Front Page Reviews & AIR

THE LONG, HARD ROAD OUT OF HIGH SCHOOL

The Road played a significant role in my life as a teenager.  I spent a lot of time in the car, travelling from place to place.  Unfortunately, those places were all within about a ten-mile radius.  During my high school years driving was one method of staving off extreme boredom.  In much the same way a twenty-something will unenthusiastically wander into the same bar week after week hoping something unusual might happen, we took to the familiar roadways of our town with those same rarely realized hopes.

Often the drive was preceded by long discussions about what we did not want to do that particular night.  There were no good movies to see.  No one was hungry.  There might be a party at someone’s house, but we didn’t really like that someone.  And, as mostly straightedgers, we didn’t really like parties.

So we took to the streets in my best friend’s car, a 1983 Ford Fairmont.   Against all convention, and without consideration for how the car actually looked (boxy) and performed (slowly, if at all), he painted flames on the hood and emblazoned the windshield with the name Col. Decker, after the character from the A-Team.  In this eye-catching ride, we drove around picking up whatever friends were available to be picked up and embarking on numerous pointless excursions.  We often flipped a coin at each intersection. If it came up heads, we turned right.  Tails, left.  However, because we flipped so frequently, we rarely got very far from home.

One of our most frequent musical selections during such drives was the Spawn soundtrack.   Now, just to be clear, I’ve never seen the movie.  And while I was definitely aware of the comic book, I never did sit down to read it.  So my assessment of this soundtrack is not at all clouded by any predisposition toward the Spawn character.  Only by youthful reminiscences.  My friends and I all liked comic books, and we all liked Henry Rollins.  I imagine that’s how the soundtrack found its way into our record collection in the first place.  We gradually grew fond of the whole album, and it emanated from our open car windows on many a warm afternoon.  

It was 1998 and I was 17.  The Spawn soundtrack had come out the year before.  I should probably refer to it by its official title, Spawn: The Album, which is how it was billed.  This sounds kind of pretentious, but the album was actually comprised of original tracks composed specifically for the film.  And what made it interesting was that each track was a collaboration between an alternative rock band and a techno artist.  So you had all the good, angsty rock riffs coupled with the high-energy, head-bop-inspiring beats.  Taking its cues from the revolutionary Judgment Night soundtrack, which paired rap and metal artists in a similar venture, Spawn: The Album was a grand experiment, and as such it proved to be an apt soundtrack for our young lives.

Like us, Spawn: The Album existed in the no-mans-land of the late nineties.  Grunge had taken its last gasps and people were wondering what was next.  They seemed eager to lighten the mood a bit, as evidenced by the sudden popularity of Sublime, No Doubt, and Christopher Walken dancing in a Fatboy Slim video.  But the scourge of nu metal lay just over the horizon.  We loved Rage Against the Machine unequivocally, and even tolerated Korn thanks to that cool animated video with the bullet.  We did not yet know the horror to which the combined influence of these two bands would lead.  But had it not been for this strange in-between time, this alternative rock limbo, the creators of Spawn might not have been inspired to make such an interesting album.

Of course, all the pleasant associations I have with the album force me to ask this question:  Is Spawn: The Album just a fuzzy piece of nostalgia from my youth, or is there actually some good music on there?

The one song you’d probably recognize is “Trip Like I Do,” the collaboration between Filter and the Crystal Method that achieved popular success on the rock radio airwaves.  I think we’ve all got to admit it’s a catchy tune, with its distorted, pulsating bass line and the start-stop, soft-loud dynamic.  And to this day it’s the only song I can think of that includes the vocab word ‘acumen’ in the lyrics.  Points for that, and the lines, “I got the rationale of a New York Cop/ I got the patience of a chopping block.” Not bad, right?

But I learned a long time ago that when an album’s radio single is the first track, the rest of the album is likely to be a disappointing.   Fortunately, that’s only partially true with Spawn: The Album.  But sadly, its most notable flop comes directly after its biggest hit.  Both Marilyn Manson and the Sneaker Pimps have denounced “Long Hard Road Out of Hell,” their dull, plodding pseudo-collaboration.  You may remember the Sneaker Pimps publicly comparing their work with Manson to “polishing a turd.”

If you can make it through that track, Metallica’s Kirk Hammett and Orbital kick it right back into high-gear with the guitar-heavy “Satan,” probably the best example of real rock riffs working as seamlessly as possible with electronic beats and samples.  Other delightful pairings include Moby and the Butthole Surfers, Tom Morello and Prodigy, and Stabbing Westward with Wink, whose dark, driving “Torn Apart” stands out as one of the strongest tunes on the album.

Considering my intense disdain for Incubus, it’s especially difficult for me to admit that their collaboration with DJ Greyboy on the groove-heavy track “Familiar” also rises to the top of this eclectic mix.  And “Skin Up Pin Up” from the lesser known Mansun (not Marilyn) and 808 can make you feel like a racecar driver surrounded by bright, pulsating lights – the kind you see in Japanese Animation when a character is supposed to be moving really fast but the artist doesn’t want to actually draw the background a thousand times.  I wonder if Mansun and 808 did such a good job with this song because they viewed the project as a genuine opportunity, not just a quick paycheck.  I’m thinking here of Metallica and DJ Spooky, whose lame remix of “For Whom the Bell Tolls” was likely done remotely, with no contact between the artists.  Just a way to get the Metallica name on the record and move more copies.  Of course, this is all speculation on my part.

Speaking of genuine opportunities though, the back end of the album is reserved for some of the boldest experiments.  Both the Henry Rollins (who we loved unconditionally)/Goldie track and the insane Slayer/Atari Teenage Riot track, “No Remorse,” feature beats so fast as to be undanceable, coupled with violent riffs and lyrics.  Not exactly something you’d want to listen to over and over, but genuinely intriguing compositions.

All in all, a decade and a half later, Spawn: The Album remains a record I would describe without hesitation as “pretty cool,” especially considering the musical no-mans-land of 1997 in which it was created.  And if you’ll imagine yourself bobbing your head to these punchy jams while driving aimlessly around town in a 1983 Ford Fairmont with flames on the hood, you can probably start to appreciate its appeal even more.  It seems the collaborators took to the studio in the same way we so often took to the road: Hoping something cool might happen. And for Spawn: The Album – if not for us aimless drivers – those hopes were realized.