Work it, make it, do it

Continuing my trip up Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Albums Of All Time...

#236 : Discovery - Daft Punk (2001)

The robot duo from France perfected house music as pop on their 1997 album Homework. For the follow-up, they took electronic dance music to a whole new place, with the vocoder euphoria of “One More Time” and the deep-groove delight “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger,” where the title is chanted like a mantra at a dystopian corporate retreat. But even the winky moments have heart, like “Digital Love,” where Eighties guitar cheese takes off toward Tomorrowland.

We previously met Daft Punk at #296 with Random Access Memories not being quite as good as I remembered, with me commenting how I much preferred Discovery - so I was very pleased to meet it here.  And I enjoyed relistening to it, but unfortunately I didn't think it was quite as good as I remembered - I'm spotting a theme here.  However, I'm willing to give this one a bit more of a pass because I listened to it early on a Monday morning, and it's really not an "early Monday morning" album.  The highlights are also undoubtedly high - "One More Time" and "HBFS" are both great tracks (and every time I hear them I struggle to remember who they're by!).

Wikipedia's entry for the album is surprisingly lengthy and made me chuckle in the first section - "In the lead-up to Discovery's release, the duo adopted robot costumes, claiming they had become robots as a result of an accident in their studio."  The rest of it is surprisingly po-faced for quite a fun group, basically just noting the critical and commercial success of the album.  Given this is our last visit with Daft Punk on this list, I had a deeper dive into their Wikipedia entry and came up with these beauties "A medley of Daft Punk songs was played at the 2017 Bastille Day parade by a French military band, in front of French President Emmanuel Macron and his many guests, including U.S. President Donald Trump" (there's a fantastic NME article on it here) and "Baicalellia daftpunka, a species of flatworm, was named after Daft Punk because part of the organism resembles a helmet".

In the previous Daft Punk entry, I mentioned how many dance albums we haven't seen on this list so far - and you've probably not noticed too many that could be counted as dance albums since then.  And guess how many more there are on the entirety of the rest of the list that might possibly be counted as such?  One.  Which is rubbish.  "Customers also listened to" a particularly random selection of music - some dance-y, some not so much.  Overall, this was a slight disappointment but only because it didn't quite hit the heights I was expecting - it's still a fine album (and way better than most I've had to experience recently).

#235 : Metallica (The Black Album) - Metallica (1991)

After a decade of breaking metal’s speed limits, Metallica pared down their sound to the bare bones for their self-titled “Black Album.” “Enter Sandman” became a blockbuster because listeners finally had the space to sing along with James Hetfield’s bleak visions. Metallica achieved maximum heaviness on “Sad but True” by letting their guitars ring out for once; they embraced cinematic melodrama on “The Unforgiven” and “Wherever I May Roam,” and showed unusual depth for a band named Metallica with the sincere, no-bullshit ballad “Nothing Else Matters.”

Somehow, around the time of this album, the accepted view of Metallica changed from being  "yawn, heavy metal" to "fantastic purveyors of emotional angst".  Also somehow, this transition entirely passed me by, so my expectations here were very much "yawn, heavy metal".  So would this album confound my expectations with its fantastic purveyance of emotional angst?  Well, basically no.  I didn't hate it as much as I was expecting to and my teenage self might have even liked it, but I found most of it a bit tiresome.  Yes, even the widely acknowledged brilliance of "Enter Sandman" (sorry!) - although I would have to admit that I actually quite like "Nothing Else Matters".  I can't fault the axework throughout though...

I knew this album's success had passed me by, but Wikipedia makes it clear to me exactly how much it had - it's spent 550 weeks in the US Billboard 200 album chart.  Which equates to 38% of the time available since it was released!  It's sold "a few" copies globally and everyone agrees it's a fantastic album - except me, it appears. Their Wikipedia entry is somewhat lengthy and suggests they've got some good reasons for purveying their emotional angst, although most of it is entirely self-inflicted.  It also includes the following gem "On January 7, 2021, it was announced that Miley Cyrus would be releasing a cover version that would feature Elton John on piano" with an album of Metallica covers to follow - which I imagine has the average Metallica fan positively salivating with anticipation!

"Customers also listened to" Guns N' Roses, Ozzy, Sabbath, yada, yada, yada - and I'll be quite happy never listening to any such album every again.

#234 : Master Of Reality - Black Sabbath (1971)

Paranoid may have bigger hits, but Master of Reality, released a mere six months later, is heavier. It was the band’s first attempt to use the recording studio, and it’s full of ambitious ideas (check out Bill Ward’s funky timbale work on “Children of the Grave”). The highlight is “Sweet Leaf,” a droning love song to marijuana. The vibe is perfectly summed up by the final track, “Into the Void.” But it isn’t all relentless doom: “After Forever,” written by bassist Geezer Butler, pretty much invents the idea of Christian metal.

Oh.  Well that plan didn't exactly work now, did it?  Another one of Batman's favourite albums - oh joy.  I was expecting this to be a 20 year older version of Metallica, with a slight Brummy twang to the vocals.  And yup, that's what we've got.  Again, the axework is impressive, but that's all that catches the ear for me.  And yes, I realise I'm going to be told I'm wrong.

Wikipedia tells me I'm wrong now, but on release, the critics sided with me whilst the general public completely ignored the critics and bought it by the truckload - although a huge amount of orders were pre-release, so it didn't really matter what it sounded like.  I was intrigued as to why the album starts with either a coughing fit or someone trying to start an engine and Wikipedia explains that, as is often the case, Ozzy is to blame - "During the album's recording sessions, Osbourne brought Iommi a large joint which caused the guitarist to cough uncontrollably".  Although, just because he did that, doesn't mean that they had to include it on the recording.  Or even more particularly, start the whole album with it.  

Another interesting fact that leapt out at me was "Iommi downtuned his guitar 1​¹⁄₂ steps in an effort to reduce string tension, thus making the guitar less painful for him to play. This pain was the result of a factory accident years earlier in which he had the tips of two of his fingers severed" - seems pretty hardcore to me.  I've already covered the content of the band's Wikipedia entry relating to Ozzy's substance abuse issues, and a quick look suggests there's no other content, so we're done here.  Please, no more metal for at least one round...

Would anyone like to hazard a guess as to which album I'm going to give this round to?  Well down to those crazy Frenchies...

#239-237 - Three very different albums
#233-231 - Not a lot of common ground here