Blast from the past albums #9: BLACK STONE CHERRY - Black Stone Cherry (2006, Roadrunner)

In this series of posts I'll discuss an album I picked up as a teenager or in my early 20s and haven't listened to in a very long time.

I used to read a lot of music magazines back in my school days - stuff like Classic Rock, Metal Hammer, Terrorizer and Ultimate Guitar (well, alright, the last one was a guitar-focused mag, but they reviewed albums too). Around 2006/2007, Black Stone Cherry were getting a lot of press, and I remember their song 'Lonely Train' featuring on a Southern rock-themed freebie CD with an issue of Classic Rock. I loved that song so much I went out and bought this album, which was at the time the only one Black Stone Cherry had under their belt. Since I was still in the early years of my metal/rock obsession at that point in time, I think this album may actually have been one of the first I'd bought from a new band. I was still discovering legacy bands at that point, so yeah - I think this may have been one of the earliest 'new' bands I was into at the time. Well, when I say was "into" them - I actually remember being a little disappointed with the rest of this disc when I heard it. In my opinion none of the other tracks were up to the same standard as 'Lonely Train', except for maybe opener 'Rain Wizard'.

I guess I fell for the hype with this one. I like to think I'm pretty good at avoiding this, although there have been other times where I've caved in and bought an album to see what all the fuss was about (Deafheaven's Sunbather, Trivium's Ascendancy, Machine Head's The Blackening etc.). Don't get me wrong, sometimes all the hype is deserved - but there's something off-putting to me when a lot of people are effectively trying to sell me someone else's record. I still haven't heard anything by Blood Incantation, let alone that Absolute Elsewhere album from 2024 that everyone bangs on about. It's even the same with TV shows - I still haven't seen Game of Thrones!! I'm sure it's great, but I don't care enough to watch it myself! I know, I know - I'm being obtuse!

Anyway! Back to Black Stone Cherry. Maybe they weren't hyped by every rock fan and it was just the UK press, I don't remember. But I do remember a lot of those publications comparing them to legendary Southern rock acts like Lynyrd Skynyrd, which is just insane to me. I'm no Southern rock expert, but it's a genre I still like for the most part. And I suppose I would call myself a fan of Blackfoot and Molly Hatchet, and I do love the odd Skynyrd track too. But BSC don't sound anything like any of those bands to my ears. And I don't know why I was even expecting this 20ish years ago either, because like I said at the beginning of this article, the only song I'd heard was 'Lonely Train' - and that's just a great song that even borders on heavy metal up to a point. I do hear Southern rock influences on the album, sure. Southern-influenced hard rock feels like a better label to me than fully-blown Southern rock. And to be brutally honest with you, I completely jumped off the BSC bandwagon right after this debut - I never bought anything from them that came later. Wikipedia sticks the 'hard rock' badge on them first, with Southern rock following close by. 

Enough of that. Let's talk about the songs. Well, I still love 'Lonely Train'. The riffs are killer, the chorus is simple yet extremely effective and the song in general is just a good rockin' time with commercial appeal too (but not in a negative way). Good songwriting, that's what it is. It still makes playlists for me all these years later, and I do still enjoy 'Rain Wizard' too. Maybe the verses are little lacking, but that massive chorus is really hard not to love. 'Backwoods Gold' too, is simple and maybe even poppy in terms of it's vocal hooks - but it has enough grunt to still be hard rock. Again, good songwriting. 'When the Weight Come Down', despite not hearing it for such a long time, immediately came back to me when I heard it again for this blog post. And it only brought back positive memories, so I must like it! I also kinda like the sleazy cover of the Yardbirds' 'Shapes of Things' - it gives me nice summertime feels for some reason, and I forget I'm even listening to a cover. It fits in so well. Oh, and 'Tired of the Rain' is a gem as well. It makes nice use of '70s-style rock organs, and this track in general feels the most old-school of the lot. Aside from the modern production of course, this is maybe the most classic Southern rock-sounding number of the lot.

And as far as anything else I like about this album goes, well I generally like Chris Robertson's vocals. I won't say he's great (sometimes he sounds like he's struggles on the higher-ranging parts), but he definitely has a unique tone that makes him easily identifiable. That counts for something. Also his and Ben Wells' guitar playing is solid too. The riffs may be a little generic at times, but they never sound bad. The lead guitar work and licks are legitimately good however, and I also like how they throw in riffs that sound more metal than rock here and there throughout the record. They give the songs more balls. The production too, is great. Modern, yes, but not the point where everything sounds over-produced. The guitar tones are really nice and crunchy, and the album as a whole is pleasant on the ears without being too fluffy or shiny.

It's a shame that there's a sizable portion of filler to sit through on this disc. No flat-out shitty tracks - they don't stick out like sore thumbs and do at least continue in the same style as the good songs on here. They're just... a bit boring, and the hooks don't come close to the songs I've mentioned that I do like. 'Rollin' On', 'Drive', 'Shooting Star', 'Crosstown Woman', 'Hell and High Water'... I've just sat through this record and I can't remember how any of them actually go. I'm a metalhead first and foremost, so hooks aren't everything to me - but a hard rock album with mainstream appeal like this needs memorable hooks to be good in my opinion. And these songs just don't have 'em, whereas the best ones do.

A bit of a mixed bag this one. I still think 'Lonely Train' is the best song on here, but there's a bunch of others that are really good too. And thankfully nothing on here is downright embarrassing or completely unlistenable, but that's still not enough to excuse the fact that there is a fair share of filler to sit through. The album's too long despite lasting 46 minutes in total! Naturally, hearing this disc again for the first time in who knows how long hasn't made me want to go out and buy more Black Stone Cherry albums. I mostly still feel the same way about it now as I did nearly 20 years ago. But hey, it certainly doesn't suck. It just sits somewhere between okay and good!
Adam's rating: 6/10

Blast from the past albums #8: MUNICIPAL WASTE - Massive Aggressive (2009, Earache)

In this series of posts I'll discuss an album I picked up as a teenager or in my early 20s and haven't listened to in a very long time.

My relationship with Municipal Waste is pretty simple. I like them, find them to be hellish fun on stage (they never disappoint live - I've seen them a handful of times over the years), but I've never had much interest in actually collecting their albums. In fact, Massive Aggressive was the first one I ever picked up. I bought it back in 2009 when it was first released, and since then the only other Municipal Waste album I've bought is 2012 The Fatal Feast. It's not that I find their albums are weak per se, I just never felt the urge to buy more of them. And it has nothing to do with the fact they're a thrash/crossover metal band - for example, a lot of Hirax's albums are made up of similarly short bursts of crazy thrash (minus the humour) and I own plenty of their releases. I guess MW are just a band I like, but don't love!

Anyhow, I'm listening to Massive Aggressive again for the first time in fuck knows how many years, and I'm digging it right now. The songs are kind of hard to distinguish from one another - other than the stupidly catchy 'Mech-Cannibal' and maybe the punky mania of 'Media Skeptic', this album sort of meshes together as one adrenaline-pumping, sweaty mess of lyrically humorous, comic book-like thrash metal with hardcore punk tendencies. Well, I guess you could say that's crossover thrash in a nutshell? Whatever! The fact the songs all blend together isn't really an issue. There's 13 of them, which sounds like a lot, but the entire album only lasts 28 minutes anyway. Other than the final track, 'Acid Sentence', not 1 of them lasts 3 minutes. One-trick pony albums/bands like this can be excused for this if the music is actually decent, which it is. Municipal Waste aren't going to set your world alight with this record, but if you have similar music tastes to me then you're probably gonna enjoy it too. Which is funny, because on Metal Archives this is the lowest rated MW album with an overall rating of just 55% from 9 reviews. Not that Metal Archives is the definitive place for a general consensus (just look at some of those low-scoring reviews of classics like Master of Puppets or Vulgar Display of Power...), but I find their average review scores to be pretty reliable for most albums outside the really popular ones. I guess the fact I never sank my teeth into Municipal Waste's discography means I have little to compare Massive Aggressive to (apart from The Fatal Feast and a few songs I know from The Art of Partying that is). I've seen this band live several times, and this album sounds just like the stuff they played on stage, therefore it sounds pretty good to my ears!

Aye, the songs are mostly fast and frantic with the odd mid-tempo number (the title track) or old-school style breakdown riffs within them. It's really quite impressive just how many thrashy riffs they've crammed into these short songs, and even if it's difficult to remember them all, they certainly get my adrenaline pumping. I've always thought Tony Foresta's vocals are pretty average overall; he sounds like he's straining a lot the time, but he does at least suit the nature of the music. So I can at least give the vocals a pass, even if I find the rest of the band perform at a noticeably higher level. The production is mostly decent, although I do think the guitar tones are a little on the lighter side. They have kind of a soft distortion/overdrive sound, if that makes any sense?! Like they were trying too hard to replicate '80s guitar tones - but it just doesn't give the songs the balls they could have deserved. Maybe I'm talking absolute bollocks, but there's something that's always never really settled with me in this department. Nowhere near enough to put me off the record, but enough for me to notice. That said, I do like the sound of the drums. They sound human, as daft as that sounds.

What Massive Aggressive seems to remind me most of, is Suicidal Tendencies' 1987 album, Join the Army. Not vocally of course, because Foresta sounds nothing like Mike Muir. But the intensity of the songs, the riffs and overall tongue-in-cheek attitude of the lyrics always makes me want to listen to that classic ST record straight after. Oh, by the way - I think Join the Army is 1000x stronger than Massive Aggressive. But for what it's worth, the fact Municipal Waste successfully manage to remind me of another album I love does at least put a smile on my face. And for that reason I still think Massive Aggressive is a good time overall. I don't think my opinion of it has changed much since I first bought it back in 2009 - I still have no urge to get on Ebay right now and start seeking out more of their stuff, but at the very least it scratches the crossover thrash itch for me.

In the picture is my special edition box set. In it comes the CD jewel case, a patch that was sewed onto my battle jacket back in 2009, some pin badges and a sweatband that I've lost. 
Adam's rating: 7/10