1992
Noah’s Barks pages covering things relating to the year 1992.
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Suicide – “Why Be Blue” (1992)
Somewhere along the line, keyboardist Martin Rev and vocalist Alan Vega lost their initial one-of-a-kind chemistry and began to pull in different directions. If you ask me, it happened with Why Be Blue. I won’t deny Suicide’s self-titled debut album is easily their best, and neither would most people, but I still think they had… (read more)
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Refused – “Operation Headfirst” (1992)
Operation Headfirst, the second EP from Refused, sees them increasingly branch away from traditional hardcore punk. Dynamic tempos are introduced where the band deigns to slow down, and the influence of metalcore can clearly be heard on the shredding solo of “Who Died?” In general, this is better than their first, self-titled EP, but there’s… (read more)
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Refused – “Refused” (1992)
Refused’s debut, self-titled EP shows little of their experimentation that would lead the band to widespread recognition. Refused is structurally traditional hardcore punk, but the catchiness of every single song shows that Refused probably spent a lot of time developing them. The guitar, as always, straddles the line between hardcore and metalcore, and the bass… (read more)
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Neurosis – “Souls at Zero” (1992)
Souls at Zero is the album where Neurosis, a hardcore punk band on the fringes of post-hardcore, make a complete unexpected dive into the depths of sludge metal. While this is a true black and blue sludge metal album, vocalist Scott Kelly interestingly still sounds like a post-hardcore vocalist. It adds an extra layer of… (read more)
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Pale Saints – “In Ribbons” (1992)
The shoegaze “canon” be damned; In Ribbons is objectively the best Pale Saints album—much, much better than The Comforts of Madness. The thing that killed the shoegaze movement was the fact that many bands thought all you had to do was step on effects pedals and find a pretty noise so you wouldn’t have to bother writing any… (read more)
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Lovesliescrushing – “Bloweyelashwish” (1993)
Bloweyelashwish is completely lacking structure or cohesion. All over the place with no reason to be because it has no good original ideas sonically. Basic, fuzzy shoegaze that uses a bunch of short noisy forgettable drone interludes to try and set itself apart from its contemporaries. Amateurish and jagged, a shot in the dark where… (read more)
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Moose – “…XYZ” (1992)
No shoegaze on …XYZ, despite what some will tell you. A lot of soft vocals and reverberating guitars (and string instruments!) may evoke a calming sea (well, more of a lake, here) of sound similar to shoegaze, but there’s no distorted or noisy guitars here, as far as I could tell. Maybe a small section… (read more)
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Red House Painters – “Down Colorful Hill”
Down Colorful Hill was the first slowcore album I ever heard, I’m pretty sure, and Red House Painters remain the best slowcore band. Kozelek’s evocative lyricism aside, Red House Painters were one of the only major slowcore bands to not view depression as synonymous with laziness, or at least they didn’t view their music that… (read more)
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Kyuss – “Blues for the Red Sun” (1992)
If there was ever an album that put the “stoner” into “stoner rock” it’s Blues for the Red Sun. Kyuss deliver pummeling hard rock that often gets lost in a sea of psychedelic haziness but reliably always finds its way back to deliver more strong guitar riffs and a thumping rhythm section that makes you… (read more)
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Battle Clash
Produced by Gunpei Yokoi and developed by Intelligent Systems, ‘Battle Clash’ is the first stand-alone video game to use the Super Scope, the SNES’s proprietary light gun. What first impression will this mecha-battling action game leave? (read more)