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You know how when you get a new puppy and it evolves past the peeing on newspapers in the basement phase, you let him out and he piddles on the grass, and within a week or so the lawn turns into a patchwork of little puppy-piddle shaped brown spots. Eventually the grass recovers, but it's forever emotionally scarred and has difficulty creating lasting bonds with other grass species.
Well, late 90's metal was sort of like that to the genre of rock in general, only instead of a single little puppy piddling in the lawn it was a water-tanker truck full of acidic, yellow Great Dane urine that careens out of control and overturns in your backyard emptying millions of gallons of acrid, retched mastiff whiz onto your grass.
The music released in the late 90s nearly killed the rock genre entirely and only now is it beginning to recover. That's not to say it was all bad, in the same way that urine is mostly water, but just enough of it is acid on xenophorph- blood-levels of Ph that it F-ed things up good. One of the major culprits of the pee tanker years was the sub-genre of rap-rock. Again, not all of it was bad, but for every Rage Against the Machine, there was three Limp Bizkits and over time they all either flamed out or changed their music style and with the occasional exception like Linkin Park, rap-rock is dead. Or almost.
Yesterday I told you how Chester and Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park were teaming up with Busta Rhymes for a new song and today we get Achozen. That the name of a new band comprised of Shavo from System and The RZA from Wu Tang.
They’ve just finished their debut album which they hope to release this summer with a tour to follow. It's being described as “heavy hip hop” which sounds synonymous with rap-rock without the negative connotations.
Here's something interesting: Rivers Cuomo, the producer. He self produced a couple of the Weezer albums with his band mates, but now he's getting outside work. Punk band The Used is trying to acquire his services for their new record. Guitarist Quinn Allman says, “The stuff that Rivers’ has done, even just Pinkerton, Pinkerton sounds amazing, and that’s kind of the style we want to get. Pinkerton just has the most unique sound out of all of them, but the songs on the Blue Album.” Apparently Rivers has come out as a fan of the Used so they're trying to use that admiration to get him on board. |
