Vice v7n10 Record Reviews

Green Day
Dookie
Reprise

5 Having emerged from the crust-till-we-rot 924 Gillman Street scene and cut records for Lookout! these three cartoon characters have been working with diminishing returns since signing to Warner front Reprise. Can’t see another album in them past this middle of the road piece of junk unless that video for “Basket Case” that seems to be on MTV every three and half seconds really pulls them through.

Frank Edwin Wright III

Blink 182
Cheshire Cat
Cargo Music/Grilled Cheese

6 This just seems to be a bunch of tracks from last year’s Buddah which came out on Filter re-recorded and polished up. If you like your punk poppy and bright eyed then you could do worse. A little less maniacal then the Green Day record and equally destined to the ditch of obscurity amid the bones of a million other pop-punk bands before long.

Angelic Airwave

Soundgarden
Superunknown
A&M

7 While it doesn’t have the spit and sawdust heaviness or riffing of Badmotorfinger this fourth go-around from the Seattle miserablists might just be the downer ode and coffin nail in the whole grunge things pallid casket.

Pat Lear

The Offspring
Smash
Epitaph

8 If I had to choose between this, the Green Day record and Blink182 it’d be this all the way. Sure it’s hardly re-inventing the Adolescents shaped wheel but it has all the stuff that will have you singing along in your headphones as you run home half cut kicking over rubbish bins and trying to waylay tomrrow’s hangover for as long as possible. Shame every cover they’ve done since the vinyl version of the first LP has sucks so bad though.

Poodles

Current 93
Of Ruine Or Some Blazing Starre
Durtro

10 Over ten years and at least thirty releases in and David Tibet shows no sign of giving up the avant-folk ghost just yet. Maybe he’ll be like one of those old pack horses that just drops dead one day from a life of sheer toil and exhaustion. Either way he’ll have left one of the most formidable gluts of unbridled creativity behind him, the like of which we’ll possibly never see again.

Menstruel Knight

Therapy
Troublegum
A&M

9 And it all comes together for the Northen Irish guys who you always wanted to be amazing but never quite followed through. Well, here it is in all its harsh, stop-start glory. If this doesn’t make them superstars fuck only knows what will. Worth picking up for “Screamager” alone.

Billy Blands

Pantera
Far Beyond Driven
East West

8 Did you ever see the original sleeve for this? Instead of the drill bit shattering a guys skull, like the one that you should already be holding in your hands if you have even a single iota of taste, the banned version had the drill whirring a hole in a guys ass. So much for capitalizing on the new found “commercial viability” that Vulgar Display Of Power had bought ‘em.

Ted Maul

Rodan
Rusty
Quarterstick

8 While it remains thoroughly in the shadow of Spiderland it has more than enough confusing polyrhythmic flouncy bits to make it exciting in its own right. And it has a weird butterfly that looks like it’s going to be crystalised forever in amber on the cover.

Math Jock

Sunny Day Real Estate
Diary
Sub Pop

9 Unlike every other single thing that has come out on Sub Pop in the last five years this didn’t make me want to slit my wrists headbang alone in my bedroom. Instead it made me feel like running around outside and saying good morning to people and generally that everything is going to be a-ok. Thanks Sunny Day Real Estate.

Walter Rifles