A Boxful of Rock Sound CDs (Revisiting 2000)

[Cleveland Steamer]

Hello.

It's the amazing futuristic year 2000. Not much has changed, and we don't live underwater. And your great-great-great granddaughter is a cryptofascist stock market manipulator.

Pre-the internet (or rather, pre-me having the internet aside from going in the library and asking please may I use the pornography machine), pre-grabbing mp3s for all I was worth and wallowing forever in all music ever made by anybody ever, as a culturally starved poor boy where was I to go for to get the new music I desperately craved?

John Peel was still on, but on his way out, couldn't be bother wrangling another TDK into the tape machine and making 90 minutes count, too much wet indie, the punk pound was crashing hard and the U.S. rap-metal dollar was soaring, and free CDs on magazines were the future. I bought Uncut for a while but it started getting a bit too much like cheesecake crumbs in my throat, polite music for country boys, marmite beer in a tartan flask type thing. I couldn't go "full metal", could never take the bald boys in baggy shorts jumping over office chairs seriously, but Rock Sound seemed like a nice compromise, had a mix of all the guitar music (along with some curveballs), plus sometimes a sexy poster of a goth babe bass player (of which there was no shortage of in those days, a glut of goth girl bass players in fact), and some unintentionally hilarious interviews with dipshit crow men and their foundation routines and annotated maps of their tattooed torsos.

Anyway, fuck all this. While back at my parents' home over the weekend clearing the last remaining leavings and evidence that I ever was in that house, I took down this box full of Rock Sound CDs and thought I'd give them a spin again just to remind myself of the horrible, the shitty days, awful nasty depressing crappy 2000s, spearmint rhino ashtray and green cathode tube tv, never talking to real girls days (despite being furnished with a head of full hair and slimline figure, powder blue bell bottom cords and a stinking leather jacket, quite the trophy, although no one wanted to hold me) I only discussed matters with my posters of Amy Lee and Cristina Scabbia.

Anyway, to reiterate, fuck all that. Now the unpleasantness of starting this thread has been dealt with, let's listen through, starting completely at random with the first CD I pulled out -

VOLUME 12 - April 2000

music with ATTITUDE dad you can't handle it, it's got TUDE, and the tracklist looks pretty ominous. Definitely some shit soon to be traversing the old ear canals on a junked barge of rusty metal. The majority of bands I have absolutely no memory or knowledge of (NOTE: I will *not* be doing even the barest bit of research into any of the bands or songs on these things)



Here's the tracklist if you want to play along at home

Bush - Prizefighter
Disturbed - Stupify
The Step Kings - Vibe
Idlewild - Rusty
The Drum - Diskin
Linea77 - Meat
Kill II This - Guided By Voices
Glassjaw - Siberian Kiss
Monkey Boy - Planet Paul Pope
Eyehategod - Depress
Covenant - One World One Sky
Speedy J - Drill

Initial thoughts: what the hell is most of all of this? who are these people? No, GBV aren't on here, it's a song title, weirdly. I'm going to have to listen to Bush.

Anyway, away we go!

[Cleveland Steamer]

Bush - Prizefighter. Bush. Bush. At this time in the world, pre-9/11, Bush was busy being, turns out, not even close to the worst US president in living memory, but all that tomtittery and trump shartiness is well off in the distant future. Bush is also busy being a band that I have never actively listened to and all I can dredge up about them is I think they were a fake grunge band from some nice pastoral county in the UK and one of them was married to Gwen Steffani.

Fuck hell, this is six minutes long. There's no need for that. Bad vocals, that kind of wide-throated vestigial grunge wail, curated gruffness, earnest stuff. This is quite boring melodic rock, and an odd choice to start off a dose of music with ATTITUDE in my opinion. It's just nothing, like eating soup or seeing a woodlouse. Step it up lads, my kidneys are dying.

I can't even imagine jamming this smoking a tab on a motorway bridge watching the light come and go and pining over some dark eyed alt rock lass at metal night down Sugarcubes, hoping something might just happen without me actually having to anything to instigate it.

Later, Bush. Boring.

-

Disturbed - Stupify. Now this is what I came to this barn dance for. Dumb bouncy nu metal with an absolutely hilarious frontman who in this song keeps doing a kind of quack at the end of each of his bad rap bars.

I looked the lyrics up and they go

I've been waiting my whole life for just one fuck
And all I needed was just one fuck
How can you say that you don't give a fuck?
I find myself stupified, coming back again

except he sings it like

I've been waiting my whole life for just one QUACK
And all I needed was just one QUACK
How can you say that you don't give a QUACK
I find myself stupified, coming back again

It really is funny. But despite all that, I enjoyed this. I think I would have jumped up to this, by the cig vending machine with a vodka coke in one hand and my brand new box fresh Vans squeaking in the tallow of spilt booze on the union bar floor. Lol, this rules.

I recall the singer of this band was a bit of a joke in the rock press for taking himself far too seriously. I mean, you can tell, go look at the video. Or just imagine it, you can probably do that and achieve better results.

This one gets a thumbs up but I'll never tell anyone else I listened to Disturbed today, just you, reader. Just you.

[Cleveland Steamer]

The Step Kings - Vibe. Yes, I also shouted "who the sweaty FUCK are the Step Kings?". Never heard (of) them. I expected ska. Reader, I got hairy thick thug rock with the beer sweats. Forgettable nonsense. I never thought I'd be craving a horn section and some keepy-uppys so much. Sorry, Step Kings fans reading this but this kind of CMON CMON-punctuated boring aggressively male kind of rock music belongs back in a cardboard box where it can rot in a shed.

I'm not even really sure what this kind of music is or where it's coming from. It's not really metal or grunge, just boring sort of heavy rock? Or is that just metal? I have to cop to, I was always a weird punk noise kid and thought "heavy" metal a bit of a joke anyway. I guess this sort of stuff is cribbing from Faith No More (a great band, btw), or at least Mike Patton's way of singing (not the boredoms rip off stuff, but the crooning).

Playing this song was like opening up a changing room locker and being engulfed by a great greasy cloud of man stink that is also telling you angrily to get the fuck down and shut the fuck up because it ain't playin'.

SHITE

-

Idlewild - Rusty. A band I remember liking! I don't think this is one of their stronger songs, though. It's pretty, pretty "mid" as the kids would type these days, pretty limp, though not in a biscuity way. At least it sounds like something though, a kind of music I can understand. More fragile, human, unpolished than the previous three songs.

-

The Drum - Diskin. Another "who the fuck are these and what do they want??" moment, swarm of question marks buzzing round my head. Before I listened to it, I wondered what "The Drum" would sound like. Sick beats? Scratching and samples? Club trax? Percussion heavy tribal shit?

Oh, it's loud boy rock music. Of course it is. I know RS liked to sometimes get crazy and throw in some EDM or hip hop on their CDs but mostly it's going to be this type of thing, isn't it?

Sorry, "The Drum", but I have already started to remove you from my memory banks. As you were.

[BlodwynPig]

Speedy J seems out of place being a Dutch techno monolith

[Cleveland Steamer]

I think I'm enjoying myself.

Here's Linea77 - Meat. I'm going to take a wild flying guess at this being some rap-rockin nu metal boyos with lots of quacking in it, maybe a turn table gets lit up and tipped over, loads of lyrics about how we're all meat. MEAT. Lots of yeehaws and big big trousers flapping around pudgy white ankles.


NAILED IT.


I mean yeah, I appreciate that I'm examining this stuff through the wrong end of a telescope twenty years long but I can't picture any iteration of me in my many larval stages declaring this to be "sick as fuck".

-

Kill II This - Guided By Voices. Now this really confused me at first because I looked at the CD and went wicked, GBV are on this? But no, it's a (I confidentally predict) rap metal large pantalooned, wallet on a chain, hoody on backwards, jump around anthem by some big scary boys? I mean, they are called KILL II THIS.

Do you get it? Kill II This. They are too metal for prepositions. Only Roman numerals will do.

It really really really really really really really sucks, and all the fake record scratching at the beginning does not give it any hood cred, it's clearly a bunch of dudes with nice living rooms and comfortable shoes getting some issues out in their dads shed. I doubt Bob Pollard would give it his blessing.


I'm absolutely baffled that the best song so far has been that quacking Disturbed atrocity

[Pink Gregory]

on the edge of my seat for you getting to Eyehategod, a good band

[Pauline Walnuts]

Fark Orf!

[Cleveland Steamer]

Glassjaw - Siberian Kiss. Has something misfired in my brain, or was the singer for this band in an iron lung and he could only get out of bed for an hour each day? Might be confusing them with another band.

Angry stuff, but I remember liking this song and still felt something. Felt like I was twenty again! Please ignore the wadded belt of flab at my middle section and the wilting air of defeat that rings my scalp like a halo of dust motes. I am young.

More Patton worship, but this lad can scream and mumble at the same time. I bet you can't do that. Try it. You'll be sick.

-

Monkey Boy - Planet Paul Pope. I'm flagging. I'm sagging. I'm lagging. It's getting a bit much describing this stuff. Monkey Boy. From British land. Got to give pops to Rock Sound, they did give exposure to lads from our shores. Not total perma-Yank with the phlegm bark. Monkey Boy sound like men with guitars. Talcum powder, weight gain protein pills, lifts, squats, threats. Neskwik strawberry instant milk. Carpet samples from a hay fever clinic. Jaunty clarinet solos. Not really, but we can dream.

-

Eyehategod - Depress. Another band I heard of. The name has always amused me but never listened to them to my knowledge before now. I am anticipating some sludge, and quite eagerly I might add.

Ooh this is good stuff. Bass so low it's in the fossil record. Everything underwater/ground/wear. I might be able to persevere with this idea. Oh wait it went punk speed and a bit silly. Slow it back down lads, drag it apart until it's barely beating.

Hands down best track so far. Deranged and flyblown. Ten bluebottles dying on a windowsill.

[Pauline Walnuts]

Quite like that one. v. FNM, natch.

[Cleveland Steamer]

And now to the finale, where things take an unexpected turn...

into BEATSVILLE!

Covenant - One World One Sky. This surprised me. It's a cheesy late 90s sounding club anthem thing. Fair play, free CD from 24 years ago, you got me. But who is this for? The kids buying this thing for Disturbed or Bush are going to paint their jorts brown and red at this shit that sounds like Bono rolling on Moll Flanders and flinging his wraparound shades across a mirror-dashed disco floor. It's so terrible! What is it doing on here?? I didn't think anything could be worse than all that high-calory stomping 'roid rock I've been scarfing.

-

Speedy J - Drill. fuck me westwards, another left field techno banger with warm waves of overheating synth interference and a co-op grow house beat slinking over the static of it. And unlike the Covenant track it doesn't have some conemelt bellowing "ONE LOVE" like he's on Pebble Mill miming to a keyboard demo over the top of it. Pretty boring though to be honest, feels like they ran out of rock music with attitude and had to fill the CD up at the end. By the time the "so spooky you guys" keyboard strings came in I just kept picturing a knobhead in a skeleton onesie doing stupid hand dances along with the beat, his brand new braided dreadlocks bouncing around like a shit medusa in a school play of jason and the argh-onauts.

Anyway, that's all for today! See you next time with another ROCK SOUND OF ATTITUDE CD OF MUSIC!

[dontpaintyourteeth]

Idlewild, Glassjaw and Eyehategod were/possibly still are good. That's it

[Olarrio]

I am so, so pleased you started this thread and I'm so pleased you happened to choose that particular sampler. I had it myself at the time (amongst many others) but lost it somewhere along the way.

Funnily enough I've been trying to recall that Kill II This track for yeeeaarrs. At the time I thought was pretty good as i was well into nu-metal... fuck me it is dire! The main riff is so transparently a FNM rip I've realised now.

I haven't listened to The Drum (formerly China Drum) track back yet, but the excellent boys at the Unsung podcast did an episode on their album Diskin which deserves a listen - https://pca.st/episode/5d1977e8-34a0-416b-aee7-5879dc922a3f. At the very least a band who tried to do something a bit different.

I am very much here for your next edition!

[dontpaintyourteeth]

China Drum's album Goosefair was pretty good pop-punky type gear, though I imagine if they're remembered for anything it's probably their version of Wuthering Heights

[Cleveland Steamer]

I am so, so pleased you started this thread and I'm so pleased you happened to choose that particular sampler. I had it myself at the time (amongst many others) but lost it somewhere along the way.

Funnily enough I've been trying to recall that Kill II This track for yeeeaarrs. At the time I thought was pretty good as i was well into nu-metal... fuck me it is dire! The main riff is so transparently a FNM rip I've realised now.

I haven't listened to The Drum (formerly China Drum) track back yet, but the excellent boys at the Unsung podcast did an episode on their album Diskin which deserves a listen - https://pca.st/episode/5d1977e8-34a0-416b-aee7-5879dc922a3f. At the very least a band who tried to do something a bit different.

I am very much here for your next edition!

Thanks for your kind words! Glad someone else has an interest in this potentially time-sinking, mood-ruining, niche interest endeavour.

Interesting about The Drum, I do remember China Drum a bit from hearing them in the 90s. Might check out a bit more of "The Drum" later.

[BeardFaceMan]

I recall the singer of this band was a bit of a joke in the rock press for taking himself far too seriously. I mean, you can tell, go look at the video. Or just imagine it, you can probably do that and achieve better results.

I think it was Metal Hammer that dubbed him 'Mad' Davey Draiman, which he fucking hated. Which made me laugh a lot.

Monkey Boy - Planet Paul Pope. I'm flagging. I'm sagging. I'm lagging. It's getting a bit much describing this stuff. Monkey Boy. From British land. Got to give pops to Rock Sound, they did give exposure to lads from our shores. Not total perma-Yank with the phlegm bark. Monkey Boy sound like men with guitars. Talcum powder, weight gain protein pills, lifts, squats, threats. Neskwik strawberry instant milk. Carpet samples from a hay fever clinic. Jaunty clarinet solos. Not really, but we can dream.

No guitars involved, they had just had multiple bassists. They did a concept album called The Creature of Doctor Rumpledink, which still gets played round this way. Very silly fun.

[Cleveland Steamer]

Oh thanks for that. Sounds pretty interesting actually and I'm regretting (only a little bit tho) being dismissive and silly. But hey! That's just me.

[dontpaintyourteeth]

China Drum's album Goosefair was pretty good pop-punky type gear, though I imagine if they're remembered for anything it's probably their version of Wuthering Heights

Also I didn't realise they changed their name.

[Sean Ymphs]

I had one that had One Fine Day by the Offspring, and the video for Free by Vast. Have you got that one?

[Enzo]

I had one rock sound sampler that included a Placebo cover of Daddy Cool.

[The Mollusk]

Eyehategod fucking rules.

[boki]

I reckon I've still got a bunch of these things in a box  somewhere, too.  I wonder whether we've all got the same ones, or if there's a bit of a spread.

[BeardFaceMan]

I've still got a load too, with little x's written next to the tracks where I wanted to investigate further. Got about 40 of these from the first hundred issues ripped to my hard drive.

[Shaxberd]

Quite like that Covenant track actually (at least until the vocals kick in), it's the sort of electronic body music stomper that 2000s movies would have playing over a club scene full of people in shiny bondage trousers who may or may not be vampires.

As for Stupify, it's a much better song combined with another turn-of-the-century relic:

[boki]

Haha, that's brilliant.

[Cleveland Steamer]

As for Stupify, it's a much better song combined with another turn-of-the-century relic:

hahaha love it

[Cleveland Steamer]

here we go here we go here we go

it's VOLUME 11 - March 2000

Loveable comedy despot Augusto Pinochet falls out of a helicopter at a Lincolnshire RAF base while Maggie Thatcher covers his birdcage shaped head with her overcoat. World Of Leather goes out of business forever, to the chagrin of private dentists, hi-fi enthusiasts and hog mechanics everywhere. I talk to a girl in a Lincoln night club and get an ashtray smashed over my head. And Slipknot are on the new Rock Sound CD.




ATTITUDINOUS TRACKLIST

Slipknot - Spit It Out
Staind - Mudshovel
Pitchshifter - Everything's Fucked
Six By Seven - Ten Places To Die
Southpacific - Analogue 9
One Minute Silence - If I Can Change
Misery Loves Co. - Your Vision Was Never Mine To Share
Inertia - Angel (Razed In Black Mix)
Super$hit 666 - Crank It Up
Oleander - You'll Find Out
Groop Dogdrill - Sour Milk

we ain't stoppin the beats is droppin


Slipknot - Spit It Out (Overcaffeinated Mix). I'm just going to say, THIS SLAYS.

Out of all the big "nu" metal lads, Slipknot were probably the most credible, and I still see kids in in official Knotwear(?), which is more than you can say for anyone else on this CD. I was a bit old for their shenanigans at the time, and they did seem a bit like a record executive's idea of extreme metal, quite derivative of other stuff. But fair play to getting a load of their mates to pop down to Luvyababes, pick up a werewolf mask and get paid for doing dead crow semaphore at the back of the stage.

This is great though. The squirrelly guitar lines going left and right in the verse, the mad biscuit tin lid drumming, tight as Page Hamilton's foreskin, "fuck me I won't do what I tell me" rages the one with octopus arms coming out of his bicycle helmet. You fuckin tells em pal.

Corey Taylor had a column in RS (not sure how often he wrote for them, the mags are long pulped by the British Heart Foundation), the only one I can remember is one where he is having a shit and he gets so angry that racism exists that he forgets to wipe his arse properly and gets an itchy cleft in his boilersuit later at the clam bake. Poor lad.

-

Staind - Mudshovel. Crusty pyjama bottoms and eggy lapels. Dried on prawn madras and spunky shreddies. Every gargled syllable is a soggy digestive. Staind. But they were a... a thing, weren't they? Imagine the threadbare balding 35-year-old who sings in your band coming into the practice room one day and saying "right, we're not called Chakka Demons And Pliers anymore, we're called Staind. No "E". Yes, that's right. Staind. As in underpants. Any questions, no, good, Bobby wind that shit down to drop D."

-

Pitchshifter - Everything's Fucked. I never liked this band and I think they just got worse when they really went for the industrial-metal participation trophy. From Nottingham, I think. But I bet they wish they were in LA sharing a formaldehyde jacuzzi with Trent Rezner and his bolt-cutter crew. Bad stuff. Piss shift... shitter, more like. Everything's fucked indeed.

[Cleveland Steamer]

Six By Seven - Ten Places To Die. Another Nottingham band. I was looking forward to hearing this because I have them filed away as 'quite good' in my circuitry. Well, it's very "of its time". Something like the Cooper Temple Clause? or The Boxer Rebellion? Member thems? It's got quite a drone on, an atmospheric slow thing, working it's way towards something, building, edging, kids here for Slipknot getting impatient (they want to explode like orchids and sea urchins).

I assume songs on these CDs are chosen by record companies or representatives of the bands themselves, so if you've got your one chance to get your shit out to the kids, why choose a five minutes plus drag stomp that barely gets off its first chord? Brave move? Different times? Wouldn't fly with today's mosquito children and their insta-vape tik-tok crush sugar fit attention spans, their minds are already flitting off to the next pumping tube of stumulants the minute they've pierced one baby blue sweet valve of bleb.

-

Southpacific - Analogue 9. A nice surprise, this. A bit of almost ambient, post-rock-dreamgaze. Not a hairy shouting man to be heard, just lilting waves of hawaiian keyboard settings. A break in all the aggro. I was worried some over-sensitive wispy vocals might come floating in on a gossamer thread like a spider chris martin, but nope, nice and instrumental. Definitely one to put on that tape you're making for the girl in your philosophy class that you can't even make eye contact with.

[Cleveland Steamer]

One Minute Silence - If I Can Change. I saw One Minute Silence live, I'm sure I did. Just don't ask me where, why, how or when. A fella's arm come out of his socket in the pit. Gnarly.

They aren't punk though. Which I was thinking. Punk? The turntable scratches are implied, but they are there in the mind of the borgeious listener. Nu Metal thru und thru. Chugging chorus, tuff guy vocals. I wouldn't want my arm coming off while this was going on. Someone been listening to too much Rage Against the Machine, except without the Michael Winslow wheep wheep guitar sounds. It's far too much in the testosterone zone for me.

I bet when the man was singing this, right, bet he was doing that thing where he whips his head away to the side after each line, then shakes his head, then he jumps up, like really high as he can in his kicks (careful don't snag your wallet chain on the lights you might rip your jorts), does a shuffling hand jive, maybe duck walks around the stage, a lovely boy, his arse is hanging out.

-

Misery Loves Co. - Your Vision Was Never Mine To Share. GOTH BARITONE BLACKOUT BLINDS  PETE STEELE CRYING IN MONOTONE LONGHAIR   EXCEPT FOR ONE WHO IS BALD

WE ARE VERY SERIOUS AND SOLEMN     START UP THE REACTOR
CLEAR THE STAGE FOR TOPLESS TATTOO PARADE
   DO YOU LIKE MY TATTOO DEPICTION OF THE LAST SUPPER EXCEPT THE DISCIPLES ARE ALL GEORGE FROM RAINBOW AND THERES A BUNGLE JESUS AND A ZIPPY JUDAS

THE WAILING OF TEETH  AND THE GNASHING OF GARMENTS

GNARRR

-

Inertia - Angel (Razed In Black). And here's another off-roader, a wild card club banger chucked in the concrete mix just to fuck up the whole structure. Some laughable "evil" vocals in here, and the second time I'm thinking of Trent Reznor's discarded stems and patches going round in a shite dish washer fuck.

The kids are getting restless.

[Cleveland Steamer]

Super$hit 666 - Crank It Up. Brilliant band name. Ronseal band name. All that dollar sign slightly harshes my chubby. I hope these guys are filthy.

UGH. This is a big sloppy dose of that "new rock n roll" shite that was going around alongside the metal. I hated that stuff. There were and are a ton of amazing bands I love doing raw dirty rock and roll (Oblivions, Cheater Slicks, The Gories, Dirtbombs that kind of thing) and silage like this and the Datsuns and the Hives and the Strokes was so sanded down and bacteria wiped. BIN IT. Crank it up and put it in the BIN. And then FLUSH the bin UP YOUR ARSE.

-

Oleander - You'll Find Out. More of the same, although this is a bit more "board-room brainstorm session punk" than roll, but still it's strutting around like it thinks it's God Stewart.

-

Groop Dogdrill - Sour Milk. I thought I remembered this band but then I remembered that the band I was remembering was Dog Fashion Disco. And then I thought no there's another band I'm thinking of, but that band was Kerbdog. And then I just went into a pineal spiral of thinking of all bands with "dog" in their name and none of them was Groop Dogdrill.

This is not what I was expecting anyway (gang vocals, army cadet jogging, punk energy, street glowering) from a band called Groop Dogdrill. It's slow and whispery and goes LOUD then quiet again. Could someone who listens to The Deftones tell me if this is ripping them off? I feel like it might be.

It bored me after two minutes and the whole thing is seven fucking me minutes long. Reader, I did not make it.

And that's the attitude of March, 2000. Later.

[Cleveland Steamer]

I'm just going to link this in here because I woke up with it grunting and wheezing in my inner ear and I think it's so rad