Gravity All Nonsense Now

This post is the result of a brief conversation on Facebook, which turned into an entire thread, and is now a blog post because fuck it, why the hell not?

My friend and I were discussing Marilyn Manson. I forget why - do we really need a reason? After comparing favorite songs (friend favors Lunchbox and Tourniquet, whereas I prefer Apple Of Sodom and Cryptorchid) we both simultaneously agreed that Antichrist Superstar was a perfect album, flawless from start to finish.

Then, of course, we had to start discussing what other albums - in our humble opinions - were also flawless. And, of course, because this is my blog, I will now list the albums that I personally consider to be flawless from start to finish.

Antichrist Superstar - Marilyn Manson

We'll start with the album that initiated this discussion, Manson's second album Antichrist Superstar. Released in 1996, nothing like this had ever been heard before: blasphemous, sacrilegious, blatantly challenging the core morals of everything Good and Pure in America. People had been eagerly awaiting the rise of the Antichrist and the return of Jesus, so Manson gave them what they wanted. Of course, the backlash was immediate and vicious. Kids loved it, parents hated it, and the more it was condemned the more copies it sold. It's a fucking powerful operatic, intricately ugly and morbidly beautiful. It's exactly what everyone fears it might be, and so is Manson.

Operation Mindcrime - Queensryche

Say what you want about Geoff Tate's dubious hairstyles, he's got the pipes. Mindcrime, released in 1988, was revolutionary and ahead of its time, both musically and conceptually speaking. Also written as a rock opera, Mindcrime tells the story of a junkie turned political assassin and is punctuated throughout with Roman Catholic undertones. Best track - the ten plus minute long Suite Sister Mary. I wish I still owned this album, but alas - I wore my cassette out and the last time I went looking for it, it was out of print and available only at prices which bordered on ridiculous.





ZoSo (Untitled) - Led Zeppelin

Yeah, um...duh.





















Sabotage - Black Sabbath

I came upon this album as a teenager when I was working in a record store. It had been special ordered and had been sitting, collecting dust, for weeks, so I gave the potential customer a reminder call...only to be told by his mother that it would not be picked up anytime soon because her son was currently serving a lengthy prison sentence. So rather than return it, I bought it for myself. It immediately became my all time favorite Sabbath album, every track a smoking gem of wrath and dementia. If this album had also contained the track War Pigs, I might have exploded from an overload of awesome.



Broken - Nine Inch Nails

Pure, crystalline hatred and destruction, boiling with self loathing, seething with disgust, compressed into a thirty minute long EP and jammed right the fuck into your carotid artery at mach fucking 5. Nothing surpasses this shrieking assault on your eardrums and nerve endings as this musical equivalent of a scud missile. Nothing. This album summed up an entire fucking generation: enraged, exhausted and determined to crash and burn with as much ferocity and twisted, molten metal as possible.







Paul's Boutique - Beastie Boys

Admittedly, the B-Boys first album - Licensed To Ill -  was fun, but it wasn't serious. Paul's Boutique, released three years later in 1989, was the leap from puberty to maturation. It was still fun, dirty minded and silly, but the music was multilayered now, an homage rather than a spoof this time around. Check Your Head, released in 1992, would cement the band as serious musicians with a powerful message and a genre-changing influence, but Paul's Boutique caught everyone's attention and held them for the long haul.






Within the Realm of a Dying Sun - Dead Can Dance

If you can listen to any track off of this album without getting a severe case of the chills, there's something wrong with you. Lisa Gerrard's haunting vocals rule this musical necropolis of an album, moving ghostlike from the heat of the Middle East to the ruins of ancient Greece. This has been a goth staple since 1987, when it was released, and has since become an icon of the genre, an example to which all other goth ambient artists look in awe and fail to reach.








Deadwing - Porcupine Tree

Damn, it was so hard to narrow it down to this album, having to choose between it and both In Absentia and Fear Of A Blank Planet. But ultimately I went with this one, because...well, because PROG I guess. From the straightforward rock heavy Shallow to the dreamy, kodachrome colored Mellotron Scratch, Deadwing really established Porcupine Tree as a band which could not be nailed down to any one genre, ever.

But damn it was hard to choose!
Fuck, I forgot Stupid Dream!






Grace For Drowning - Steven Wilson

ALSKDJFHG*!&@^#%$!!!

Urban dictionary defines "alskdjfhg" as The common phrase used when an Interweb user pretends like they really just slammed the keyboard in anger. When in all actuality they really just pressed the middle row of keys in a "left, right, left, right, etc." sequence until they have successfully hit all of the keys. I describe it as the feeling I got when I first heard the song Raider II performed live. Times that by a million gabillion zillion and you have the album Grace For Drowning.





Vegas - The Crystal Method

If it were possible to purchase kaleidoscope colored music in jimmy-frosted waffle cones at the summer carnival, it would definitely be Vegas by The Crystal Method, and it would taste like neon heaven angel lollipops spinning golden discs on unicorn horns.









Astro-Creep 2000 - White Zombie

"White-trash-on-acid metal" is how this album was described when it was initially released. I bought it on a whim one night, having heard only a short snippet from the song More Human Than Human which had been featured on the pilot episode of the television series Millennium. I was fucking thrilled to see an actual girl was a group member - a bass playing, ass-kicking, real live sexy hardcore GIRL! - and I wore the tape out within a month, entranced by its wicked trailer trashy monster movie grooviness.







Ænima - Tool

It seems somehow appropriate that the first copy of this album that I ever owned was taped from a dead man's disc. I held onto that tape until it unspooled, partially because it was a memento of a murdered boy whose CD copy had died with him, mostly because I played it constantly, every day, over and over, all the goddamned time. This blisteringly angry and achingly desolate album almost hurts to listen to. It's like watching someone who thinks they are all alone and unobserved masturbate and cry at the same time.






October Rust - Type O Negative

The unofficial soundtrack for Autumn/Halloween. When you're a goth you're a goth all the way, from your first black hair dye to your last...well, you get it. And when you're a goth, it's not truly October until you've put Type O Negative's least worst CD on the player and blasted it for the whole world to hear.

And here I end, not because I've run out of albums but because I'm tired and my eyeballs are starting to feel like sandpaper. I've been writing for two solid hours now and I have to stop. So I'll leave you with the immortal words of Anthony Burgess:

Oh bliss! Bliss and heaven! Oh, it was gorgeousness and gorgeousity made flesh. It was like a bird of rarest-spun heaven metal or like silvery wine flowing in a spaceship, gravity all nonsense now.

You're welcome.