Honeycrack - Prozaic (1996)

★ ★

Honeycrack were sadly disadvantaged by their main songwriter - Willie. There are two deadly paths songs in this punky-pop-rock-diet-metal genre must avoid. Billie Joe Armstrong is currently wandering down the left path, tossing off generic three chord songs without abandon. Willie chose the other path: desperate to be viewed as a serious songwriter he throws in every chord, riff, melody and genre he can find. The result is a fucking mess. If you like the first ten seconds of a song I guarantee there's something wanky round the corner that you will hate. Sometimes the music even gets kinda heavy in an industrial sorta way, but Willie's damp boyband voice just can't cut it. The Gil Norton produced "Go Away" is the highlight - shockingly it sounds a lot like the Pixies. This kind of rock music has to come from the heart, or the gut, or the balls. If you're coming from the brain then you better know what you're doing. I guess I just disagree with Willie about what makes cool-sounding rock music. He writes music for commercials now. Conclusion: Clever, but ugly as fuck.

Hole - Nobody's Daughter (2010)

★ ★

I liked the first track. Moody old school Alt-Rock. Cool. Next is the single "Skinny Little Bitch" - a fairly generic grunge-punk rocker. From then on its Marianne Faithful croaking over a backing track of R.E.M. b-sides - with over-compressed 'modern' production in place. There's more fun to be had with Courtney's semi-shitty 2004 solo record (because this is a Hole record you see...no honestly it is.)

Billy Corgan - The Future Embrace (2005)

★ ★

Molten metal guitars are out: the guitars here are drowning in reverb and they whine and buzz like an army of emo-bees. The rhythm section is one lonely drum machine. There is a definite My Bloody Valentine influence here, but whereas "Loveless" soars, "The Future Embrace" just irritates. Sadly Corgan ran out of songs 3 or 4 Pumpkins albums back, and this collection lacks variety and fire.

Crass - The Feeding Of The 5000 (1978)

★ ★

This is a difficult listen. It kicks off with the track that was banned from the original vinyl: "Asylum" is an awful militant-Feminist poem preached over guitar feedback. Its ridiculous. From then on its snotty punk all the way with Steve Ignorant spitting out his anarchist manifesto at 3000 mph. Some songs are gratingly simplistic, some are intriguingly creative, demonstrating touches of proto-noise rock and proto-hardcore. Sometimes the lyrics are embarassing, but mostly they are indecipherable. The recording is fairly clean and crisp, but the mix is bad - the drums are LOUD, the guitars are thin. Inconsistent but curious.

Iron Maiden - The X Factor (1995)

★ ★

New boy Blaze's deep bellow is slightly difficult to take seriously - he seems almost like a parody of a heavy metal singer, and his performance is bloodlessly one dimensional and unintentionally amusing. The songs are okayish but energy levels seem to be down, though this may be an aesthetic choice: the riffs here are brooding and symphonic opposed to Maiden's usual muscular gallop. Supposedly named "The X Factor" because band and producer felt they were on to a winner. Maybe they were, but Blaze was never up to the job of leading this aging warhorse into battle.

Guns N' Roses - "The Spaghetti Incident?" (1993)

★ ★

The covers album with which Guns N' Roses Mark 1 ground to a halt. Sometimes it works, and sometimes very much not: Axl's strangled rendering of "Since I've Been Loving You" and faux-cockney drawl on "Down On The Farm" are highlights, but there's too much karaoke going on here. Straight-ahead, un-embelished numbers like "New Rose" and "Human Being" just sound redundant and diminish the occasional truly awesome moments like "Ain't It Fun" and "Black Leather". Production is stark compared with the meticulous detail of "Use Your Illusion", and at times this exposes the GN'R sound to be pretty damn ordinary at its core. There is just too much filler here to award this album a higher score.

Stiltskin - The Mind's Eye (1994)

★ ★

Cynical cash-in, hurriedly cobbled together by hurriedly cobbled together alt-rockers Stiltskin. The Levi's song is here with added gruff Cobain-cum-Bryan Adams vocals from a future ex-Genesis singer. The songwriting isn't bad, but the heavier guitars are overly caustic, making half the album frankly nasty to listen to. The "band" proves itself better suited to the REM-esque pop-rock ballads which make up the better half of this short album.

Green Day - Insomniac (1995)

★ ★

Even by Green Day's standards this is stripped-down: seemingly reacting to sudden fame by cranking up the amps and rocking out a handful of not particularly carefully written songs, the Berkley pop-punkers are merely treading water here. Quirky tunes like "Brain Stew" and "Panic Song" stand out, but mostly this is just a big brick wall of crunchy power chords. Formulaic punk with nothing new to say.