Friday 5: The Most Awful, Annoying Sounds Ever Recorded
Happy Friday, MetalSucks reader! Welcome to MetalSucks Friday 5, our awesome series that appears every Friday (duh) on MetalSucks (duhh) and involves the quantity of five (duhhh).
Here’s how it works: A list of best/worst/weirdest/whatever five somethings is posted by one of your beloved MetalSucks contributors or by one of our buds (like you?). Then you, our cherished reader, checks it out, has a chuckle, then chimes in with a list of the same. No sweat, just whatever springs to mind, k? (Just like that movie about those losers working at a Chicago record store!) After all, it’s Friday — the day dedicated by the gods to mindless, fun time-wasting.
Today, let’s share the moments that make us cringe!
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THE FIVE
What are the five worst sounds ever recorded?
THE LISTER
Anso DF, MetalSucks senior editor
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1. “Breaking The Silence” second line
The culprits: Queensryche singer Geoff Tate, producer Peter Collins
We all have a few of these: A moment in great music that we dread. A little mistake, or a phrase that hits us at the wrong angle. An unintentionally funny or queasy fill. They’ll come to mind slowly as you read this Friday 5. And maybe doesn’t occur in “great music,” but somehow we keep encountering it anyway. No biggie — but you react, it changes your life a bit. Like, I reflexively look away from the speakers and cringe when Geoff Tate basically dings the pristine door of a Stingray in Operation: Mindcrime‘s “Breaking The Silence.” That the line doesn’t even fit in the space allotted is half the problem; that it is corny as a Nebraska toilet is the other half. Shudder.
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2. “Hear About It Later” guitar solo
The culprits: Eddie Van Halen, 18 Schlitzes
Now sure, a dude could harvest a healthy crop of annoying sounds found on awful records and throughout terrible performances. After all, ghastly biffs and poor judgement are bountiful; heck, in some cases, they characterize an entire work. But today may we focus on fails that haunt us? These are the ones we encounter often, the ones we endure, those which we take measures to avoid. Bad things happen to good music, so to speak. Even to Eddie Van Halen, author of this mystifying solo that mars a VH pop gem like a smudge of turd on Kate Upton’s chest. But it won’t wipe off.
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https://youtu.be/WvbctTRpD0A?t=2m7s
3. “Be Aggressive” guitar solo
The culprit: Faith No More guitarist Jim Martin probably
What if it’s good that bad things happen to certain good music? That’s Faith No More, one of America’s greatest achievements, a band that flaunted its shit smears (see #2). Like the opposite of “a silk hat on a pig.” At least twice that backfired a tiny bit, once amid their masterpiece Angel Dust. Again (see #2), it’s a dumpy solo that drives you to clamp hands over ears and hum loudly. I mean, rough is good. Unvarnished is good. Irreverent is good. That’s FNM guitarist Jim Martin! But on keyboardist Roddy Bottum’s big jam, “Be Aggressive,” Martin’s solo sounds like it was performed by Nigel Tufnel on his back at center stage. I’d conjecture that Bottum was really the one who played it, but that’s just mean.
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4. “Higher” chorus lick doo-doo doodily doo
The culprit: Creed guitarist Mark Tremonti, you
I confess: I never encounter this song. I don’t play it, I never encounter it at restaurants n junk, radio won’t touch it. I have no reason to be mad at it, for it hardly even exists to me. Still, I would wipe this sound off the Earth. Like, stormtroopers blowtorching warehouses to end the chance of survival for this sound. Rows of citizens with wires dangling from their heads, jolted each time they think of this sound. A horizon dotted by towers issuing constant silent signals to cancel this sound. It’s the worst, too annoying for the shrillest jingle. More annoying than this and this and this put together. Heinous. And the weird thing is that it’s probably not the work of their human-shaped fail of a singer — it created by their sharp guitar player! Jesus!
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5. “Two Tabs Of Mescaline” outro
The culprit: Glassjaw singer Daryl Palumbo, producer Ross Robinson
This particular awfulness is depressing. Both Glassjaw albums are 40% pants-soiling temper tantrums; a fan builds a tolerance to it. But not this awkward, tone-deaf shit fit. It spoils the final moments of an incredible album’s towering finale. Its meaning is indecipherable (“Sailor scent” whatever), but that’s surmountable. The Jonathan Davis-level wailing? Not so forgivable. (Hilariously, the guitarist snakes the final word.) Now of course, we must honor Glassjaw’s right to self-expression, but we don’t have to respect the expression itself. Jesus, quit crying brah. Just bang all her friends and move on.
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Happy Friday! Your turn :)
