The Art of Rebellion

I bought the cassette immediately when I saw it in the shop, knowing beyond the shadow of a doubt that the Mike Muir team couldn’t possibly let, and respectively bring, us down… god was I saddened to the core of my being when I heard it. I gave it another listen right after, but the impression was only marginally more positive than the first, so I put it on the shelves to gather rust alongside Kreator’s “Renewal” and Overkill’s “I Hear Black”, two other very dubious tapes that I had purchased around the same time. Man, was this going to be a terrible year for the metal scene… I could understand the other divisive transformations, but the Suicidals… the easy livin’ propagators, the lovable goofy psychos…

ten years later I listened to the album in its entirety at a friend’s house, on his request, with the guy making comments on nearly every song. It was a very surreal setting, like I was both participating in and watching an improvised documentary with a dedicated connoisseur giving a fairly interesting lecture on his favourite album (or thereabouts) and the circumstances that led to its inception. I regret now that I didn’t record this session; it would have become a big hit on youtube and elsewhere… anyway, I’m not sure whether it was this devoted underneath-the-soundtrack narrative or my having outgrown my scholasticism, but I did listen to this opus another few times in the next couple of weeks, and this nearly an-hour-long saga started making more sense to me in a weird subversive way.

Never to the extent to pronounce it superior to any of the preceding slabs, but still a decade down the line this art somehow managed to win me for its cause… partially though. Strange how the entire thrash community decided, like one, that their music wasn’t going to do the trick anymore. I wonder if anyone else ever stops to ponder over the early-90’s setting: what a huge travesty it was, and what a big unapologetic fun it made of the music world in general… well, some got away with it, and our favourite skaters were one of the lucky ones. Earlier Muir had tried his hands on some merry funky rock/metal with his other formation Infectious Grooves, a successful enterprise that, fortunately, didn’t hamper the Suicidals’ career. Some may even say that it boosted it since right after its foundation came the main band’s most lucrative effort, the album reviewed here.

Still thinking about the huge gamble all these bands took… could their next outing be their Black Album? Why not… cross fingers and boom… let’s get into the groove. Most failed but Muir and Co. struck gold… I’d say unexpectedly cause with such a drastic change of direction there was no way they had anticipated this result. Kudos to that; after all, no one judges the winners who again don’t sound shabby at all, their new delivery possessing this dark progressive, alternative vibe that instantly crosses out frivolities like punk and crossover. Nope, it would be only Muir’s seductively hypnotic mid-ranged clean croon that will remind of past exploits, the music front moving on with “Can’t Stop” initially, a strangely compelling brooding near-thrasher, the only song I genuinely liked the first time around. A nearly 7-min long tractate… wow, the guys have gone progressive… and although the other lengthy exercise (also title-wise) here, “I Wasn't Meant To Feel This/Asleep At The Wheel”, is a perfectly skippable balladic drag, the level of gravity applied pays off, largely on the lyrical melancholic delight “Nobody Hears” and on the diverse slow-builder “Monopoly on Sorrow”. The more energetic material (“We Call This Mutha Revenge”, “Gotta Kill Captain Stupid”), the one I had completely overlooked earlier, is an easy reminder of the guys’ past exploits, with enough panache elicited to help them pass a sturdy thrash test, also compensating for the presence of meeker representations like the semi-balladic leisurely-assembled trip “I'll Hate You Better” and the radio-friendly bouncer “It's Going Down”.

Yep, it’s a major paradigm shift witnessed here, but the album doesn’t annoy if given the proper amount of time, with more niceties later popping up, like the memorable stomping hymns “Accept My Sacrifice” and “Tap into the Power”, the band’s agenda propelled in a quietly anti-climactic manner, no rush, no skate, no crossover… not even metal at times as there’s a certain alternative rock sensibility seeping courteously, probably readying to occupy a bigger space on subsequent recordings (which never happened). But if the album sold close to 600,000 copies, even more than Anthrax’s own “The Sound of White Noise”, that means that the band core fanbase fell for this metamorphosis whole-heartedly… what a subconscious game-changer this Black Album was, hey… swiftly re-adjusting the radars of millions of metallers worldwide. No complaints from this camp whatsoever who reaped the benefits of this re-adjustment without exactly stirring a rebellion… probably also feeling quite content with the fact that their transformation stint worked better than the ones of Testament, Exodus, Forbidden, Vio-Lence, Flotsam & Jetsam … the mentioned at the beginning acts as well… better than nearly every other practitioner who tried to outgrow the thrash in the early-90’s save for the Four Horsemen. One may argue that in the Suicidals’ case this outgrowing process was easier provided that they’ve always been with one foot in the punk/hardcore/crossover realm, so crossing over into the unknown mustn’t have been as heart-breaking… sure, but leaving their free-life-flow proclivities, the surf, the skate, the cyco at the door… there was a lot to shed; it was definitely a decision of Epic (also Sony) proportions.

It’ll never cease to beat me, under the lucrative circumstances, why Muir never repeated this formula again… the re-release of the debut a year later was hardly the most logical follow-up to the art here, and although “Suicidal for Life” did contain echoes of it, it largely mirrored the band’s earlier feats with an angrier, more down-to-earth attitude. The cow hatched its golden egg, just this once, and was sent to a faraway coop straight after… a situation which wasn’t to the taste of the Epic/Sony executives who dropped the band in the mid-90’s, including Muir’s two other offspring, Infectious Grooves and Cyco Miko. Not that the latter cared too much as he quickly stitched his own label, Suicidal Records, and kept churning out efforts on all three fronts… of a very dubious quality, though, especially the ones that came from this camp, a string of very weak, downright terrible slabs that was put an end with the arrival of Dave Lombardo (yeah, that same one) and the release of the really cool “World Gone Mad”.

The thing is that it’s Cyco Miko we’re talking about; his next step is thoroughly unpredictable… and he already unnerved the environment big time a few years back with “Still Cyco Punk after All These Years”. Don’t worry, this isn’t another rendition of the band’s first instalment, but it’s nothing new, either; what it is, is a re-recording of the Cyco Miko debut, not the greatest funk/punk/metal/core/rock amalgam out there, but still not a complete throwaway. Now what’s left is to hear another “Art of Rebellion”… really?! Mike… you must be joking… of course! The monopoly on maturity and sobriety has long since been lifted…

besides, there isn’t another “Mona Lisa” left to burn.

Two years earlier, Suicidal hit pay dirt with Lights...Camera...Revolution!, which is my favorite by them. When the recording process for this album arrived, however, they'd lost the backbone to their sound, as R.J. Herrera left the band because of "unspecified personal differences." Replaced on the album by Josh Freese, but on the tour and subsequent Suicidal for Life album in 1994 by Jimmy DeGrasso, the band was effectively credited as a quartet on this album. This album has been considered "experimental" by many fans and critics, including former rhythm guitarist Mike Clark, blending their thrash metal and punk with funk, progressive rock, alternative metal, and even pop, but this helped them gain a bigger following among the music community. The album's producer, Peter Collins (who'd also worked with Queensryche on their two seminal albums), helped create an absolute masterpiece, as the albums 12 tracks never cease to amaze me, much like Lights... had done before it. The album peaked at #52 on the Billboard 200 and went Gold, their final album to reach this certification. Let's see what this album has in store...

The album opens with "Can't Stop," which starts off mellow and its lyrics by vocalist Mike Muir are a bit insane, but get to the point and provide a great opening to a great album when it picks up. Rocky George and Mike Clark's guitar parts work to a charm, Rob Trujillo's bass is infectious, and Freese's drumming is just perfect. The rest of the first six tracks are a great set of tracks, and their lyrics are diverse, but the instrumentation is very amazing. My favorite track out of the first six is "We Call This Mutha Revenge," which opens with a great instrumental section, and has great instrumentation throughout, especially at the end, where Rocky is allowed to branch off and play an AWESOME solo that gets me every time! We're halfway home; let's see what's left in the tank for Suicidal...

The last six tracks begin with two songs for the price of one, "I Wasn't Meant to Feel This/Asleep at the Wheel," which is the longest song on the album (7:07). "I Wasn't Meant to Feel This" provides a mellow opening to the track, and Rob's bass is mellow, but makes this a lot better. This two minute piece segues into "Asleep at the Wheel," which utilizes keyboards and the cello as unorthodox instruments in Suicidal's repertoire. Again, the lyrics, like on the most of the album, are odd, but help the song progress along well. My two favorites out of the final six are "Gotta Kill Captain Stupid" and "I'll Hate You Better;" the former is a thrash piece with AMAZING lyrics, while the latter is a near-power ballad with a great message in it. "Captain Stupid" conveys the message that there are dumb people in this world that do dumb things, and are then lost when they try to get help. The wacky sound effects provide a great intro to a beautifully crafted piece of thrash candy. "Hate" is so mellow that it's almost out of their vein, but has lyrics that tell of how our world is lost because of hate. That's all she wrote for us, folks; a great album has come to a close...

In short, Suicidal created another masterpiece, and The Art of Rebellion was, like Lights..., no fluke at all. It may have been diverse and almost unlike Suicidal to create this, but they did so and did it well. By the time 1994 rolled around, however, Mike Muir, now disliking the band's great success (he wanted them to stay underground), helped the band make Suicidal for Life, which definitely alienated their fans and caused the band to splinter into a million pieces come 1995...

The fond memories of Suicidal Tendencies’ thrash era seemed to have ended at the release of this album, or at least that was what many of their core fans came to believe when they heard the introduction of a host of non-Metal influences to the band’s sound. Essentially one has to decide whether to judge this based on the context of the time it came out in, or in a general sense based on the band’s past and that of the style they belong to. When you apply the former standard, this towers above about 95% of the various grunge and groove metal releases that came forth in 1992 and 1993. But the latter standard, which is what I always go by when all is said and done, doesn’t really tell that much of a different story.

“Art Of Rebellion” is somewhat of an ironic album in that despite the spectacle of a badass security guard standing guard while the Mona Lisa burns like a miniature forest fire, the album presents a highly progressive outlook, almost to the point of being Avant-garde. There’s a fairly large collection of acoustic Rock and mellow parts all around, all but predicting parts of Megadeth’s “Cryptic Writings” about 5 years before it came out. If you doubt this, listen to the really ballsy mid-tempo ballad/Thrasher “Monopoly Of Sorrow”, which is all but a more intricate ancestor of “Use The Man”. There’s also the prominent use of straight clean vocals by Mike Muir, who almost sounds like a punk rock answer to the Paul McCartney question. There is of course the occasional Primus moment from time to time courtesy of bassist Primadonna Rob Trujillo and some groovy drumming here and there.

Naturally some might be thrown off by this notion of avant-garde music, so I’ll simply put it in context by stating that this is such only in that it seems to bounce between styles in a fairly spontaneous fashion. There’s nothing quirky about what is on here, as it basically listens like a really good version of the slowed down thrash/groove style that was really popular at times. Songs like “I’ll Hate You Better” listen somewhat similar to rock bands of the time like Candlebox and Ugly Kid Joe, but without the over-indulgent bluesy nature of the former or the comical lyrics and vocals of the latter. The same story basically applies to “Where’s The Truth” and “Which Way To Free”, which have some pretty impressive lead guitar slots, but otherwise listen like a crisper and better version of Anthrax‘s “Sound Of White Noise”. Mike Muir is primarily the element that succeeds here where John Bush fails on said 1993 album, as what is heard here is a versatile mixture of vocal styles, rather than a straight up cloning of Layne Staley.

The places where this album suffers a bit is when the band tries to get too advantageous and looses itself in a sea of differing ideas. An excellent example of this is “I Wasn’t Meant To Feel This/Asleep At The Wheel”, which essentially spends 2 minutes stuck in some really obscure sounding jazzy bass grooves while the vocals just rants on about things just not seeming right, before going off into an odd mixture of hard rock and folk music. Muir and Dave Mustaine have had this sort of unofficial contest going on between the two of them to see who can come up with the most ramble-drenched speeches every put to Metal music, and right now things are looking pretty good for Muir. The bass gets a lot of activity on here, almost putting a bit of a Flea flavoring into what sounds like a Jane’s Addiction song. “Can’t Stop” has a similar narrated rant in the first half of the song, but thankfully throws some solid riffs at the listener to give the song a sense of familiarity.

Fortunately the weirdness that occupies a fair share of this album is all but completely canceled out by a few really solid pieces of Thrashing goodness. “It’s Going Down” takes a pretty straight up approach, but is loaded with some really solid lead guitar work and Muir’s vocals have a solid punch to them. “We Call This Mutha Revenge” is a little more multifaceted and has a slow intro with some more quality soloing before bursting into a solid piece of riff happy goodness. That principle riff just screams Bay Area goodness like crazy, mixed with a little bit of tasteful bass shredding here and there. My personal favorite of this bunch is the catchy as hell anthem of social consciousness known as “Gotta Kill Captain Stupid”. This is essential thrash metal that essentially merges that rapidly changing riff style done so well by Vio-Lence with a straight up speed metal beat employed often on early 90s Annihilator. Forget about Captain Howdy scaring the hell out of you, and don’t even bother with how many people Captain Trips ended up killing, this captain just pummels with every crushing blow. Muir’s vocals get a little bit homeboy-like at times and the lyrics are a little bit preachy, but this is metallic gold if I’ve ever heard it.

Ultimately this entire album comes off as a mixed bag, but a mostly solid and enjoyable mixture regardless. Eclectic fans who can tolerate a little funk with their metal and a lot of other stuff mixed in will definitely enjoy this. It’s far better musically than “Frolic In The Park” or a whole lot of other groove oriented albums, but it’s definitely a little bit down the ladder from what this band has offered up on previous studio works. It’s a little bit sad that the 90s were allowed to change a lot of great 80s bands the way it did, but Suicidal Tendencies were among the few who were still heavily influential at this point and didn’t themselves completely suck. Granted, the distance with which some apples fell from this tree became so wide for some bands that you wonder if its branches were stretched out past the ledges of some steep cliffs on all sides.

Originally submitted to (www.metal-obserer.com) on April 8, 2009.

Wow! I can't believe this album hasn't had been reviewed here yet! Well, it's about time that situation was rectified. So here it is, my review of a long lost, and under - appreciated metal gem!

Out of all the well known thrash bands of the 80's, Suicidal Tendencies were surely the most charismatic and unique of the bunch. Starting out as a skate punk/hardcore band with metal influences, they gradually progressed with each album to eventually become almost a pure thrash metal act by the time of 1990's seminal "Lights, Camera, Revolution" album. 1992's "The Art Of Rebellion" however, found the band mellowing out a bit, and embracing new sounds. All the while never fully letting go of their thrash/hardcore roots. Suicidal fans seem to be split on this album. There are those who believe this album to be a sellout, and a rejection of the band's past. Some though, feel this one to be Suicidal's last great album. An end of an era, and the last Suicidal album worth giving two figs about. I'm pretty much in the latter camp, even though I quite like some of the latter day Suicidal. The band have definitely dumbed down their sound since "Art Of Rebellion" though, and this is to me not only the last Suicidal album I would class as essential, it is also in my opinion, probably the best thing the band has ever done. The band had already injected some funk influence into their sound on the previous album, but it is taken to the next level here. But more on that later!

What we have here essentially, is a big melting pot of different influences and sounds. But amazingly, they all still manage to sound like Suicidal Tendencies. Nothing sounds forced here, it all sounds very organic, and natural. Which is very uncommon amongst most of the thrash bands who lightened their style post 1990. (And Metallica's Black Album!) Opener "Can't Stop" is a creeping mid - paced burner. Very unlike most of their previous openers, which have all been crushing full paced thrash assaults. The song opens with beautiful soft guitars, and some very soothing vocals by Mike Muir. It then quickly morphs into a taut, tense affair, made all the more manic courtesy of the schizophrenic, almost insane vocal performance of Muir. Which perfectly compliments the lyrical matter, which sound like the mutterings of a manic depressive on the edge of insanity. Some might call it "emo", but really, Jonathan Davis and co. could only wish to sound as truly on the edge as Muir does here! The track closes as it began with the lush guitars and smooth voice of Muir, but this time over some fading rippling effects and bird song. It really is very atmospheric and ends the song in a beautiful way. Next up is the pummeling funkalized metal assault of "Accept My Sacrifice". Penned by bassist Rob Trujillo, this one pounds the senses, with some powerful drumming, very upfront, funky bass and a simplistic but brutal main riff. Its short but very sweet, and definitely one of the best of the album. The smouldering "Nobody Hears" takes down the pace a little, It's very atmospheric and melodic, and also features a very memorable lead line from guitarist Rocky George. Another top notch song! "Tap Into The Power" however, is the very definition of "filler". Boring, unmemorable, and completely devoid of any hooks. Not a terrible song, but it certainly sounds like it compared to the gems on the album. I always skip this one! Thankfully the next track, the searing melodrama of "Monopoly On Sorrow", quickly raises the album's quality bar to the top once again. Coming off as an acoustic song played on an electric guitar, this one sounds strikingly original. It also features strings, but somehow doesn't sound in the least bit twee or sappy. It really is a sound all it's own! The last minute and a half of the song quickly picks up the pace, with the main theme of the song being played at a furious speed, with some thundering bass and drums, and an awesome shotgun vocal delivery by Muir. An absolutely stunning track all round, just pure magic! "We Call This Mutha Revenge" starts slowly, in an almost pure hard rock style, with some great lead guitar by Rocky George. Then suddenly it all changes into hardcore styled thrash, with gang vocals and barracking guitars. This will please fans of the older Suicidal, as it's style is very much in that vein. The verse riff is just vicious, and the whole song is sure to put a big smile on anyone's face who enjoys a good headbanging time. Great stuff!

The second half of the album begins with probably it's most ambitious, and strange sounding song. "I Wasn't Meant To Feel This/Asleep At The Wheel" is very much in an alt rock vein, with a very laid back, almost lounge like sound. There is some funk in there too, courtesy of the amazing bass lines of Rob Trujillo. It has a very hypnotic sound, and it does hook you in. A very different sound for Suicidal, no doubt. But no less amazing for it! Ironically, this song is followed by the scathing "Gotta Kill Captain Stupid". This song is pure late 80's Suicidal, complete with a raging main riff courtesy of rhythm guitarist Mike Clark, and has an all round thrash sound. Session drummer Josh Freese offers up some crushing fills on this one, while Rocky George delivers a classic thrash guitar solo too! This is awesome stuff, and showing that even with their new found melodic sensibility, they can still deliver some high quality, face melting thrash whenever the mood takes them! The smooth as silk "I'll Hate You Better", has a wonderful, laid back quality, the overall sound of the track is very soothing, and Rocky George delivers some great melodic solos, and lead guitar on this one too. He is surely one of the most underrated guitarists ever in rock/metal! A lovely song to listen to. "Which Way To Free?" starts with a slow paced, heavy riff. This soon gives way to a stunning, surging stop/start bass riff, which the guitars soon follow. It has to be said, Trujillo suits this band far more than Metallica, and this album is probably his finest hour. This song overall has a slow/mid - pace, but is very infectious, and keeps your attention held throughout. Another very good song! The album should have ended here, as unfortunately, the final two tracks "It's Going Down", and "Where's The Truth?", are not quite up to the quality of most of the rest of the album. The former is probably the better of the two, with some meaty guitars, but really nothing that really grabs your attention. And the final track is just really average. These 2, along with "Tap Into The Power" are the only below par songs on the album. And sadly, I've had to lower my rating slightly because of that.

In closing, it's fair to say this album is easily Suicidal's most musically mature, experimental, and melodic album. There is a tiny amount of filler, but the amount of amazing songs really makes up for them. But because of those average songs, i find it hard to label this album as a true classic. This is definitely the last gasp though of the band as a vital, and a truly creative, original force in metal. For any open minded metal fan, i would heartily recommend this album. It's brimming with intensity, originality, and a very high quality throughout most of it's duration.

Buy this album now, you won't regret it!