The Union Underground - An Education in Rebellion

... and we're walking, we're walking, watch your step as we enter this inauspicious folder called "music." Don't worry, we aren't making a stop in all 73 subfolders, just most of them (some of them aren't full albums and some of them aren't worth hearing or writing about at all). 

If you look to your right you'll see the second band John Moyer played bass in, The Union Underground. This is a strange band, they only made this one album before John got called up to the majors, and it is somehow mistakenly called Nu-metal. It's much more Industrial motivated if you ask me, but that's not the strange part at all. You might remember their one hit Turn Me On Mr. Deadman, but a lot of these songs got serious radio play in the early 2000s, all the ones without swear words in them, at least.

Lyrically, this album is bizarre because most of it is either specifically about drugs, Paul McCartney and John Lennon, or else uses lyrics from other famous songs as sort of writing prompts like they were taking a poetry workshop at the local community college (Soundgarden, Dire Straits, you name it). It's not bad in the sense that they failed to make a generic Industrial Metal album that speaks to their generic desire to be lifelong rockers, but did anyone really need the south Texas version of Rob Zombie's little brother's Powerman 5000 borrowing Lane Staley's not wanting to be a heroin addict anymore MO?

Musically it's also what I just described. Take Alice in Chains, Rob Zombie, Marilyn Manson, and the word motherfucker, put them all in a blender on puree for 2 minutes, then pour directly into the least used toilet in your house.

Ok, ok, that's too harsh. If you put it on at half volume while you're running power tools you could easily pretend it's a much better album with much better lyrics. That may not be particularly satisfying, but tons of bands are much worse. At least they aren't Finger 11.

If you don't want to go hear it for yourself, and I don't blame you, at least take a moment to contemplate one of the worst lyrics I've heard in a while:

It's such a shame that it is this way, I'm a junkie God is gay.

That obviously neither offends nor shocks me, but rather comes across like Andrew Dice Clay doing his best Dr. Seuss impression. I can't disagree with other critics who imply it's a "hey, we can do that too" kind of album, but there's also no follow up to prove me right or wrong. 

Ok, I want you to know this album sort of sets the bar for exploring this so called "music" folder. There is some great stuff here, and some worse stuff. You all know I don't play favorites, so definitely bring a helmet for these next however many albums. It's gonna get weird.