Daveportivo's Cultural Evaluation Facility

There are certain bands that encapsulate the sound of an era perfectly. They aren't nessecarily the best band, or even the most creative or unique but they are the prototype. Garbage where that band. They were post grunge, they had the dillusionment of the US alternative scene, a pinch of Nine Inch Nails and one big dollop of pop writing genius. They had the look down perfectly, Shirley Manson can stand along side Marilyn Manson as the face of the late nineties American alternative music. Similar to Manson they had the knack of crafting gorgeous subversive pop songs, after all both acts rooted them selves in nineties culture astethically but musically they were far more interested in the brooding synth hit makers of the eighties. Garbage was a stylish album but it was far from shallow it had brooding arrangements with Shirley's croon sometimes blending into the track to create a suicidally seductive groove on As Wide As Heaven or drooling with sarcasm on hit singles on When it Rains, Stupid Girl and the superb Queer. Ultimately Garbage gave the 90s US movement a fiery Scottish Leading lady who women could look up to, after all Courtney Love had far to much baggage to be a real hero.

Yes I know technically they got a seperate release so you could buy them as individual albums but lets face facts this was a double album. It even had a two versions of the same track (Don't Cry) on both editions. Use Your Illusions will always serve as the finally moment in the sun for both Guns and Roses and the hair metal stadium rock movement

as a whole. Guns last album of original materiel ensured the band would go out with a creative bang it also summed up everything good and bad about the eighties. It was one big party! We had the complete excess the over the top epics November Rain and the pompous cover of Live And Let Die. Then there was the so cheesey but you love it, tear in the eye pulling a girl out of the audience brilliance of Don't Cry. Then there's the smoking red hot bluesy rock of You Could Be Mine, Don't Damn Me and Right Next Door To Hell. Then of course we get the OTT power of Civil War and the even more pompous than thou cover of Knocking On Heavens Door. Then there's the frankly ridiculousness of Estranged. This record was a glorious tribute to the hair metal of the eighties, it had everything, by the end you'd been fucked, fallen in love, got extremely drunk, cried, made up, got married, got divorced, and died from a million STDs. It was big stupid incredibly flawed but absolutely magnificient.

After Infinite hardly set the world of fire Eminem came out firing on The Slim Shady LP. He was a man with a point to prove and fire in his belly. That fire turned into absolute rage as Eminem pulled no punches, I'm not just saying that as a lame cliche, he really let everyone have it women, homosexuals, lesbians, his mother and his wife. This was the album when Eminem found his voice and it was an angry voice. This album was aptly named this was all the menical evil Slim Shady and very little of the torn fragile Marshall Mathers. Ultimately this album was about the anger and keeping it under control or letting it loose. There was the sychofrenic My Name Is, the inner psychotic ramblings of Brian Damage, and Em's first rage against celebrity in Role Model. The album's pinnacle was the superb Guilty Conscience which pits Eminem against Dre where Em internally debates mudering his cheating wife or whether to rob a grocery store or whether to fuck an underage girl. It's perfectly demonstrates Em's sublime lyricism, it's no gimmicks, no goofs, straight up genius. Overall the album is dark and maccabre throughout you feel like your inside the brain of a mad man, he has the tone of someone slowly loosing his sanity. Unfortunately the album features the pathetic sexism and homophobia that mars his work, but it's a minor flaw in a beautifully menicial album.

In metal circles Sepultura will always be God's among men but in the mainstream they've had there hits and misses.

No one has every doubted their guitar works and the superb frantic grooves that develope throughout their albums but the unconverted have always scoffed at their rather hackneyed lyrics and message. Down with the corperation,the government is evil etc... Coming from Latin America you'd expected them to be brimming with rage but some articulation would be nice. However while Chaos A.D still suffered from cliche it was simply too damn good to resist. Sepultura proved they deserved recognition beyond the confines of their genre. It always helps when an album comes flying out the gate and Sepeltura knew their strenghts and the monster singles and sloganeering of Refuse/Resist, Territory and Slave New World set the tone perfectly. Selptura occasionsly felt bloated Amen is a bit too much but a bit too much for Sepultura is four and a half minutes. The Brazillian sluggers are at their irrestiable best with the short shap bursts in the middle of album Propaganda and the insane Biotech Is Godzilla, are like quick bursts of machine gun fire slaying all those who get caught in the crossfire.

The Smashing Pumpkins will probably be remembered as the greatest hit makers of the post-grunge US alternative scene. Throughout their career they always had problems putting it together into one coherent album. You get flashes of brilliance here and there but it would be surrounded by filler or part of an overly bloated album. Siamese Daydream struck the balence perfectly, there was still the odd duff track but the consistancy was there and the quality was definitely there. It also happen to spawn their biggest hit Today and their most beautiful and powerful song writting moment Disarm with it's lush string arrangements and Billy Corgan desperate howl "I used To Be You Little Boy". It also seems to be the album of the great lost hits Geek U.S.A and Rocket didn't even manage to make the greatest hits LP which is a war crime. Of course in between the tender moments and the the rock out moments was the greatest riff the Pumpkins ever created on the album opener that Cherub Rock. So the Pumpkins had done it they had created an album with three mamoth singles and surrounded by equally rewarding tracks right up until the tender end note of Luna.

Music For The Jilted Generation saw the Prodigy bring together all the individual aspects of their music that made them great. They took the mental rave of Charly and toned it down and refined it. They took the rock edge that would be predominant on the thinly stretched Fat Of The Land and brought it together with mad drum loops and rave samples. They also brought their knack for crafting catchy hooks, slammed it all together and remarkably it didn't sound like a clusterfuck it sounded bloody brilliant. It had depth of sound and continues to suprise to this day. There's the crunch of Voodoo People but whereas Firestarter limps along in the same gear, Voodoo People is alive with mad African drum loops and rave sirens and beeps. It sounds like society has broken down and we're going to have one big looting party followed by an dark and dirty rave. Breaking And Entering was a track that started as a arcitypal raver but grew and grew gaining more depth until it's soaring conclusion. This is also the album that spawned Poison, No Good and Their Law it was absolutely loaded and best of all it didn't overstay it's welcome or float to an aimless conclusion. It's was a lightening bolt the last and only truely great Rave album before Daft Punk and the dance brigade took the batton and never gave it back.

I hadn't listen to this album until just last year, when my Metal mate Gaz suggested that I give it ago, granted I'd heard the mamoth singles Walk, Mouth Of War, Hollow and This Love before. Vulgar Display Of Power is an album that's influence becomes immediately apparent on a single listen. It has been mined creatively, copied, adapted by so many mental bands in the near twenty years since it's release. It truely is an album of staggering strenght and it is a suprisingly accessible album to boot. This isn't a great metal album, this is a geniunely great album, because at the heart of Pantera's music are these thick irresistable grooves, this isn't a band wanking off on guitar trying to show the world how fast or how technically they can play this is a band who carefully craft a groove and they lay on some lovely (yes lovely in metal review) guitar solos and some slick riffage. As a result this is an album that feel fresh, the songs don't blend into one they stand out on individual merit, they don't hit you over the head like the album artwork suggests this is an album that draws you in, lets you get comfortable, maybe even gets you dancing before it suddenly knocks your block off with a sharpuppercut.

So after the *yawn* house wives favorite The Joshua Tree U2 wanted to show the world a few things. First of all that they still rocked, second that every so often they liked to dance and third of all that they have something resembling a sense of humour. Achtung Baby would be both a rare dose of experimintation (but not too much) and some fun. This album was probably the first step on the road to the failure of Pop but back in 1991 they nailed it and created there best album. The Edge and the ridiculously underated Adam Clayton got to have some fun laying down some serious grooves. From the world go this was an album with life and vigour Zoo Station and Even Better Than The Real Thing had all the big hooks and pretentious

choruses you'd associate with Bono but they were irresistable and dammit U2 were dancable! Clayton would grab even more of the attention as he laid down the think gooey and utterly sexy baseline to Mysterious Ways and by the time you got to U2's best single The Fly it sounded like even Bono was getting in on the act and having a laugh. So yes U2 had made an album which almost be described as cool, oh and it had some song called One on it.

I almost feel begrudged to include Automatic For The People in my list because even though it's popularity is beyond doubt, and it's influence is equally mamoth there's just something unsatisfying about this album. Perhaps it's that it marks REM stepping down from alternative rock legends to dad rock specialists. However while there will always be a sense of regret when listening to this album it's overall quality cannot be denied, and in a way, sitting along side Achtung Baby is it's rightful place. While the big rock numbers were on the way out the huge sweeping emotional arrangements were in, and in in a big way. Listening to sublime album opener Drive it's irresistable, with it's wide open arrangement and the almost depressively nonchalant cander of Stipe's vocals. It's only matched by the beauty of Nightswimming there's a real sense of injustice that a song of such unquestionable calibre is doomed to play second fiddle to Everybody Hurts; a song with such little subtly, and even less depth. Of course the latter's immediacy is it's strenght but like alot of this album it drags. After so many ballads the genius of Ignoreland, The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight and Man On The Moon come as welcome relief. All in all REM created a powerful album but an overated one, it's a downbeat slug at times but it's too big, too sweeping and too tender to ignore. Ultimately when you hear the sublime album closer Find The River you realize battling against this album is futile, the high points are so high, once you reach the peak you can't even see those tepid little foothiles you had to endure to get to the summit.