Ross in 2001
2001 was an important year for me. It was the year I first got a driver’s license, it was the year I broke my arm within a month of getting my driver’s license (while playing paintball, which is probably a story in itself), and it was probably the year I really began to come out of my shell and transform into the social butterfly I am today.
The driving part, though, that really influence how I listen to music. My first truck (’95 F-150 single cab longbed) had a great soundsystem in it. Amp powered Clarion door speakers and 2 12” JL Audio subs behind the seat. That thing was loud. And naturally, I liked when it was playing loud music. It saw a lot of nu-metalish playlists, as was the style of the day. Do the heavy rotations of Powerman 5000 and Godsmack? Nah, that shit will be funny forever. I still feel like I owe that system an apology for skimping out on rap music as a whole, though.
Metal in 2001
Album 2001 Exposue
Chimaira – Pass out of Existence Listened, but I didn’t love it
Converge – Jane Doe Did not listen
Opeth – Blackwater Park Listened, but pretty much stuck with “Bleak”
Pig Destroyer – Prowler in the Yard Had no idea what a pig destroyer was
Slayer – God Hates Us All Scrupulously avoided due to anti-god-sounding title
Slipknot – Iowa Listened, but never really got into it like their first album
Static X – Machine Probably listened to this more than any of the others
Tool – Lateralus Listened, but mainly stuck with “Schism” and “Parabola” (I could play them on guitar it was sweet)
Pass out of Existence – Nu Metal Index: 2
I’ve listened to a fair amount of Chimaira in the years between 2001 and now, but the thing that stuck out to me about this album in retrospect is how unapologetically aggressive the music is. 2001 was nu-metal’s heyday and the New Wave of American Heavy Metal was still a few years out. There weren’t many great riffs, there were too many “melodic” choruses, and no one even knew what a double-bass pedal was. Chimaira fixed ALL that. This album was a breath of fresh air released in the middle of a somewhat subdued metal scene. Though it doesn’t much new ground, this is a very solid album which influenced lots of people to listen to and play metal.
Favorite tracks: Dead Inside, Severed, Lumps
Jane Doe
If “Pass out of Existence” ran against music trends of 2001, Converge shattered them. “Jane Doe” is a very harsh listen. The vocals are incomprehensible, the guitars are grating, and the drums are spastic. But in the midst of the chaos there is sort of a central theme of the mourning of a relationship gone wrong. The tone of the music in a way reflects the emotions of the central character: humiliation, anger, regret, and eventually reflection. At times it can be brooding, but mostly “Jane Doe” functions as an eruption of anger for half an hour followed by the towering, excellent title track, which clocks in at 11:30, roughly a quarter of the entire album’s runtime. “Jane Doe” helped establish that noisy music can in fact have merit beyond its noise, which I think really influenced a lot of great mid 2000s bands. Having already more or less created the metalcore genre a few years prior with “Petitioning the Empty Sky”, Converge cemented themselves as the best, and most unique, band the genre has produced with “Jane Doe”.
Favorite tracks: Concubine, Fault and Fracture, Jane Doe
Blackwater Park
At the time they released “Blackwater Park”, Opeth had been a band for about a decade and had already released four albums. Admittedly, I’m not exactly a scholar of their early work, but based on what I’ve heard it’s very good progressive Swedish death metal. The musicianship is great, the songs are super long, and they stick with pretty standard “dark” themes, for instance their album “My Arms, Your Hearse” is a concept album about the central character becoming a ghost and following the love of his previous life around. Turns out, being a ghost makes him feel sad. So, on to “Blackwater Park”, I can’t get over the epic scale of the songs. It feels like a classic rock album in the vein of Led Zeppelin or Pink Floyd. There is a symphonic quality to the album. Opeth effortlessly shifts from death metal growls, double bass, and crushing riffs to acoustic interludes coupled with gentle singing. This great album is stands the 15 year test of time very well and almost certainly is going to go down as a cornerstone of the genre.
Favorite tracks: Bleak, The Drapery Falls, Blackwater Park
Prowler in the Yard
This album is a fucking trainwreck. It’s brutal just for the sake of being brutal, grotesque and horrific. It’s so over the top that it’s borderline cartoonish. Some of the tracks aren’t even leveled correctly from one to the next, so you have to adjust the volume constantly. This is made worse because the average track length is something like 47 seconds. They do not have a bassist. In terms of tone, I’d almost describe it as a horrorcore album, kind of the same way you’d describe the Insane Clown Posse as horrorcore, though their musical styles couldn’t be more different. Pig Destroyer is what I would expect to have happened if, say, Eminem had decided to play guitar instead of learning to rap. The main goal of everyone in the associated acts of Pig Destroyer seems to be to offend; senses and sensibilities.
All that being said, there is some really good stuff to be found here, culminating in the final track, “Piss Angel”. It shows signs of real songwriting and musical potential, and sounds GREAT turned way up. Be warned though, the computer voice usually attached to the end of the track is terrifying. Probably be sure to edit that out if you plan on adding it to a playlist.
Favorite tracks: Piss Angel
Note: Nu Metal Index is defined as follows
(Number of days between album release date and Flaw’s “Through the Eyes” – Number of days between album release date and Linkin Park’s “Meteora”) / number of days between “Through the Eyes” and “Meteora”
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