A Perfect Circle
The 12 Worst Heavy Metal Albums of All Time
What makes a truly awful metal album? It’s not just a lack of riffs, awful production, or quarter-assed vocal takes. Most of these records suffer from overdosing on compromise, whether it’s hopelessly chasing a trendy sound or a failure to age gracefully; others have visions more realized yet too noxious to raise the horns with any pride. It shouldn’t shock you that most of these albums were released in the late 90s to the early 2000s – metal’s crisis years when older bands couldn’t make sense (or were outright hostile towards) nu-metal and what was left of alternative rock, and before the MTV2 Headbangers Ball revival both spread metalcore around the world and reignited a lot of older thrashers’ careers. Those really were the Dark Ages. Metal should make you want to sin for the greater go...
The 50 Best Songs of the Year 2000
The year 2000 looms large in pop culture history: the Y2k non-scare, the Seinfeld “Newmannium” episode, the “In the Year 2000″ sketch from Conan O’Brien’s original late-night show, the Hulu series PEN15. And just like, say, the grunge-defined 1991, the year immediately conjures specific sounds: gleaming teen-pop, earnest radio rock, the Neptunes and Timbaland. There’s never a bad time to revisit this music. But in the middle of a pandemic, with America on the verge of collapse, it feels extra comforting — a blast of nostalgia for a time when you could safely exit your home, visit your local mall’s Sam Goody and buy Mystikal’s “Shake Ya Ass” CD single. For this list, our only criteria was that the songs appear on albums or soundtracks released in 2000. Here we go. 50. Papa Roach, “Last Reso...
Mer de Noms at 20: Musicians Celebrate A Perfect Circle’s Debut
At first, Tool fans were kinda bummed. Word of a Maynard James Keenan side project — while appealing on paper — was met with apprehension and dismay, as it threatened to further delay the studio sessions for the follow-up to Ænima, which they’d already been impatiently waiting years for. When the album finally hit record store shelves on May 23, 2000, those fans weren’t skeptical anymore. As they’d learn fast, A Perfect Circle was no Tool clone. The music was largely written before Keenan ever became involved. Guitarist Billy Howerdel, the creative strength behind the avant-rock outfit, was a former guitar technician who’d worked for Nine Inch Nails and Faith No More. He became friends with Keenan in 1992 after meeting on tour; Tool were opening for Fishbone, who Howerdel was working for. ...
