Terrifyingly good
5
By Pick My Boogers Please!
Of all the grunge albums released during the period from Nirvana’s mainstream breakthrough onwards, this one is by far the darkest. It’s also much more metal too, in fact more so than grunge. Jerry Cantrell takes Tony Iommi’s sludgy innovations and makes them darker and a perfect fit to Layne Staley’s often disturbing lyrics, which are often about the misery of addiction (heroin in this case, but really ANY addiction fits). Indeed the lyrics are very gut wrenching and self condemnatory in their honesty about how doing what one wants to actually can lead to a downward spiral towards an inevitable end, which is a stark contrast to modern day’s decadent sex obsessed garbage filth churned out like a McDonald’s hamburger and just as forgettable. Taylor Swift wouldn’t be caught dead writing about her suicidal thoughts or her loss of human connections, definitely not in this vein. There’s a reason why all four of the Big Four of thrash metal toured with this band. Dirt remains as terrifying as it was back then, in fact even more so because Staley ultimately died from his addiction, making this a haunting warning from beyond the grave. Though Hate to Feel and Sickman take time getting used to because of how dark and nauseating they are, every song is a standout. Don’t think, listen!
