Once you get past the fact that Blues Traveler does not play any music that could be called blues, you find a fairly talented band. Each member of the band is impressive on his instrument, and Popper’s vocals are average at worst. In contrast to some other “jam bands”, they even write some fairly catchy tunes. The lyrics are often nonsensical and the scatting on “Stand” is embarassing, but that is not the point of this music.

The band sounds best on light, upbeat tunes such as “Run-Around”, “Stand”, and “Brother John”. The slightly harder rock of “Fallible” also works fairly well, driven by Kinchla’s wah-drenched guitar. On ballads like “Look Around”, however, they can be unbearably sappy. “The Mountains Win Again” avoids this, and is a beautiful lament.

Appetite For Destruction is a singular album in the history of rock & roll. From the stuttering echo of the intro of “Welcome To The Jungle” to the final notes of “Rocket Queen”, the sneering soup of heavy metal, blues-rock, punk, and classic rock is fresh and original, even in retrospect.

Slash’s lead guitar work and Axl Rose’s uniquely nasal voice get the most recognition, but the soul of this album is the riffage of Stradlin, McKagan, and Adler. Slash and Rose certainly contributed to the band’s sound, but if the rhythm section had not laid down such a great foundation, Guns N’ Roses would be just another band with a flashy guitarist and annoying frontman.

Thematically, Appetite cries out with both exultation in and weariness from the lifestyle of sex, drugs, and rock & roll that the band were living in L. A. and on tour. Two of the tracks have drug and alcohol abuse as their primary topic (“Mr. Brownstone” and “Nightrain”), and it features heavily in several others. Another four songs are written about easy access to indiscriminate sex (“It’s So Easy”, “My Michelle”, “Anything Goes”, and “Rocket Queen”). “Welcome To The Jungle” describes the seedy side of L. A. in a mix of pride and revulsion. The effect of Rose’s frequently vile lyrics is enhanced by the vituperative way he spits them out and by the aggressive, seething, music over which he sings.

The other tracks reveal a band that is already becoming disillusioned with their life in the fast lane, even as they find themselves reveling in it. “Sweet Child O’ Mine” uses the metaphor of a romantic relationship to return to the safety and innocence of childhood, while “Paradise City” yearns for an escape from Los Angeles, where the asphalt is littered with used syringes and the girls are slutty, to a mythical city where the “grass is green and the girls are pretty”, probably inspired by Rose’s childhood in rural Indiana.

These are not nice people, and Appetite For Destruction is not music for the comfortable. It is meant to shock and perhaps disgust as well as entertain. I have a friend with great musical tastes who, as a sweet and innocent seven year old girl purchased her first cassette – a copy of this record. It is remarkable that she has grown into a well-adjusted woman, rather than being scarred for life.

There are no real weak points on the album, but there are a few highlights. “Welcome To The Jungle” is iconic in hard rock legend, and for good reason. “Sweet Child O’ Mine” rewrote the book on power ballads, demonstrating that a ballad can rock just as hard as anything else. The full-band workout at the end of “Paradise City” with both Slash soloing and Axl singing over the thunderous main riff is a true treat for the ears.

Few genres are more enjoyable to read than absurdist satire, and Catch-22 may be the finest example of the genre that I have ever read. It takes only three pages to reach the first seeming contradiction that, after a bit of thought, makes perfect sense: “The Texan turned out to be good-natured, gregarious and likable. In three days no one could stand him.” The entire text is filled with such gems. My favorite is a paragraph from chapter 9, describing Major Major’s father. Regardless of your stance on farm subsidies, it is impossible to deny the absurdity and hypocrisy exposed by this brief description:

Major Major’s father was a sober God-fearing man whose idea of a good joke was to lie about his age. He was a long-limbed farmer, a God-fearing, freedom-loving, law-abiding rugged individualist who held that federal aid to anyone but farmers was creeping socialism. He advocated thrift and hard work and disapproved of loose women who turned him down. His specialty was alfalfa, and he made a good thing out of not growing any. The government paid him very well for every bushel of alfalfa he did not grow. The more alfalfa he did not grow, the more money the government gave him, and he spent every penny he didn’t earn on new land to increase the amount of alfalfa he did not produce. Major Major’s father worked without rest a not growing alfalfa. On long winter evenings he remained indoors and did not mend harness, and he sprang out of bed at the crack of noon every day just to make sure that the chores would not be done. He invested in land wisely and soon was not growing more alfalfa than any other man in the county. Neighbors sought him out for advice on all subjects, for he had made much money and was therefore wise. “As ye sow, so shall ye reap,” he counseled one and all, and everyone said, “Amen”.

It is interesting that Heller chooses World War II, which of the armed conflicts in which the United States has been involved is clearly the most just and necessary, to demonstrate the senselessness of war for all who are involved. I have never served in the military, but it is not necessary to have done so in order to recognize the people and situations in Catch-22. While the novel centers around an Army Air Force squadron, the insights it provides are as much about bureaucracy and human nature as they are war. Generals and colonels who consider their mission to rise in authority or to gain publicity while caring little for the orthogonal mission of winning the war could as easily be company executives or government officials who rally their subordinates to the task of improving their lives without regard for the objectives of the organization that employs them. There is a part of mercenary merchant Milo Minderbinder in every selfish charlatan, from a back-stabbing friend to Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling. The catch 22 itself should be roughly familiar to anyone who has had significant interaction with any large entity.

As I was reading through the novel I suffered a bit of fatigue because, while each chapter is brilliant, they are all brilliant in the same way and for the same reasons. At the time, I was prepared to suggest that large portions of the text be excised. After completing it, however, I find that very little occurs that is not important later. Given the opportunity to edit the book down, I doubt I would be able to remove more than ten percent of the text without significantly degrading the impact of the work as a whole. I have been previously critical of literature in which place and time flow continuously back and forward through sections of the book. This is certainly true of Catch-22, but in this case it is not a significant hardship. This is because very little of the novel is plot-based. Rather, each short chapter illustrates an unusual character or situation, sometimes from a different perspective than previously. Thus, the chronology is not terribly important, and Heller is free to deliberately reveal information in whatever order suits it best.

Biting satire is only effective when it is pointing out something truly horrible. Was is indeed, as Sherman stated, hell, but Catch-22 extends beyond war to all human suffering. The poignant 29th chapter briefly abandons humor to enumerate a litany of inexcusable, and only peripherally war-related, conditions. Yossarian encounters extreme poverty, illness, rape, violence against animals and children, police brutality, theft from the elderly, murder, and finally injustice while wandering through the streets of Rome. I must include another quote here to demonstrate the depravity Heller is trying to convey.

… Almost on cue, a nursing mother padded past holding an infant in black rags, and Yossarian wanted to smash her too, because she reminded him of the barefoot boy in the thin shirt and thin, tattered trousers and of all the shivering, stupefying misery in a world that never yet had provided enough heat and food and justice for all but an ingenious and unscrupulous handful. What a lousy earth! He wondered how many people were destitute that same night even in his own prosperous country, how many homes were shanties, how many husbands were drunk and wives socked, and how many children were bullied, abused or abandoned. How many families hungered for food they could not afford to buy? How many hearts were broken? How many suicides would take place that same night, how many people would go insane? How many cockroaches and landlords would triumph? How many winners were losers, successes failures, rich men poor men? How many wise guys were stupid? How many happy endings were unhappy endings? How many honest men were liars, brave men cowards, loyal men traitors, how many sainted men were corrupt, how many people in positions of trust had sold their souls to blackguards for petty cash, how many had never had souls? … The night was filled with horrors, and he thought he knew how Christ must have felt as he walked through the dark world, like a psychiatrist through a ward full of nuts, like a victim through a prison full of thieves.

What a masterful account of the dark night of the soul, befitting the near-end of a masterpiece. Yossarian lives!

Stay Of Execution is a rather different album than any of its predecessors, but falls within the direction the band had been taking from speedy thrash metal into something else entirely. Jimmy Brown’s voice has become even more annoyingly operatic, but it seems more appropriate for this material than in the past, and his lyrics are somewhat less sophomoric. The band’s early struggles to find a good lead guitarist are also behind them.

The title track is a groovy, progressive, metal epic, and easily the best track on the album. “From Once Was” has a pleasant bass intro followed by an unusually mid-tempo main section. The beginning of “Ramming Speed” is even further removed from metal, as is “Horrendous Disc”. While these changes may not please old-school fans, the band sounds quite good in this new genre mismash. The rest of the album consists of not-quite-thrash, which is listenable but no better than the group’s earlier work.

What A Joke is an appropriate title for an album containing a number of short sound clips, a song with a recipe as its only lyrics, a heavy metal version of “Silent Night”, and sardonic barbs at the band’s enemies. For the most part, the tracks intended for humor are a waste of space. However, “Chipped Beef” is notable for its riff and the way the vocalist demonstrates his complete lack of interest, and “Silent Night” is delightfully absurd.

The rest of the album has a frustrated mood. “Pseudo Intellectual” rails against people who object to the band’s message, “What A Joke” expresses outrage at misunderstandings of Christianity, and “It’s The Beat” is full of righteous bitterness toward Christians who object to the band’s musical style. Musically, the multi-faceted “Pseudo Intellectual” is the most interesting track, followed closely by the cover of Black Sabbath’s “After Forever”. The bleak, repetitive riff of “What A Joke” also makes a great hook. The second riff in “J. I. G.” is also very nice. The rest of the album is energetic but generic thrash metal.

There are several reasons to dismiss the debut album by Deliverance. The lead guitarist has plenty of virtuosity but lacks the focus that would make his solos more than a stream of notes. The vocalist tends to sing in an obnoxiously operatic style most of the time. The lyrics verge on cheesy in the majority of the songs. The bassist is mixed so low as to be nearly inaudible.

However, there are also a few reasons to consider this an excellent release. Chief among them is that the rhythm guitarist is absolutely sick. The band is very tight about him, and they have written some very good (instrumentally), very intense thrash metal songs. Each track is multi-part, and nearly all contain at least one killer riff.

The combination of these elements makes an album that could and should have been better, but is a strong debut release.

Weapons Of Our Warfare picks up where Deliverance left off, but the band matures a bit. This adds some interesting twists but detracts from the brutal intensity of the earlier release. The new lead guitarist writes significantly more directed solos, although they could still use a bit of work. The vocalist’s style has not changed, but his lyrics are better.

The first track, “Supplication” is the first example that something is different. The opening Scriptural quotation from which the album got its title (a nice touch) fades into a clean guitar part, which was virtually unheard of on Deliverance. If there were any doubts about what band you were listening to, however, “This Present Darkness” plunges the listener back into familiar blazing thrash before falling away to a nice low-key but rocking interlude before the solo.

The centerpiece of the album is its title track, which uses an extended introduction in the form of a military march before settling into a surprisingly mid-tempo thrash. The slowed-down “23” is also notable as a very different, yet effective song.

It manages to be a better, but less enjoyable, album than its predecessor, which is no small feat.

Bust A Nut is not a strong release, even compared to the band’s prior work. Nothing on the album is decidedly bad, but nor is any track noteworthy.

The deck was stacked against me liking St. Anger long before I first heard the album. The band had produced some of the best metal albums in the history of the genre and recently been re-energized by the excellent Garage, Inc. and S & M projects. As if this were not enough to raise expectations beyond all reasonable levels, press releases leading up to the debut praised St. Anger as a return to the form of the band’s first four stellar albums.

Sadly, this did not reflect reality. Certainly St. Anger is the heaviest record Metallica has written since its self-titled LP in 1991. It could arguably be the heaviest material they have ever written. However, the genius of their early recordings is not simply high speed and massive distortion, though they are an important factor. The best Metallica compositions have borrowed heavily from progressive rock, and included plenty of Kirk Hammett’s melodic lead playing, both of which are notably absent on St. Anger. Much has been made of the extremely raw production of St. Anger, but … And Justice For All proved to be a classic in spite of similarly poor production on the strength of its songwriting.

On a second listen five years later, however, I am coming to appreciate St. Anger for what it is. None of the tracks are strong enough to stand on their own against the band’s early catalogue, but the album as a whole is a powerful look into a band trying to work through two massive egos, at least one serious alcohol addiction, more than 25 years of petty feuds and squabbles built up, clamoring fans such as myself, and the struggle to refind its voice. Hetfield’s vocals are passionate and filled with surprisingly clever lyrics such as “frantic – tic – tic – tic – tic – tick – tock” and “I’m madly in anger with you”. The crushing riffs enforce his anger and frustration well.

St. Anger will always be a disappointment, but it makes a compelling concept album, and that will have to be enough.

Psychotic Supper is another good but not great release from Tesla. There are two notably good songs: the thrash-lite of “Don’t De-Rock Me” and the excellent power ballad “What You Give”, as well as one notably bad track, the thankfully short “Government Personnel”. The rest is standard poppy hard rock.

S & M is bombastic, pretentious, and wonderful. Michael Kamen’s orchestration works better over some of Metallica’s compositions than others, but it is never bad.

The band’s earlier progressive works are most suited to the symphonic treatment, where the orchestra can simply layer more complex counter-melodies over what is already an epic suite. This is most evident in the fantastic “The Call Of Ktulu”. In fact, it works so well that it is surprising no other purely instrumental pieces were used. “Orion” might have been a difficult choice, but “To Live Is To Die” would have been great.

The orchestra is also quite effective on “Master Of Puppets”, “Of Wolf And Man”, “One”, “Hero Of The Day”, and especially the response to the guitar solo’s call on “For Whom The Bell Tolls”. One of the new songs, “No Leaf Clover”, is excellent, while ”- Human” is simply good. The rest of the tracks are less remarkable, but in every case the orchestra either adds a bit of sweetening to an already great song or revives one that was not especially interesting in the first place.

Critics will call all of this bloated excess, but for fans like me it is one of the greatest musical collaborations of the modern era. It is a terrible shame that Lars’s exclamation of “same time next year!”, heard at the end of “Battery”, did not come to pass.