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
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