Reviews by gregorsmith

If Toxicity is the polished masterpiece, this self-titled debut is the raw, unhinged prototype. It's an absolute experience as the stop-start tempos and thrash-influenced riffs create a unique, nervous ball of energy. Serj Tankian is the star of the show here, switching seamlessly between growling and falsetto operatic singing and his lyrics balance real heavy political themes (war and the Armenian genocide) with absurdity and Dadaist humor. Standout tracks are "Sugar", "Spiders", "Soil", and "War?"

Just a fun, bouncy Pop Rock album. Belinda Carlisle has that sauce and the whole band is tight, everything is short but filled to the brim and while the production is polished and radio-friendly, the band's punk roots still shine through in the energetic tempos and driving drums.

This album is essential listening. It manages to be critically respected yet endlessly fun, proving that pop music can be both commercially massive and artistically credible.

Just a flat out ridiculous album, zero skips within, Sure "Money For Nothing" and "Walk Of Life" are way overplayed in your lifetime, but the whole flow of the album is seriously fucking good. Mark Knopfler is on fire with his guitar playing, the drums and bass are tight and even the 80s sax player gets his chance to shine with a godly tier riff on the jazzy noir "Your Latest Trick" and the vibes on "Ride Across The River" feels like an island band despite the song being about mercenaries and private wars, a theme that gets bookended in the titular "Brothers In Arms" about the futility of war, and capped by an emotional solo for the ages.

This is arguably the moment Dire Straits went from "great British band" to "global phenomenon." It was one of the first albums made famous by MTV videos and directed at the CD market, recording digitally to capture every nuance of Mark Knopfler’s fingerpicking.

Pure 80s New Wave goodness, but this is in no way a recommendation... It takes everything bands before them like Ultravox, Human League and Duran Duran had already mastered and just sloshes it about a little, then pours overs the rocks and calls it something new. I mean, this came out around the same time as Duran Duran's Rio and it just doesn't measure up.

I love Joni Mitchell, and Blue is, without a doubt, one of the most influential and emotionally resonant albums ever created. It stands as a timeless masterpiece, a raw and unflinching exploration of love, loss, and the complexities of the human heart and its strength lies in its simplicity of sparse arrangements that beautifully highlight Mitchell's unparalleled songwriting and vocal delivery, creating an intimate and deeply personal window into the artist's soul during a turbulent period of her life.

While I often find myself debating whether Blue or Ladies Of The Canyon (shockingly missing from this list) represents her absolute peak, there's something about the raw vulnerability and unadulterated honesty of this that continues to connect with me after all this time.

At this point in history, hard rock music was pretty down and dirty, but this is like painting by numbers dad rock. Absolutely lacking just about everything that makes rock, well, ROCK. Even the signature "Can't Get Enough" song is painfully bland.

Yep, sounds like late 60s San Francisco and the psychedelic scene... A dime a dozen it feels like.

Almost conceptual metal as its mixed in with Brazilian percussion, and it chugs along at a breakneck pace. Much better than I thought it was going to be after the last Sepultura album I had.

I want to say this was good, but unmemorable, better than the usual early 80s new wave dross we've already waded through to get here at least.

Absolute gratuitous prog rock wankery, as is ELP's wont... A near 21 minute "Tarkus" movement is the introduction to this album and it's just so goddamn long, the rest is serviceable for a knees up, though.

Nice enough 60s folk with the monster hits in "California Dreamin'", "Monday, Monday" and "Go Where You Wanna Go", but suffers immensely from that 60s era split stereo production where one voice or instrument is in one ear and other voices and instruments in the other. I've always hated that

A solid early Beatles album, they had finally moved away from a mixture or original and cover songs, and while this has its weak moments, the highs are so so good such as "And I Love Her", "Can't Buy Me Love", "Things We Said Today", and "I'll Be Back". A step up from the early Beatles to more mature Beatles.

Good stuff as I'm really loving the vibes of these Latin Jazz choices and this felt like a masterclass on rhythm and storytelling. It’s not just "background music", it’s an energetic piece of art. The interpolation of "America" from West Side Story was a nice touch.

Don't believe the hype? Naw, BELIEVE the hype. This is a hard hitting time capsule of the tension, the noise, and the raw energy of late 1980s America. The production by The Bomb Squad is a dense, claustrophobic wall of sound with sirens wailing, James Brown samples colliding with Slayer guitar riffs, and media snippets cutting in and out. It perfectly mirrors the sensory overload of the era and the rise of 24 hour news cycles, the crack epidemic, and the boiling racial tensions of the Reagan years.

There is zero filler here, from "Bring The Noise" to "Black Steel In The Hour Of Chaos", the album moves with the relentless pace and the interplay between Chuck D’s booming authority and Flavor Flav’s chaotic hype-man antics created a dynamic that has never been replicated.

This isn't just music for your ears... it's a history lesson for your nervous system.

Outside of "Sweet Emotion" and the worse non Run-DMC version of "Walk This Way" this album is pretty crappy, and the less said about the innuendo laden "Big Ten Inch Record" the better.

There's something to be said about thrashing dozens of minute and an half or less songs into existence. Fucking metal as fuck. Noise and confusion.

Metal as its supposed to be, fast, loud, and blasphemous

I loved the Zutons when they burst onto the scene, mainly because I've never played a saxophone, but I'm 99% sure I play saxophone at the same level or better as Abi Harding...

Anyway, back to the matter at hand, who killed The Zutons? Their record label dropped them in 2008 some 4 years and 2 more albums after this, pretty much right after Amy Winehouse and Mark Ronson made their version of the song "Valerie" a bigger hit than Zutons could ever dream, so lets say them... Still blows my mind that they did "Valerie" originally.

It feels like another Radiohead album I'm supposed to like... And I mostly do, but sometimes I'd rather listen to The Bends, you know?

Finally got that out the way, I remember being somewhat repulsed by this upon release, it was too weird, it was too different. It's only now I realise that it was me, it was always me, I wasn't weird enough to appreciate it at the time, now I can safely say I'm very weird and this tickles a brain itch like few things on this list have done so far.

So of its time, turn of the millennium beats with random lyrics thrown on to and a lot of "yaw yaw" noise and layered noodling. "Red Alert" and "Rendez-Vu" stand out as songs I heard in those turn of the millennium clubs 25 years ago, the rest is.... regrettable.