal wake up call that turns 90s
rage into a soundtrack for change.
Grab your earplugs and your sense of justice.
I love it, man.
I remember it was around.
I just wasn't really seeking out a lot of metal at the time in that new wave with Pantera
and stuff.
I was kind of, I shrugged that off.
So intense.
I love what they did with the expression of anger channeled at something important.
Not, you know, we've talked about before, it's not anger about mom and dad not buying
you a car or, you know, about not getting into the right college.
But by harnessing this anger, Burn My Eyes transforms those destructive emotions into
a force for self-reflection and hope of unity amidst division.
Sound like something people might want to think about now?
Hope?
Finding unity amidst division?
Yeah.
Sounds good to me.
I was listening to it while I was cooking.
I almost burned myself a few times because I was moving around in ways that are not good
for being near fire.
Yeah, I don't want to be head banging in your hot oil.
Yeah, I'm like, realize.
That's probably how his eyes got burned in the first place.
That's right.
So yeah, Burn My Eyes was actually Roadrunner, which is the label that this came out on,
their best selling record from 1994 all the way to 99 when Slipknot's debut came out.
I don't know if that was pretty interesting.
Well, I hate to throw this in, but then Nickelback came and crushed all that.
They were on Roadrunner as well.
We won't talk about that.
We're watching a documentary about them and it's love to hate Nickelback.
Yeah.
Oh my God.
It's about that phenomenon where people love them and then hated them for whatever reason.
So anyway, I digress.
So yeah, it's definitely in that era of kind of transitional period for metal here, but
I think it's a good one.
I would still say it's got kind of an underground status and I think it holds up pretty well.
Machine head Burn My Eyes.
Before we get to our next angry selection, why don't we hear a little bit from the folks
over at Kenai Pod with Madness.
Kenai Pod with Madness.
What we will be doing is looking through vintage Karang, Karanga metal hammer, all from late
80s.
I remember when someone lent me Somewhere in Time and by that time I'd heard Marillion
and I'd heard Death Leopard.
I heard Bon Jovi on the radio and I thought I knew what heavy metal was.
When this started, I thought, I'm going to take this.
It was so harsh.
It was so metal.
I thought, I think this is going to be too much for me.
But I put it to be and I pushed through.
And I think if you tell most maiden fans would probably think this has got a soft album,
it's got keyboards on it or synth guitars or something.
But yeah, for me it was a shock to the system.
I credit Alice Cooper with introducing me into type of music because when I heard that
it was like, yeah, two friends over.
I was like, listen to me.
Like, obviously this has blown my mind so it's going to blow your mind too.
This is going to be amazing.
I played it to them and then they went, oh, do you like heavy metal?
And I was like mortified.
And I've never forgotten that because she'd be like, yes, I fucking like heavy metal.
Kicked over the tape and walked out of my own room.
So what do they do there?
They talk about Iron Maiden.
Is it all Iron Maiden?
Okay.
So that was a little sample of what they do over at Can I Pod with Madness.
Go check them out.
Okay.
So my angry pick comes from Pink Floyd.
Surprise, surprise.
So this is actually a while since you've actually talked about it.
You name drop them constantly, but we haven't talked about an album in a while.
So this is actually their final album with Roger Waters released in March 1983 called
The Final Cut.
It's actually their 12th studio album.
The band was formed in London in 1965.
The lineup at this time was just Roger Waters, who's the bassist, main songwriter and vocalist,
David Gilmour on guitar and vocals, and then drummer Nick Mason.
Keyboardist Richard Wright had been kind of pushed out of the band by Waters during The
Wall.
So yeah, I mean, this album is basically the culmination of Waters increased creative control.
Well, anyway, let's hear the opening cut.
This is The Post War Dream.
Yeah, it's kind of like, stop it.
Stop it guys.
I'm really angry.
Seriously.
You don't feel the raw rage in his voice there?
I do not.
I don't.
Maybe I have a problem and I needed to be screaming.
I'm not sure.
That's on me.
Because I find myself at times being the other extreme like, okay, calm down.
When he wails like that, it's like, okay, we get it.
Interesting.
Anyway, so I mean, I feel like that song kind of sets the tone for the album's themes of,
I guess, disillusionment and criticism of like the post World War II society, British
society specifically.
And it actually references Margaret Thatcher, who was the prime minister at the time, calls
her Maggie, which is, I think, disrespect.
Yeah.
I'm kind of surprised that like all I hear now historically is that people didn't like
her but as a kid, I just thought it was cool that a lady was the big leader.
I thought that was cool.
I didn't really understand that she was not popular.
Yes.
Sort of ironic that it's kind of a progressive idea to have a woman leader but to have her
be this conservative force.
The song actually begins with sound effects of a radio tuning, which is like, I feel like
Roger Waters has done that.
Roger Waters.
Yeah.
Boy, how does he, on new albums, what does he do?
Does he have someone flipping through TikToks?
On the next one.
So that song as well as much of the album features the National Philharmonic Orchestra
arranged and conducted by Michael Kamen.
Is that the guy who did the Metallica?
With Metallica, yes.
Oh my gosh.
Wow.
Interesting connection there.
Yeah.
So my clickbait headline for the final cut is Waters copes with childhood loss and grownup
disillusionment with scream therapy session.
So a lot of this feels that way.
Could you change it to wailing therapy session?
Yeah, maybe it's wailing therapy.
I mean, this feels like a Waters solo album and it really kind of sets the tone for his
solo work.
I mean, I think it's an effective album.
It doesn't have the musical highlights of The Wall, but it does have some dramatic and
powerful moments.
And the anger is, it's the loss of his father.
His father died fighting in World War II.
I think the rage comes from the pointlessness of it all.
And then I think that was all brought to the surface with the Falklands, the Falkland Islands,
that conflict in the early 80s that dealt with Britain and Argentina.
So I think it's all, this is all senselessness.
Yeah.
And it has a lot of connections to The Wall.
Some of these cuts were left over from that time.
A few of the songs deal with the schoolmaster character.
The Eater North Putting guy?
Yep.
So we kind of get behind him and it turns out he's a veteran of the war and dealing
with demons.
So that's why he's mean to children.
Trying to get them to have their nutrition.
Yeah.
What a jerk.
And then somewhere in there, there's the song, The Final Cut, that feels like that's the
character of Pink from The Wall, the rock star who's dealing with the loss of a wife.
So yeah, it's kind of The Wall, part two, informed by more modern events.
Well, let's keep going.
Here's the final cut from The Final Cut.
It's not to be confused with The Final Cut.
Right.
Realize, realize, realize, right?
This is Two Suns in the Sunset.
Yeah, I mean, I guess it is screaming.
It's just in a more civil way than I guess I'm used to.
It's a gentleman's scream.
Yeah.
So I guess this song kind of stands out for its rage and fear about nuclear annihilation.
It closes the album with a vision of destruction and a world on the brink of collapse.
The Anger in the Song is directed at the global leadership and systems that perpetuate wars
and waters describes the moments leading up to the catastrophic nuclear explosion, likened
to the two suns in the sunset.
Wow, that's pretty dark.
Yeah, kind of reminds me of that the day after.
Yeah, remember that made for TV movie thing?
Yeah, that scared the crap out of me.
Me too.
Yeah, it was about if America had been nuked.
Oh yeah, I did see that.
Yeah, that is creepy.
So the line in the song, the sun is in the east even though the day is done, two suns
in the sunset could be the human race is run.
You go, Roger.
Yeah, there you go.
It does feature a notable saxophone solo by Raphael Ravenscroft renowned for his work
on Jerry Rafferty's Baker Street.
Wow, we're having some weird connections here.
It adds some emotional depth to the song and makes it slightly sexy, which I'm not sure
is the correct choice.
But the song ends with this quiet fizzle like amplifying less anger and more despair about
the future.
Sure.
My clickbait headline to describe the album, Roger Waters final rant is the final cut a
farewell or just an ego trip?
Yes.
Kind of a farewell to both.
It is a farewell to Pink Floyd in some ways.
So I think it's more like his overwrought solo albums than it is Pink Floyd.
So as far as their catalog goes, this is not amongst my favorites.
I liked it when there was more of a collaborative band spirit behind the creation where there
was some, where the sounds varied a little bit.
This is all very in the same lane, but Don loves it.
So I love it too.
All right.
Well, let's hear another cut.
This is also on side two, the Fletcher Memorial.
That's an equally dark song.
We had the nuclear war and the dudes back there.
This one's about gathering together all the world leaders, putting them in old folks home
and setting on fire.
Yeah, that's a little, I guess that is kind of angry.
Yeah, that's angry.
This is plotting sort of twisted.
I kind of like the imagery.
It's like they're there just like playing with each other so they can't harm the rest
of us.
I would be fine with it if it wasn't for the last line where he introduces the final solution,
which is pretty dark.
Yeah, Roger Waters is known for saying some pretty incendiary, hey-oh stuff about violence
toward the people he disagrees with, which is odd.
He's angry.
Yeah, well, how many times are you going to channel that anger through your music?
Eventually, that's supposed to help get it out.
Fun fact about that song.
So Fletcher is a reference to his dad who was Eric Fletcher Waters.
Yeah.
He's really caught up on the death of his dad.
I didn't realize that he was just an infant when he passed away.
I thought maybe he was a little bit older based on the trauma it seemed to have caused
him.
But I'm a big fan of The Wall.
I think I really took to that in college and I still hold it in high regard.
I think a lot of these songs here feel like they could be on The Wall or at least feel
wall-esque, wall-esque.
But the quality, yeah, is a little hit or miss for me.
My clickbait headline for the final cut is, Water uses leftover bricks to build a ramshackle
monument to himself.
Ooh, well said.
Like I said, there's some parts of that good things I like about Water and his artistic
creativity here, but there's just not enough of the group.
Gilmour is such a talented guitarist, man.
I love his guitar playing and you get glimpses of it here, but there's not enough to really
sink your teeth into or feel like it's a consistent thread throughout the album.
Yeah.
I mean, there's Gilmour parts on it while they're good.
They feel like just a replica of licks he played on The Wall.
Yeah.
I felt the same thing too.
You get dusts of the good background singers and there's some horns and stuff throughout
and field recordings.
So it does feel a little bit more intentional than just thrown together than maybe some
other brands might do with this type of B-side material.
But it's still Roger Waters.
He's still a great artist in my opinion and these songs are way better than most that
I've heard.
So I'm not going to shit on it quite as much as some people maybe.
My issue is more with the style and the sound just in general.
I'm one of those weirdos that the wall's okay.
Like it's not my favorite Pink Floyd.
I like the dark side of the moon and that period more.
Or it's a little more rock and roll, a little less theatrics, but that's just me.
Yeah.
I wanted to mention just one other song.
When the Tigers broke free, that actually didn't appear on the original release.
It was recorded during The Wall session and it's actually in the film The Wall.
And then when it was remastered or re-released in 2004, it showed up on there.
So it's kind of hard to know if it belongs.
It actually fits quite well on the album and I think it ends up being a highlight because
it's, I mean that really is the story of his dad's death.
Yeah.
It's just a, I think a really powerful track.
It always moves me.
His vocal performance on that has always been very compelling to me.
He gets to some weird places during that.
I don't know about the consider us.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, it's barely a Pink Floyd album, but if you want an angry yet honest album about
the harsh realities of our world, check out Pink Floyd, The Final Cut.
Excuse me.
I'd like to ask you a few questions.
All right.
Time for another deep question by Don.
So we're talking about anger and of course we've all probably had our moments.
What are your favorite freak outs that you've either experienced yourself or witnessed out
there?
On the days of social media, I feel like we're just inundated with freak outs now and then.
I had one happen to me.
I'm not the kind of person that freaks out very frequently.
I'm not sure I ever can think of, but I had somebody freak out at me once and it stuck
with me.
If you guys have ever had the case where you've been driving upset a driver near you, come
to a stop light and they decide it's come time to take this in a more personal approach
to this and get out of their car and come back and like, no, how would you?
It's never gone that far.
Just some flip offs and horn honks and tailgating.
I had a guy get out and come back to my car, stand in front of my window and yell at me
for a few moments until I just drove around him and put out my way.
But it was pretty surprising how somebody do that.
Oh, please.
I know you're cleaning this up to sound like a nice guy, but you got out and you kicked
his ass.
I know what really happened.
I'm not fucking with that guy because I was carrying my busy street to go yell at somebody.
That's not my cup of tea.
The other one I'll mention from pop culture that I always think about when I think of
a good freak out.
Do you guys ever see that clip of Bill O'Reilly a long time ago?
Yeah.
We'll do it live.
Yeah, exactly.
We'll do it live.
Fuck it.
That's a great one if you haven't seen it in a while.
Man, he really loses his cool pretty quickly.
How about you, dude?
As a younger man and mostly kid, teenager, I was quick to anger over certain things.
If I'd hit my head on something like a cabinet door or whatever, I'd slam it shut out of
anger, but it would pop back open, which would piss me off more.
And then slam it shut again and pop back open.
It would become this basically paddle ball thing of trying to get the damn thing to close,
but without giving in and doing it nicely.
But just over stupid stuff.
I was raking leaves once when I was 15 or 16, hit my head on a tree branch, beat the
tree with the rake, broke the rake, screaming and yelling.
Just unbridled, stupid anger that you learn not to act like that as you get older.
Well, most people do, except for the guy that got in Andy's face.
How about you, Don?
Well, I mean, personally, thinking back to when I was a kid, for some reason, video games
would set me off.
Oh yeah.
You want to throw the controller, dudes?
You can see under your skin.
Yeah.
I never broke a controller, but I'd start shaking a pillow or something.
I kept it.
Remember like the Atari joystick?
I remember ripping the rubber cover off of it and throwing it in the bathroom.
Rage quit.
I was thinking about this is another obscure example, and I can't believe I'm citing this
movie again because it's such a meh movie, but the film Amityville, the original Amityville
Horror.
Yeah.
There's the Lutzes, they're friends, like the guy he works with and his wife, or talking
to them.
His wife is, she's the one that's sort of in tune with psychic, spiritual energy or
something.
So she's talking and then the husband just like lays into her and all of a sudden he's
like, Oh, thank you very much for your cosmic views.
Now do me a favor.
Shut up.
It's just so like uncalled for.
Okay, man.
So he's definitely like suppressing some rage against his poor wife, I guess.
Anyway, what's your favorite freak out?
Let us know on Instagram and Facebook or leave a comment on our website, AlbumNerds.com.
Don't make me angry.
You wouldn't like me when I'm angry.
Okay, so Anger, the Angry Albums, a lot of different things came to mind, but one popped
in in particular that was from a different perspective.
So I went with Hole, Live Through This, released in April of 1994, produced by Paul Coldary
and Sean Slade.
The second studio album by the American alternative rock band Hole showcases a shift from their
raw hardcore roots to more polished melodies and structured songwriting.
The band consists of Courtney Love, of course, on lead vocals and rhythm guitar, Eric Erlinson
on lead guitar and backing vocals, Kristin Pfaff on bass guitar and backing vocals.
And she tragically passed away from a heroin overdose shortly after the release of this
album, which adds to the list of tragedies that was occurring at this time.
And we'll get into that later.
Patty Schummel on drums and percussion.
And you know, Courtney was aiming to surprise listeners with softer edges while still maintaining
that fierce sensibility from the first record.
The Tackle Steams of Beauty, motherhood, anti-elitism and violence against women.
Why don't we jump in with the track Violet?
So that's the first track on the album.
It's a total explosion of anger and Courtney just unleashes everything in the song.
The lyrics explore anger, vulnerability, defiance and struggles with identity and the expectations
of a woman and femininity and all of that rolled into it, into the whole album, really.
I guess it's a song about a jerk and it's widely believed to be about Billy Corgan from
Smashing Pumpkins, who she dated before Kurt Cobain, who she famously was married to.
Interestingly, Love teased that she hexed him as Corgan had a full head of hair when
they dated but was losing it by the time Violet was released.
We all know how much hair he has today.
So there we go.
Courtney loves.
Wow.
Yeah, by 95 he was shaving his head.
I hate comparing her to Nirvana, but for this song, like that chorus kind of sounds like
a Nirvana scream to me.
They had similar influences.
Yeah, the Pixies were the loud soft.
I think they pioneered that and that was Kurt and Courtney were both fans.
They met when their bands were both coming up.
So this album was written before Cobain's death and was released a week or so after
because that's when it was scheduled to be released.
So I can't imagine what it was like to have this whirlwind of popularity, the death, a
terrible death of your husband, the other issues that they already had and then having
people point fingers like you did this to him and stuff.
That must have been a very difficult time.
Oh my gosh.
Yeah, at least Yoko only broke up the band.
Oh boy.
Let's not get into that again.
Go back and listen to Imagine again, Don.
I think you missed the point.
So my clickbait headline to describe the album, live through this is a sonic middle finger
to the male dominated music scene using anger fueled anthems to raise it high.
The finger that is.
I recognized what she was, what was happening there.
There was like, there's a double standard and I'm going to shine a dark light on it,
you know?
So angry, definitely.
And yeah, she's very angry.
That loudsoft works really well for anger because it helps you get those punches in,
you know?
OK, so why don't we get into the final track on the album.
It's called Rockstar.
Or is it?
Oh yeah, great song.
Yeah, I think that one stands out.
It was mainly being able to kind of above the rest of the song.
I think it's a good one.
Yeah.
I think it's a good one.
It's a good one.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I think it was kind of above the rest of it originally called Olympia.
Obvious reasons, but all the media Washington.
And that was Olimpiada Dac 돌보� Do conecta x4?
A traded joke.
Yeah, I mean, did she want to Oscar or something like an 80 something steel magnolias.
Oh, I don't know.
But the song here is about the the right got二anm adjuston touched on at some point in
Bikini Kill.
Yeah. I was going to say car wash.
That's not quite what it was about.
I remember renting that from Blockbuster when I was like 16, me and my buddies,
bikini car wash.
Yeah. That's a pretty funny song from Love there. She's got some interesting little vocal quirks
there. She does this kind of like halt start at the beginning of the track a couple of times,
and she's like, uh-huh.
Yeah. I think she's making fun of the Olympia gals.
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. My clickbait headline for Live Through This is,
in the midst of a cultural hurricane, Hole delivers one of the eras defining records.
I was really surprised at how good this record is. I really didn't listen to it a ton when it came
out of me. I knew of them and I liked her voice and stuff. But this felt like, I mean, it's so hard
not to tie this back to Nirvana. There's so many threads that are just interwoven between them.
But it felt like a really good representation of that Seattle grunge sound that there's not a lot
of really good records that I think capture that. And this one I would say is. So yeah,
I was really surprised by how good this was. There's a lot of aggression, but there's a lot
of soft moments too and a lot of diversity and dynamics to the sound. And it's lyrically
interesting. It feels like a very personal record for Courtney. I feel like I get to really
understand her a little bit as a person throughout this album. Especially probably for female
audiences, it's easy to take the lyrics and apply it to either what you've experienced. Or in my
case, I was applying it to maybe trying to recognize someone else's view on a time,
on that time in the nineties and the way that she came up and my opinions on her were probably
biased by what was in the media at the time that she was, that she was somehow on the coattails.
But I think she had all the talent and everything to make it on her own. She didn't need Kurt Cobain
for that. Totally agree. It was weird how much of a sort of like a tabloid character she became.
This was almost like an opportunity to give her side of it. It feels like a little bit.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, especially after this with addiction issues and the media just
hounding her and blaming her for Kurt's death and stuff. I'm sure the aftermath was maybe not
worth it. I don't know. Yeah. All right. Well, we move on and listen to a little bit of another
one of the big singles off the record, Doll Parts. That one line there just reminded me of that Taylor
Swift song we listened to about the guy who only breaks his favorite toys or something.
Right. He only loves them because he likes to see them break. I'll leave that to you. You're the
Swifty of the group. So Doll Parts was supposedly written after she met Kurt Cobain, explores themes
of love, insecurity, and fear of rejection. She said that it was about Cobain expressing her
feelings of uncertainty about how interested he was in her. The song's only three chords,
which I didn't notice because it sounds pretty sophisticated and complex. I think that is why
this whole album works because dealing with just huge emotional issues, but presenting it in a
relatively simple way, in a pop way. Well, even the Doll Parts metaphor where if she's
self-conscious about is he liking me, it's about her eyes, her hair, she's just a bunch of parts.
It's an interesting way to think about the way that women are viewed by men and then for them
to try to have to sift through all that when getting to know someone. Yeah, it's interesting.
My clickbait headline is love tell story of a young woman in a man's world and dares us to live
through this. Zing. Yeah, just I was quite surprised by how much I like this album.
Yeah. I do have Taylor Swift on the brain just because we recently discussed it. But
there are some parallels here, singing about these personal things that are very specific.
Taylor Swift in her own way says edgy things, she's in your face, but just the delivery is
so different. Yeah, it's a different era of music.
Yeah. But I really enjoyed a lot of the lyrics, just how dark they were in Miss World. I'm Miss
World, somebody kill me, kill me pills. No one cares, my friends. It's just so damn dark.
I don't even think she's being melodramatic like Morrissey is. It feels like she means it.
Yeah, I think that's the problem, especially this era of music. I think we saw the depression and
stuff from Soundgarden and others, Alice in Chains was metaphorical, but these people were,
a lot of these folks were suffering and trying to get it out in song and we were celebrating to it
instead. Yeah, reading through her bio, she's just had such a life experience and you hear it in this
album. A couple little fun facts. The album was dedicated to Joe Cole, who was a roadie for
Black Flag, who was shot and killed in 1991, apparently after a whole show. So that's why
they dedicated it to him. And then of course, there's the rumors that swirled that Kurt Cobain
was ghostwriting the album. That's been debunked for years. It's ridiculous. But Time Magazine in
2006 said something like, this is a quote, live through this is clearly a woman's work
and is far more swaggering than any album, any grunge man ever came up with. I like that.
I'm not even going to make it a sexist thing here.
Yeah. So the other great songs, Jennifer's Body deals with the kidnapping and abuse and murder of
Colleen Stan. A movie has been made, I believe, since then with that title. And Softer Softest
about Courtney's troubled childhood with lyrics where it says, P girl gets the belt.
P girl gets the belt.
Emotional and physical abuse she endured while growing up. And she explained that the songs about
a girl who always smelled like pee in your class and it was her, which made me very sad.
Yeah. She lived through it.
She did. She did. So yeah, Live Through This is a dark, angry album with hopefully getting anger out,
giving people some comfort of their feeling that way. And you definitely need to check it out
if it was something that you kind of passed over back in the 90s.
Can you dig it?
Well, it's been an angry week, you know, where you guys able to dig anything else,
something to calm you down, explore some other emotions.
Yeah. I got a few things in my, my knapsack here.
Over my shoulder.
That's the one you took on your safari.
Yes, indeed. All right. Actually I've been circling back through some new releases from 2024,
seeing if there's anything I overlooked. And there were a couple of things.
The first one is from an artist by the name of Judith Hill,
bought a record a few months ago called Letters from a Black Widow. I may recognize Judith. She
was a backing singer for Prince and Michael Jackson, as well as some other pretty well-known artists.
She's learned to play guitar and she put out a really compelling record here.
Let's play, uh, Runaway Train.
Most catchy song on the album, but it's a really solid album overall.
Yeah. I mean, I think Don and I were both expecting a cover of Runaway Train by Soul Asylum.
Yeah. I know.
All you up in the...
Yeah. Shut up.
I'll check it out. Yeah.
All right. And the last one for me is from Cosmozzy Washington.
Album is called Fearless Movement. This is a double album, I believe.
It's his seventh studio for the saxophonist and band leader.
It's got a lot of different features on it, including Andre 3000.
On flute?
On flute.
All right.
Yeah. On flute. George Clinton and B.J. the Chicago Kid. Really interesting jazz album.
It's an ambitious record. This is Asha the First.
Cool. I haven't listened to any like modern jazz records this year, I don't think so.
Kind of funky.
It's got some funk. It's got some like some 70s throwback that I like sound to it.
I'm digging it.
Cool.
Don, what would you dig on if you were digging?
Well, uh, it's finally happening.
Oh, Don, I'm so happy for you.
I am pretty excited.
You're glowing. You're glowing.
So, The Cure are in fact releasing an album on November 1st. It's going to be called
Songs of a Lost World. I mean, Robert Smith has been talking about this since,
you know, since the last one came out. So there is a song out there now called Alone.
It's actually the opening cut from the album.
Every song you ever sing.
Yeah, it sounds really up and happy and centric.
Nice.
Yeah.
It's a different guy.
So I did see them last year and they performed a bunch of newer songs and I do think that's
going to kind of be the mood of the album.
And he lost his parents and a brother over the last 10 years.
So that's too bad, but I'm sure it's going to make some good music.
Yes. Yeah, they do that well.
And then another thing I found, which was kind of interesting, Creed Bratton.
Oh, I just heard.
No, not that Creed.
Oh, damn it.
But Creed from the Office. That's actually his real name, Creed Bratton.
He was a member of the Grassroots and I mean, he's been putting out music,
you know, for a long time. He has a new one called, I think it's pronounced Dowel Pop,
spelled Towel Pop.
Yeah, here's a song called Tall Grass.
Really, is that it? You're enjoying it too, huh?
Yeah, it's pretty, it's...
Hey, I want to check this out.
Kind of rootsy and bluesy.
Creed, wow.
Not what my ears pictured.
Wow, his like artist profile photo, he looks really good.
Doesn't look like Creed at all.
Yeah, that was just the makeup for the show.
He's that good of an actor.
What are you digging, dude?
Well, Billy Strings is back with a new album.
Seems like it's a double, it's 20 tracks.
It's called Highway Prayers.
Billy Strings is a, I guess, a genre defying musician.
For those who don't know, plays bluegrass
and it blends traditional elements of rock and other genres.
Kind of a jam band-ish sort of guy.
So why don't we check out a little bit of Ledfoot.
So co-produced by John Bryan and features all those genres and influences and
gets to his roots in Michigan while delivering that laid back, enjoyable sort of music.
Sure, that's going to be making some year endless, I had a guess.
I was at the record store the other day, the vinyl to double.
50 Doll Hairs.
Woohoo.
Yoza.
That's a lot of body parts.
It certainly is.
Also, we mentioned this album actually on our 1984 top albums episode.
But it's ZZ Top Eliminator from 1983.
I just picked up a vinyl copy.
It's original pressing from that era.
Let's listen to a little bit of Sharp Dressed Man.
So legendary rock band with that distinctive blend of blues infused rock, catchy riffs,
their beards, of course, and then the synthesizers that make their way onto this record and make
it very 83 but also make it pretty fucking cool.
If I had been on that 83 show, we would have been rocking this album guys.
This was a staple at my house growing up.
Nice.
Give me all your loving, legs, other hits on there.
But yeah, if you haven't listened to it in a while or ever, check it out.
Well, what are you digging?
Let us know.
Join us on the socials, Facebook, Instagram and threads.
Also on our website, albumnerds.com.
It will be a discovery of extraordinary value.
It's about that time on the show when I'm reminded of the great American writer, Mark Twain.
I think about him every day.
All right.
He said anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than
anything on which it is poured.
Smart guy.
With that in mind, let's bring out my friend and yours, Wadbot, to see what we'll be talking
about on next week's episode.
In the 1980s, hip hop solidified its place as a powerful musical force and evolved rapidly
throughout the decade.
Next time, you'll be diving into the wonders of 80s hip hop.
And who knows, you might just find yourself busting a move.
I said hip hop, hippie to the hippie to the hip, hip hop, you don't stop a rocking.
What do you think guys?
Oh, that sounds like some classic hip hop.
1980s style.
Cool.
It's tricky to rock a rhyme, no rock a rhyme.
That's right on time.
It's tricky.
These are very awkward moments.
I thought we were battling.
That's next week.
Well, what's your favorite 80s hip hop record?
What else are you listening to?
Leave a comment on our website or email us at podcast at albumnerds.com.
You can follow us on Facebook, Instagram and threads at Album Nerds.
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Also, if you'd like to support the show, you can do so via PayPal at albumnerds.com slash support.
Thank you so much for joining us and welcome back.
Andy, everyone.
Welcome back.
We'll catch you next time with some 80s hip hop.
Thanks for listening, everybody.
See you then.
Go on, take it.
No, I can't do it.
I can't even hit the note.
I think we started too high.
Yeah, bring it down.
Don hands, Don eyes, Don skin, Duffin eyes.
See you next time, everybody.