LATE TO THE PARTY #2: GLASSJAW - 'WORSHIP AND TRIBUTE'

First of all, I just wanted to say a huge thanks to everyone who bit their tongue when it came to me admitting that I had never heard Milo Goes To College by Descendents (read my take on it HERE). While I know that you shouldn't really need an excuse to check something out for the first time, I thought this would be a really cool way of making those confessions, and I hold absolutely no shame in making them.

That said, there are undoubtedly going to be some albums covered in the not-so-distant future that I know I've had so many opportunities to listen to before now, and I just need to take the WHAT?!'s and ARE YOU FUCKING CRAZY?!'s on the chin.

I was a little bit anxious about this one, but what's the use in fannying around? UNTIL THIS WEEK, I HAD NEVER LISTENED TO GLASSJAW. Not a single note. If you were to have said the words 'Daryl Palumbo' to me last week, I wouldn't have thought 'Cosmopolitan Blood Loss'; I would have thought 'Beating Heart Baby', before strutting my stuff like an epileptic Jagger impersonator. Who can blame me?

If I didn't know who Daryl Palumbo was and you played me Head Automatica and Glassjaw back-to-back, I would have never put two and two together. After hearing WORSHIP AND TRIBUTE, I hold Palumbo in the same regard as Jason Aalon Butler from letlive. or perhaps even Chino Moreno from Deftones: a vocalist who is sometimes so violently emotional in their delivery that it sounds like they're on the verge of imploding, while also being able to schizophrenically switch to honey-smooth, insanely soulful crooning.

In fact, that's probably a really good way of describing this album: schizophrenic. It's an absolute headfuck from those ear-swapping guitars at the beginning of 'Tip Your Bartender' to that devastating breakdown at the end of 'Two Tabs Of Mescaline'. Even after intently listening to it three times, Worship And Tribute is continuously unpredictable and batshit crazy.

Before listening to Glassjaw, I'd seen them placed with the likes of The Used, Thrice, Brand New etc. as part of that second wave of emo/post-hardcore, and that makes sense when you hear the broodier, more delicate tracks on the album (especially 'Must've Run All Day' and 'Trailer Park Jesus'). What surprised me about Worship And Tribute, however, was how stylistically similar it was to the more progressive side of latter-day nu-metal. 

Tagging it with that sub-genre may seem like a taboo to some of you, and maybe 'alternative metal' would do it more justice, but if you listen to the scratchiness of the guitars, and the chorus on 'Cosmopolitan Blood Loss', there's definite links to bands like Deftones and Alien Ant Farm. I loved that scene as a kid, and ANThology ruled my stereo alongside P.O.D.'s Satellite, and I even went through this phase a couple of years ago of picking up on albums like Ideas Above Our Station by Hundred Reasons and S.C.I.E.N.C.E. by Incubus for the first time. 

Listening back to some of those albums from my childhood, I can't help but think that some of them, while still awesome, are dated as sin. Worship And Tribute, on the other hand, sounds anything but dated.

Luckily, the bands that survived that commercial death of nu-metal (soon after the release of Worship And Tribute in 2002) without some form of ridicule were the ones that were forward-thinking in their composition and instrumentation. Glassjaw can comfortably be counted amongst those enterprising bands; all you have to is listen to that absolute riffstorm of an intro to 'Mu Empire' (my personal favourite moment on the record) to hear the influence on what will eventually become the post-hardcore/'metalcore' scene a few years later.

With Glassjaw finally making progress on that long-awaited third album, people are raving over their return for way more than just nostalgia's sake. Now I can finally count myself amongst those ranks, I jumped back forward in time to check out their latest track, 'New White Extremity', and let me tell you: it's really not worth me taking my finger off Glassjaw's pulse any time soon.

IF YOU'RE LIKE ME (AKA A TOOL) AND YOU'VE NEVER HEARD WORSHIP AND TRIBUTE, OR YOU SIMPLY WANT TO LISTEN TO IT AGAIN, THEN YOU CAN STREAM IT ON SPOTIFY BELOW:

After setting up the various polls on Facebook and Twitter, Worship And Tribute did have the most votes out of the three suggested records, but it was in very close contention with The Offspring's Smash - I think it would be a bit dickish of me to now snub that album, so LTTP #3 on Smash will arrive in a couple weeks' time. Nevertheless, I have already picked another trio of never-before-heard albums for you to pick from for the fourth edition of this feature, and you are more than welcome to start commenting on which of the following albums you'd like me to give a blast...

Until next time, I'm off to dig out this bad boy. Because #nostalgia.

Danny

LATE TO THE PARTY: DESCENDENTS - 'MILO GOES TO COLLEGE'

LATE TO THE PARTY is a new feature on Randon's Reviews that I'd been mulling over in my head for a little while now. In a nutshell, it involves me giving my thoughts on 'classic' albums that, up until recently, I had never heard. That's about it really.

I don't see admitting that I had never listened to the records that will eventually feature on here as a loss of integrity - I'm only a young music journalist, every day is a learning curve, and even though I do call myself a 'music journalist', that does not mean I have listened to every piece of recorded music ever. I don't even think that's even humanly possible, so yeah, lower your expectations, chumps.

I'm always up for recommendations (in this instance, I've left a list of three albums for you to choose from for the next edition at the bottom of this post), so hit me up on the RR Facebook page or on Twitter if you have a suggestion and I'll definitely consider it - unless I have actually heard it before.

In the meantime, let's get stuck in to the first record, which some of you may know as one of the most influential punk records of all time: Descendents' MILO GOES TO COLLEGE...

All that I had to go off of before diving into Milo Goes To College was Descendents' iconic mascot, photos of the band, and an understanding that this album is often regarded as one of the earliest pop-punk albums. What I was met with as soon as I hit 'Play' could not be further from my expectations. When you look at the band physically, you can't help but think that they'll have vibes of early college rock (or similar veins of alt-rock) about their sound. How wrong I was...

This is a fucking fast album. To put it into perspective, I thought it would make good listening for my commute home from college, but I was barely out of the college gates by the time the first three tracks were wrapped up. By the time I walked from campus to the train station, the album was done. I barely had time to think. It's relentless, it's raucous, and it sounds like (*cue done-to-death 'barfight' cliché*) Fugazi and The Germs having a nasty little scrap.

If you think that Milo Goes To College is just a bunch of snotty Californian kids shouting 1 2 3 4! and going apeshit for a minute and a half, before repeating said formula 14 times over, you wouldn't be miles off the money, even I thought that on my first listen. This is young, dumb, full-of-cum, stagedive-your-fucking-legs-off hardcore punk, and while Descendents are clearly not as politically antagonistic as bands like Black Flag or Dead Kennedys, Milo Goes To College are far from a stupid, gratuitously thrashy punk record.

If you're not entirely convinced by the above statement, do yourself a favour and listen to the intro to 'Tonyage': those frantic time signatures and that guitar sound is like something that I would perhaps liken to some of Biffy Clyro's artier material. Then there's the bassist, Tony Lombardo, and his work throughout the record. Forgive me, I'm no bassist, but this isn't just the same three chords over and over again: it is complex and, dare I say it, funky, and when you put it with the sheer batshit intensity of Bill Steven's drumming, you have quite simply some of the best rhythm work that I have ever heard in punk rock (sorry, Dad).

Still not convinced? The band's frontman, Milo Aukerman, has a job as a plant researcher and has a fucking doctorate in biochemistry. BOOM.

As for Milo Goes To College's status as a precursor to the wonderful thing that is pop-punk, I must admit that I could not hear a shred of poppy sensibility on first listen. I was probably too busy comprehending how fast and frank it was. The more I listened to it, however, the more I detected that razor-sharp attention to melody, especially on tracks like 'Suburban Home', which sounds like the missing link between the Ramones and Green Day. That said, Descendents still maintain that brash, hardcore edge throughout, as well as encapsulating a radical sense of suburban teenage anxiety and frustration, something which reaches a psychotic boiling point on 'Parents' ("WHY WON'T THEY SHUT UPPP?!").

I've seen the last couple of years as a real 'journey of punk rock discovery', for lack of a less twatty phrase, and even after coming across bands like Fugazi and Black Flag for the first time, I don't know why Milo Goes To College, or Descendents as a whole, has passed me by. The songs (with perhaps the exception of 'Suburban Home') haven't quite stuck in my head the way that Rancid, the Ramones and The Wildhearts did when my Dad me those records as a kid, and Descendents haven't yet resonated with me like letlive., Gallows and The King Blues did when they first bombarded into my life, but that's not to say that it's a fucking awesome punk rock record that I ended up listening to three times in a row.

If you also haven't heard Milo Goes To College (or just want to listen to it again), stream the album via Spotify below:

... And now to tackle the issue of what album will pop my aural cherry next, as it were. Below are three records which I have never heard, and I want you to choose one of them. Comment below, hit me up on Facebook, or Tweet me. Be nice or go away:

Up the punx.

Danny