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So
When Peter Gabriel announced his departure from Genesis in 1975, a two-part prognosis seemed reasonable. Without the flamboyant antics of its frontman — who might perform dressed as a gigantic sunflower one night and a pyramid-headed psychedelic druid the next — Genesis would founder, while Gabriel would soar toward glam-rock status of Bowie-esque proportions. Of […]
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Master of Puppets
Metallica has taken the raw material of heavy metal and refined all the shit — the swaggering cock-rock braggadocio and the medieval dungeons and dragons imagery — right out of it. Instead of the usual star-struttin' ejaculatory gestures and hokey showbiz razzmatazz, the members of Metallica pour out pure apocalyptic dread. Their version of heavy […]
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5150
The big question is whether even a sound as titanic as Van Halen's can sustain the loss of a loudmouth voluptuary like David Lee Roth, or will the whole metal ball simply collapse under the weight of generic gee-tar pyrotechnics? Though often derided as a frontrunner in the Most Obnoxious Man in Rock sweepstakes, Diamond […]
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Candy Apple Grey
Any fears that Hüsker Dü's move to a major label might signal dilution, concession or crossover get "sucked out of the first-class window" in the first few seconds of auricle-bending clatter on "Crystal," this album's opening cut. "Crystal" provides a metaphor for the splintering of consciousness in the Information Age: "When civilization falls in its […]
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Biograph
To celebrate Bob Dylan's twenty-fourth year on record, Columbia has released Biograph, a five-record set that is not only a major retrospective but also a reassuring, sometimes startling, overview of Dylan's contributions to our culture. With its fifty-three recordings (nine officially unreleased songs, three unreleased studio versions, six unreleased live tracks and four hard-to-find singles), […]
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Tim
In this era of synthetic sound and an increased emphasis on the cosmetics of media geniality, the Replacements are probably too true to be good. While they haven't exactly reinvented the fourman guitars-bass-drum lineup, they have dramatically reaffirmed its primal essence without pandering to any oldfogy revivalist tendencies or formulaic banalities. They jolt the nervous […]
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Theatre Of Pain
Heavy metal is the idiot-bastard spawn of rock, the eternal embarrassment that will not die. It's music that doesn't care what you think. Like some mythical beast that's part tyrannosaur — slow-moving and pea brained — and part Hydra — multiheaded and malevolent — heavy metal just keeps forging on, flattening everything in its path. […]
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Fly on the Wall
Heavy metal is the idiot-bastard spawn of rock, the eternal embarrassment that will not die. It's music that doesn't care what you think. Like some mythical beast that's part tyrannosaur – slow-moving and pea brained – and part Hydra – multiheaded and malevolent – heavy metal just keeps forging on, flattening everything in its path. […]
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Meat is Murder
Lead singer and wordsmith Stephen Morrissey (who goes by his surname professionally) is a man on a mission, a forlorn and brooding crusader with an arsenal of personal axes to grind. Drawing on British literary and cinematic tradition (he cites influences ranging from Thomas Hardy and Oscar Wilde to Saturday Night and Sunday Morning), Morrissey […]
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