Thursday: Mudvayne - Nothing to Gein

     I've never liked being a follower of trends. I was a late-comer to Facebook back in the day, I've only had a smart phone for six months or so (and it's not a fucking iPhone!) and I've yet to see the merit of Twitter. But maybe there's something to this Throwback Thursday thing...

     I'm certainly all for nostalgia, and there's certainly music worth listening to, even heavy music, that wasn't recorded in the last five minutes, so let's have another go at something cool from yesteryear, shall we? This week we're going to with one of my favourite tracks by a band that had a huge impact on my burgeoning metal tastes way back when.

     But first, a little story: myself and a group of friends went to Ozzfest in 2001. It was a good year for it, for sure -- Sabbath, Slipknot, and Manson (among others) on the mainstage, and some lesser-knowns that we dug, like Spineshank and Taproot, on the second stage -- but one band in particular stands out in my mind, both because of the quality of set they put on and because of the criminally low level of attention we gave them.

     Mudvayne was relatively unknown at the time, touring on LD 50 and being overlooked as another gimicky costume act by some people (including us) in the wake of Slipknot's success. So when Mudvayne took to the second stage for their relatively short afternoon set, we were really only half paying attention, checking them out more to pass the time between main stage sets than because we dug their sound. If only I had known then just how awesome Mudvayne was, and just how into them we'd get, my attentions would have been firmly glued to the stage for that set.

     Songs like "Nothing to Gein" are the reason for this. Lyrically dark and musically diverse, "Nothing to Gein" (LD 50 in general) showed me that drums and bass don't have to take a back seat to guitar in progressive music or heavy music. In fact, in Mudvayne's case, both Ryan and Matt are arguably much more technically proficient than Greg (sorry, Gurrg), the perfect example of what a rhythm section should be doing. Do yourself a favour and revisit this blast from the past.