Prong - State of Emergency (2023)

There seems to have been a reinvigorated interest in Prong lately, with what might be their most hyped album in ages, a swank tour with the greatest band on Earth (and beyond) Voivod, which is unfortunately not coming anywhere near my neck of the woods (god damnit). State of Emergency itself continues along that path of polished thrash that Tommy Victor has been on since the surprising Carved Into Stone back in 2012, which I'm sure is a relief for some, but obviously lacks most of the industrial elements that the band was performing quite well on Rude Awakening or Cleansing, as well as the really interesting and weird, organically mechanical rhythms the band was feeding us when they blew up on Beg to Differ or Prove You Wrong. Naturally, this also isn't a foray back into the raunchy sewer thrash of the magnificent Force Fed.

No, State of Emergency is in reality a pretty standard array of groove/thrash rhythms given personality through Tommy Victor's vocals and the occasional twist of melodic chord patterns reminiscent of Rude Awakening or Carved in Stone which help to balance out the taut chugging force. It's nearly identical to the last four original studio albums, and that's not a bad thing, since he's really settled into this style alongside bassist Jason Christopher who has now been a part of the proceedings for nearly a decade. He has a simple style, which supports the structure of Victor's rhythm guitars with a good tone, making for an appreciable impact; but it doesn't venture off on its own quite enough, and I do think the simpler riffing patterns would certain allow for that. On the other hand, the new drummer, Griffin McCarthy does an awesome job, slapping out a lot of fills and grooves to help amplify the material without attempting to extremify it too much, which just wouldn't work on such basic grooves. As for Victor, he's always had that relatable, gruff tough guy timbre and sounds awesome here, barking off with a few effects here or there to make it feel sleek and modern.

I do think the album gets better as it goes along, really picking up with tracks like "Light Turns Black" or "Who Told Me" which go for broke a little more and grow catchier as a result. The opener track "The Descent" has propulsive riffing energy, and makes sense in that position, but it feels like a good 12-14 minutes pass before it's grabbing me, other than the squeals in "Breaking Point" or that melodic floe of chords in "Non-Existence". But pretty much the entire second half of State of Emergency is flooded with the more emotional style of chorus, and the riffing really supports that. Even the cover of Rush's "Working Man" really thrives in context, and unlike a lot of covers it actually functions alongside the band's original material. I also noticed that the few little spurts of effects or industrial influences that do sneak through here almost always stir my interest, and wouldn't mind if they brought more of that back into the songwriting for the future.

Ultimately, I found this the best Prong album since Carved in Stone, though I don't think it exactly laps their more recent output like Zero Days or X - No Absolutes. Though some of the riffing choices are short on nuance or innovation, the sum package is largely consistent after a predictable start, and the band still retains its distinct feel from the rest of its genre. So while it's not at all any sort of comeback album, the hype is deserved, this has always been a worthy East Coast thrash band throughout most of its incarnations and stylistic shifts, with only 1-2 sub-par studio offerings in the earlier 2000s, long since compensated for with much stronger determination, tapping into the core, urban fundamentals while streamlining them for an audience of today.

Verdict: Win [8/10]

https://prongmusic.com/

Prong - Zero Days (2017)

Zero Days frontloads what I believe to be its least compelling track, "However It May Ends", one of the heavier here to be sure, with a big brute Biohazard groove and some stock thrashing passages, but even there you can tell they're trying to round it out really well with a cool, melodic chord pattern behind the pre-chorus. That's not to forgive a lot of the vapid, boring chugging that fuels it, but I doubt too many people would hear this opener and feel like the band is in any way lacking an energy far beyond its years, even if you cannot stand the somewhat lackluster creativity of the riffs. While this is a symptom of a few tracks on the disc, I'm happy to say that overall this is the best of the albums since Carved Into Stone, and the effort that went both the production and variation is more than apparent.

Like X - No Absolutes before it, Zero Days plays like a sort of career retrospective packed into a singular experience that is streamlined through the loud, punchy production. You've got a lot of material here that is pretty much pure thrash, weighted by walls of dense palm muted riffs that are likely trying to keep it heavier and relevant with a lot of the popular styles of the 21st century. A lot of attention to detail is given to the lead guitars, and there are even obscure little tributes I noticed in a few of the songs. For instance, in the title track, there's a point where you're getting these hyper picked, dingy little guitar rhythms behind the bridge which remind me a whole lot of the tone and style on Force Fed. Some of the note progressions and structure of "Rulers of the Collective" feels a LOT like "Rude Awakening", almost as if they took that track and just remade parts of it, tucked it away on the latter half of this album to see if any of us were paying attention. These are probably too subtle details for many to pick out, but I just wanted to reiterate how cognizant this record is of the stuff Prong had written before it.

That said, they do try new patterns, catchy chorus parts we've not heard before like in "The Whispers", a cut that partly feels like it would have been a natural on Cleansing. "Interbeing" is one of my favorites, opening with a very Testament style thrash riff and delivering on some of Tommy's most interesting and almost robotic sounding vocals, with a pre-chorus and chorus that really paid off. "Divide and Conquer" is another fresh-feeling track with some nice bass effects, and a bit of a Helmet feel only through that more mechanical Prong lens...again, another very strong chorus which wouldn't be out of place on the alt rock radio. New bassist Mike Longworth fit in smoothly with a huge tone and plenty of moody lines that enhanced the tracks, primarily in the verses, although he would soon be replaced by Jason Christopher's return the following year. The lyrics are solid, Victor turning in the consummate professional performance all around, as he should with the massive level of experience he's got writing and touring in some pretty huge bands. Arturo Cruz, who ironically would be leaving himself after this, also has a flawless contribution, drumming that can flex with whatever style Prong is cycling through at any given instant, and emphasizing the groove and heaviness, even where it feels the most generic. And that's about my only real complaint, some of the heavier riffs here are just too bland, been there, done that, even predictably djenty in "Compulsive Future Projection"...and everything else just deserved better. But it's still a good album if you're willing to embrace its broad appeal.

Verdict: Win [7.5/10]

https://prongmusic.com/

Prong - X - No Absolutes (2016)

The tenth Prong full-length once again revisits the bands hardcore thrashing roots, drawing a lot of parallels to their early offerings like Primitive Origins and Force Fed, with the caveat that they've kept on board the modern production choices that defined a lot of their other 21st century recordings. It's arguably got one of the better studio sounds they've every pulled off, at least for the ears of a contemporary audience used to the clarity and loudness rather than the rough edges that outlines a lot of thrash records back in the 80s. X - No Absolutes has its moments, but ultimately I found the album a little frustrating in just how many of the tracks were so close to being great, but just didn't have quite enough of a catchy riff-set or chorus to totally stick with me; it's an album I 'like', but one that could have easily been a 'love' with some further tweaking.

Now, while I stand behind my earlier statement that this was a band going for a more stripped down and straightforward flashback to their formative style, that's not to say they completely abandon the steps they've taken along the way. You'll still traces of the groove metal of the lame Scorpio Rising on a few cuts like "Without Words", although it's more effective and better-written, butting up against the more uptempo crossover/street thrash a la "Sense of Ease", or "Cut and Dry" which brings back a bit of that mechanical oomph that structured records like Beg to Differ. They also still use a lot of the more melodic chorus parts in tunes like the titular "No Absolutes" with a pretty decent harmony. A lot of focus goes onto the lead guitars throughout the album, and while few of them are really what I'd describe as a show-stopper, they're all competent and effective in their respective tracks. Tommy's voice sounds fantastic and distinct as it almost always does, effortlessly channeling both the urban bluntness and the more occasional melodic phrasings that keep it interesting. The rhythm section of Cruz and Christopher keeps it all locked pretty tightly, although I'd almost never say the drums or bass are ever features of this record.

The one side they don't really touch much here is the industrial/electronic stuff, but instead there are a few tunes deeper in the track list like "Belief System" or "In Spite of Hindrances", where they're trying something slightly different, like a dramatic, choppy, heavy alt radio rock. I can see how these might turn some of the audience off, but I can't say they sound all that bad in this context, even if these are far from my favorite tunes on the album. Prong is never going to be Linkin Park or Sum 41, but I'm hardly offended when they do a decent job with the more accessible fare, and it's at least better written than what, say, Kreator was coming up with on Endorama. I just think it's sort of tucked away where few people are ever going to explore it, and when run against some of the harder hitting cuts on the album like "Sense of Ease" or "Worth Pursuing" it might create too much of a disparity. X - No Absolutes might actually feel like the 'matured' Prong, still loyal to some degree to what burst them up through the manholes onto the scene in the later 80s, but produced for ears that have spent the ensuing decades listening to rock radio. The brashness and venom have been drained out of the sound, but they still sound very much themselves, and this album is about on the level with its predecessor Ruining Lives when all is said and done.

Verdict: Win [7/10]

https://prongmusic.com/

Prong - Age of Defiance EP (2019)

Age of Defiance is, I'm assuming, a teaser for whatever the band is to release as a follow-up to 2017's full-length Zero Days, paired up with a trio of live cuts from a German club date back in the middle of this last decade. I was immediately taken with the dense sound they pulled off in the studio, whether they're banging out heavier chords or chugging along this one sounds like what we might have expected of a modern Prong in the 21st century, and yet it manages not to lose the subtleties created by the warmer melodic chords and Victor's voice. A full-length album with punch like this is going to turn a lot of heads and work wonders towards the trio's relevance movement forward into yet another decade, but at the same time I'm not going to say that these are necessarily their best songs.

Essentially you're getting a microcosm of many of the band's evolutionary shifts all in one package. There are still plenty of basic thrashing guitars, especially in "End of Sanity", though they were rather bland riff-wise, reminding me there of maybe Testament. The vocals are great with all the backups, and the chorus chords tend to be the more interesting parts of the songs, with some nice lead guitars to flesh them out. The rhythm section sounds great in this mix, the drums thunder along and though the bass doesn't do much of its own thing, it's thick enough to be noticed against the meat of those guitars. I think "Age of Defiance" itself is the better of the two new tunes, largely because of that melodic airiness created through the guitars in contrast to the churning, chuggy lows. It doesn't sound unlike a track from the Cleansing era, there are even some small electronic flourishes, and just a very satisfying chorus even if the verses feel underwhelming outside of their production. I think these work well enough as a sampling of what the next album could sound like, I just hope Tommy has stocked up some better, more varied riffs to go with the excellent vocal performances.

The live cuts sound alright, perhaps not as good as on the 100% Live album, but the tones sound pretty thick and effective on "Rude Awakening", "Another Worldly Device", and "Cut Rate", the latter two kicking some butt like they used to. It's interesting that all three of those tunes are from that 1994-1996 era, maybe Prong is telling us that those styles will be the focus in the near future, or perhaps I'm just reading too much into it. At any rate, while these lives don't disappoint, they will never be a reason for me to spin this, I'd rather have had more originals, so they're not exactly a huge value, though they do work well aesthetically with the new material. We'll have to hear where it all goes from this point, but if nothing else Age of Defiance reveals that Prong could potentially put out a more substantial, killer sounding disc, and the tracks at least have some seeds of memorable ideas.

Verdict: Indifference [6/10]

https://prongmusic.com/

Prong - Songs from the Black Hole (2015)

Songs from the Black Hole is not the first instance of Prong dishing out a few cover tunes, they've done a few before like "Get a Grip On Yourself" by The Stranglers back on Prove You Wrong in '91, but here the entire focus is on selecting, performing, and producing a professional series of covers from an eclectic range of influences. Considering the range of styles Tommy Victor and company have cycled through as they evolved the sound of this and, I thought this might prove a fairly interesting tribute, and at least as far as the track selection I wasn't wrong. They draw pretty heavily on some of their hardcore, punk and post-hardcore faves, which makes sense since their earlier thrash records totally emerged from the primacy of the NYHC, and as also might be expected you get a few cases of industrial or Gothic rock which clearly rubbed off on records like Cleansing and Rude Awakening.

They certainly have good taste, and the sound here is about as clean cut and polished as any in their career, at least on the level with Carved in Stone, even on the nastier punk and hardcore tracks they pick like "Doomsday" from Discharge and  "The Bars" by Black Flag. They're a natural at these, and Victor's voice sounds pretty good channeling all the proto-hardcore rage, so even if they sound slicker and less nasty than the originals they're totally energy-charged and fun to listen through. I thought the rendition of "Vision Thing" by Sisters of Mercy was rather bland, or rather it just felt too close to the original and not terribly Prong-i-fied, but on a similar note Killing Joke's "Seeing Red" is really excellent, as their cover of "Give Me the Cure" from Fugazi. Bad Brains' "Banned in D.C." will give you another swift kick in the ass, and they manage to twist the Butthole Surfers' "Goofy's Concern" into something fun. I think the one that they most successfully transform into a Prong number here is the Adolescents' "Kids of the Black Hole", and along with "Seeing Red" it was one of my faves on the album, just sounds like something they could have put on one of their own albums in the mid to late 90s before the hiatus.

The track that is most out side their box though is Neil Young's "Cortez the Killer", which is still played with a lot of the drab bluesy abandon you might expect from the original, although they do electrify it a bit more. I'm not actually a big fan of the tune or Young in general, so I constantly just felt like ending the album with track #9, but Prong definitely does a respectable job of it. And that's really the selling point here, diehards who want to hear where some of the band's inspiration hails from will be treated to well structured, well produced material that largely shines a light on such influences. Maybe a few of these are outliers and don't factor much into the regular Prong sound, but Discharge, Black Flag, and Bad Brains clearly did in their formation, and Butthole Surfers and Killing Joke would inform a little of their evolution in the 90s. Would I ever recommend this over their original albums? Not a chance...in fact, despite the level of care they obviously put into this, I do get a little bored with some of it, and if I do spin Songs from the Black Hole I'm headed straight for just 2-3 of the tunes. If you're new to the band you really want the first five albums, or maybe Carved in Stone. I don't even know that I'd recommend it to Prong fans unless they really want to hear this voice over someone else's material. But I don't have a lot of negative to say, on a technical level it's a solid product as far as these cover anthologies go.

Verdict: Indifference [6.75/10]

https://prongmusic.com/

Prong - Ruining Lives (2014)

The ground Prong gained with their 2012 'return to form' Carved in Stone was theirs to lose, and while Ruining Lives doesn't quite reach the same heights as its predecessor, it follows its example pretty closely, but actually intensifies the formula with some even more charged up aggression and speed. That doesn't translate into better songs, necessarily, but the audience would at least be snapping its fingers and necks throughout the majority of its 42 minute barrage. The eye impaled on the fork might have returned, but don't expect any return to the more industrialized, laid back grooves of the mid 90s Cleansing era, this is through and through a thrasher with just a few more of those catchy rock-oriented chorus parts here, but it by no means leans on them as much as the heaviness.

The lineup was stabilized from the prior effort, but there are a few production differences, for instance this one has a more caustic sound to the guitars which makes it hit a lot harder, perhaps a small nod back to the days of Force Fed, but nowhere near as brash, raw and atmospheric. The playing is dextrous and intense, the leads come flying at you like birds of prey crashing to the earth to snatch something up in their talons. Victor's guitars sound like he had somehow reversed his aging process, or maybe just showing us that he wasn't always lighting up the frets and whipping the hair around as he always could have been. This does occasion get Prong lost in the shuffle of other, more rapid fire thrash bands sprouting up at the time, but there's still enough here that sounds distinctly like this band that you they never scratch their identity. A few of the harder hitting, double bass driven progressions can be a little predictable, and this album has a higher ratio of forgettable riff patterns than the one before it, to the point that a lot of the tracks that relied heavier on breaks with the bass guitars ("Absence of Light") automatically sink their hooks in more because it stands out from the more exhausting heaviness around it.

There's still a degree of nuance and creativity happening where it can, and the vocals carve straight through you. In this particular mix they almost sound more futuristic, especially when he's layering down some backing tracks for himself, the limited melodic dynamics he spits out are very effective against the brickwork of the drums and rhythm guitars. I do think Campos got drowned out a bit here, you can hear the presence of the bass but it's just not competing at the level needed against these guitars, and seems like it just shadows them too much, except on a track like "Self Will Not Riot" where they get a little bit funkier and pop out more. Not a ton of tracks on this one that I ever find myself whistling when not in the presence of the album itself, but I found "Remove, Separate Self", "The Book of Life" and the others I mentioned in the review to be its strongest, and then of the rest you're at least getting some genuine fury like the opening combo of "Turnover" and "The Barriers". Not Prong's finest hour, perhaps, but still a damn sight better than Scorpio Rising, and at least it gave me confidence that Carved in Stone wasn't some late-stage positive fluke in their career.

Verdict: Win [7/10]

https://prongmusic.com/

Prong - Carved Into Stone (2012)

After 16 years of nothing consequential happening, I admit I had pretty much discounted Prong from ever mattering to me again. I could always enjoy the first decade of material they released and ignore the rest, but Tommy Victor and his latest round of recruits Alexei Rodriguez and Tony Campos had other plans, recording and releasing their best material in all those years. Carved Into Stone is partly a return to the energized thrash roots of Force Fed, but it brings along all the lessons the band learned after that in terms of production, and also some of the post-hardcore and groove metal influences, though the industrialized phase of the band had largely been phased out by this point (not entirely, see below). This record might not have all of their catchiest or best written tracks, but damn if it isn't a consistent and effective affirmation of most of the band's strengths leading up to it, and as far as I'm concerned this remains the band's benchmark for the 21st century; the formula they've been trying to maintain ever since.

Kicking off with what is arguably the band's purest thrash joint since 1990, "Eternal Heat", the trio plays in total lockstep, furious clips of Victor's thrashing guitars emphasized heavily by the drums and low end of the bass to create a flailing, punching entity that is easy to get excited about. As far as riff construction, there are tons of callbacks here to progressions from Beg to Differ, Cleansing and Prove You Wrong, even if they're not complete copies. Sticking with what's safe, perhaps, but doing so with a fury. Tommy's vocals sound so much better on this album than the two before it that it's almost like he had emerged from some sort of rehab. A lot of that has to do with the production, which sounds great with the backing tracks, and while even his melodic side retains that urban toughness you'd expect, it's the best he's sounded. You still get some of the grunting chorus parts, but they sound a lot more controlled and complementary to the music than they did on the unfortunate Scorpio Rising. The leads are also more energized and memorable here than on nearly anything else they'd ever come up with, and the whole affair is pure professionalism, and not at all to the detriment of the level of aggression they're meting out.

Also vital to the album is that they keep a lot of the very catchy choruses with the melodic chord patterns and slightly cleaner, more emotional vocals, "Revenge...Best Served Cold" being one that comes right to mind, a tune that would have fit right in on any of their 1991-1996 material. "State of Rebellion" is another highlight, and this one's one of the scarce love letters to their industrial side with those pumping bass lines in the verses and the creepy, shrill electronics in the background that make it sound like you're trying to solve a Scooby Doo mystery from the middle of a mosh pit. I can't even think of a truly weak tune on the album...even "Subtract" with its bland verse groove riffs is accented by a great chorus and skillful vocal delivery. The lyrics are quite good, some of the best they've had through their career, and even the cover art, while still staying simple, is at least less of an eyesore than the couple albums before it. I was thoroughly satisfied with this album when it showed up, and still break it out for regular rotations almost as often as I do the first five.

Verdict: Win [8.5/10] 
https://prongmusic.com/

Prong - Power of the Damn Mixxxer (2009)

It's weird that anyone would feel that an average album like Power of the Damager would necessitate an album full of electro industrial remix tracks, but perhaps the band felt like they had strained a bit too much of that sound out of the album and wanted to toss the fans of records like Cleansing and Rude Awakening, or themselves, or the hypothetical industrial metal-based portion of their audience, a bone. Bring on a bunch of the band's friends from groups like Pitchshifter, Anthrax, Dope and even The Dillinger Escape Plan to tweak the knobs and see what they can do with this material, after all it was a partly forgettable experience to begin with, and perhaps this sort of collaborative experiment to bring out some sort of qualities in it we hadn't heard before...

I won't go that far in dubbing it a success, but what I can say is that Power of the Damn MiXXXer is at least far better than the atrocious Whose Fist Is This Anyway? remix EP from back in 1992. The mixers involved here seemed to give the tunes a good listen and try and extract the riffs, vocals and grooves into something almost dance-worthy that made sense. Granted, was anyone asking for an hour of industrial dance remixes from a band that had seen better days about 15 years before? Was a bargain bin KMFDM necessary when you could still enjoy (or endure) the real thing? Probably not, and this remains one of the more useless outings in the Prong canon, but there's no question that it was put together with some degree of care, with each of the original tracks being given its own shot at shining in this alternate format, and "The Banishment" getting two versions. Some of them feel like pretty generic rave beats with thrash guitars applied to them, but you do still get a little of the vague emotional impact from the choruses of the originals, even with those rhythmic differences.

One other thing I appreciated was that, having had problems with the production on Power of the Damager, a lot of that has vaporized here, as the guitars are given more cutting mixes, and in particular Tommy Victor's vocals actually sound far better here. A lot of the other things they added in like synth lines or industrial pulses are quite cut & dry, generic and don't show a lot of creativity if you've explored the techno or industrial genres yourself, but they'll do in a pinch. A few tunes like the title track get an even bigger evolution which almost feels like J.G. Thirlwell got to them, as in the original tune is abstracted more and its ideas translated more into the noisier synths and beats. This isn't necessarily a sign of higher quality, but at least Prong didn't want this all arranged to evoke too much monotony, you're getting a decent dynamic range, for instance the jungle mix of "Pure Ether" with the filtered, robotic vocals, quite a stretch from the original or even its neighbors here, but not ultimately that effective. So in the end, respectable, but I wouldn't say any of these were going to distract me from the better Prong efforts or any other EBM/industrial or electronica that I frequent.

Verdict: Indifference [6.5/10]

https://prongmusic.com/

Prong - Power of the Damager (2007)

Power of the Damager is by no means one of the highlights of the Prong discography, and it's nowhere near as distinct as the albums they were churning out through the 90s, but compared to Scorpio Rising before it, I had the sense that a metro commuter rail which had nearly fallen off its tracks had suddenly righted itself and then proceeded to the next station with few casualties. This album might best be described as the band's return to thrash, although it doesn't abandon any of the influences that had shaped Victor's songwriting in the previous decade. Another way to look at it is that's it quite similar to a record like Cleansing, only with most of the industrial bells & whistles removed for a more straightforward, street brawl structure that would more closely resemble how it was going to feel at a live event. Stylistically, also directly sets up the streak of albums to follow it, thankfully an era in which the group would get its groove back and no longer teeter on the brink of embarrassment.

This one comes out swinging, with a pair of punchy thrashers which actually deliver a small dose of NYHC in their chord constructions, while maintaining the pinches and squeals Tommy is so fond of embellishing his meatier riffs with. They could have opened up a Biohazard gig easily with some of this stuff. The guitars have this really processed, pugilistic feel to them which sound potent, but also can muddle up the rest of the mix. That's actually one of the areas where this one falls short, I just don't love how it sounds, perhaps a bit too bulky and I don't always love how the vocals and guitars drown out the little background melodies or even the drums. Also, there are a couple dumb grooves in tunes like "3rd Option" which by 2007 felt really passe even by meathead mallcore or nu metal standards around the turn of the century. Fortunately these are pretty scarce, and many of the riffs do deliver a modicum of thrashing entertainment, but I feel like a better production on the guitars would have made several of them shine a lot brighter. The rhythm section is as solid as always, but they do have to contend with that bludgeoning as well as a lot of Tommy's angrier brute vocals which have clearly rubbed off a little from Scorpio Rising, just not as awkwardly.

There's an EP worth of decent Prong material here, in particular "Pure Ether" and "Worst of It" which focus more on the balance of heaviness with catchier, melodic chord patterns that remind me of stuff they were doing on Rude Awakening or Cleansing that I liked. These aren't also without production issues, for example Victor's vocals on "Worst of It" sound almost like a badly mixed Mike Muir, but musically they get their point across and I enjoy the blend of thrash and post-hardcore elements. A few others also deliver, but on the whole I think you could erase half this material from existence and nobody would really miss it, possibly not even the band. However, I don't mean to imply that it's at all terrible, whereas Scorpio Rising made me cringe a whole lot just to get at the painfully few tasty bits, this one sees them in regular rotation, only they aren't being served well by the production choices or the weirdly 'blunt' cover artwork. See what I did there?

Verdict: Indifference [6.75/10]

https://prongmusic.com/

Prong - Scorpio Rising (2003)

I don't think there's any question that Prong was already flirting with groove and nu metal on their 90s albums like Cleansing or Rude Awakening, and they were possibly even an influence on a few of the bands in that style; but Scorpio Rising was the first unfortunate instance in which they themselves started to adopt the style to the point where it felt intrusive and distracting, like they were trying to bring on some of those more modern influence and in the process dumbing down their own unique aesthetics. This was not as shocking, or as awful as, say, Diabolus in Musica, because Tommy Victor and friends eased us into this evolution It's not quite the disaster that some of the bigger metal bands ran into as they were trying to court an even more mainstream audience, but it IS bad, the worst Prong album in the discography and remains awkward to listen to even today.

The riffs here are mostly big, dumb groove metal riffs, not the first they've written, but they don't really stand out as other than flexing some muscle in a niche that had already gotten annoying and tired even by the early 21st century. They still have some nods to their industrial/thrash era as in "All Knowing Force", but even then those aren't as good as "Snap Your Fingers, Snap Your Neck" and a few come across as just bad Ministry wannabe progressions. The bass playing is still quite pumping and fun, but when you haven't really got any good riffs to play under it also eventually dips into the inevitable mediocrity. The drumming is fine in that groovy hip hop style with some occasional industrial programming embellishments, but by far the biggest offender on the album are the vocals of Tommy Victor. Sure, they still sound like he always has, but he adds in these over the top gorilla grunts to his already gruff style and it ends up sounding too moronic to take seriously. On a track like "Embrace the Depth" he's back to himself and it doesn't sound so bad, he can surge into one of those catchier chorus parts, but there are other times here where I nearly had to shut off the album it was just so goofy sounding. A few of his howls even sound like an angrier, burlier Glen Danzig, so it seems like the other, bigger bands Victor had played with (or would play with) rubbed off here, and the lyrics are largely awful...

I can't completely decimate this album, because about 30-40% of it sounds like the band did in the decade prior, but apart from a few of those splashes of more warm, melodic chords, the bass lines and a few of the chorus vocals, this is just weak. The better songs like "Assurances" and "Out of This Realm" are wedged pretty deeply into the album, but they wouldn't be enough to save it even if they were the first two in the track list. Maybe it was all that time off, Tommy was just trying to rekindle the flames of what Prong was prior, but mix in a few flavors of the week, a process that clearly worked in the previous decade but just falls apart here. At its best, Scorpio Rising is just lazily copying previous material, but at its worst it's unintentionally hilarious. Not the sort of career nadir I'd want to run over with my car like Load or Virtual XI, but this album just seems so unnecessary in retrospect, since they've done a pretty decent job with most of their other output. Even the cover artwork on this one left something to be desired. Is that a skeleton with a beetle head wielding a scythe? What the fuck does that have to do with anything?

Verdict: Fail [4/10]

https://prongmusic.com/

Prong - 100% Live (2002)

When Prong re-emerged after a five year hiatus, the longest yet in the band's career, they did so with their first full-length live album. This wasn't the first time they'd given us the uncut experience, as they had a Peel Sessions EP and another rare live EP that I've never actually had my hands on; but 16 years into their existence seems like a respectable time to produce such a product and one would assume this would be handled professionally, especially since they had such a great run into and through the 90s. Well, 100% Live, cultivated from a couple gigs in the Midwest, certainly sounds decent enough in terms of its mix and even the song selection, but I don't know that it was necessarily arranged to have a lot of impact on the listener, to give him/her that same rush of seeing Tommy and company on a stage.

What I mean is that the track listing here, as presented to the fan, seems a bit too mellow up front, where you'd expect them to start off with some ragers and then get a little more dynamic as the sets progressed. "Rude Awakening" is an awesome song but it's a little too subdued to kick off a set from a band built on thrash, and then after that they launch into a chuggy tune called "Initiation" which was entirely new to us (they'd later change the name for Scorpio Rising), though it did build to a decent chorus that would have felt at home on the two studio albums before it, some nice bass lines from ex-Lizzy Borden player Brian Perry (who would not appear on any of the studio material). Proceeding into "Broken Peace", a track that doesn't quite work as well within the organic live environment as it did in the studio, there's a real sense that the band is kind of phoning it on or taking it a little too easy, not because they're cocking it all up but because of how they structured this. Even when they take on a more aggressive tune like "Another Worldly Device" it feels a little sluggish, the one real exception being "Disbelief" when they reach straight back to their roots and go hardcore wild, or "Cut-Rate" from Cleansing...in fact there's just a chunk of material near the end of the live album that seems more driven and ferocious than the rest and it stands out too much, including the finale, "Unconditional".

I think you can also notice small production differences in some of the material which is always the risk when you're not just pulling it from a single source, and even though the wilder closing tracks might seem less cleanly produced, they're so much more fun. Don't get me wrong, I like almost all the songs on this album in their studio incarnations, but the whole industrial/groove arsenal in their sound has never seemed to come across live as well as the classics which sound awesome. All told, 100% Live is certainly not a bad representation of their chops, but it just seems inconsistent in the context of a record that's you'd think was supposed to thrill the audience at their return. A better arrangement of the tracks would have done wonders for this one, as it stands I'll just be sticking to their studio works because there's not much reason to revisit this.

Verdict: Indifference [6/10]

https://prongmusic.com/

Prong - Rude Awakening (1996)

Rude Awakening was another of those heavily divisive albums of the 90s, by a band that was constantly reinvigorating itself by layering in more influences than the hardcore punk and thrash which fueled it so heavily in the decade before. After a somewhat successful LP with Cleansing, they decided to shift further into their electronic fetish, and the result was an album incorporating everything from industrial embellishments, hip hop beats, bouncy groove metal riffs that mirrored some of the burgeoning nu metal of the day, and even some moody alternative rock which would structure some of Victor's vocal stylings and how the band would assembled its verse and chorus structures. Like its predecessor, it somehow managed to make all of this work, to fuse it onto the urban rusted framework that has always supported the group's atmosphere and lyrical disposition, and evoke a timelessness that pervades the stylistic migration of their first five full-lengths.

I absolutely loved the production on this one; whereas Cleansing was a bit more level instrumentally, this one is heavily saturated, fatter and really grooves along hard. Paul Vincent Raven provided the bass guitars for the second time, and his tone is awesome, these rumbling bass-lines which always enhanced all of Tommy's drudging, basic chug-laden riffs, and his more interesting squeals, pinches, melodic chords and other trickery that created such a well-rounded, exploratory sound. The drums feel a lot more electronic this time around, basically a blend of Ted Parsons steady mechanistic style and some actual programming, but as someone who was also playing around in an industrial band in the mid to late 90s I really enjoyed how it all came out. Sure, some of these beats are mighty basic, but when you listen closely you can hear all of these little beeps and gleeps and percussion effects that keep them interesting even when a few of Tommy's duller chug riffs are playing over them. At times this album feels like some dudes picked up a basic drum machine, pressed the pre-sets for some trip hop beats and then just let their imaginations splash all over that, and while it might seem crude or 'boring' to some, it forced Victor and company into creating some catchy riffs and vocal lines to help entrance the listener.

The vocals are the same blunt street-ready philosophy we'd always gotten, perhaps flirting a little bit more with rap or poetry in a couple of the verses but not too distanced from where they were on the 1994 album. I have to say the first three tracks on this remain some of my favorites in their catalog, from the jerky, slamming "Controller" that sounded like an industrialized Chaos A.D. outtake, through the insanely groovy and subversive "Caprice" and its adorable electronic melodies, to the more mellow, catchy, pop-like title track. Sure, it had a fairly awful spur-of-the-moment rockstar video courtesy of Rob Zombie, which does not at all represent the song's message, the album, or the band, but I'll try not to hold that against it since I've been listening to this one for almost a quarter century now and never gotten tired of it. These cuts do overshadow a few of the other tunes, to be honest, but even the weaker, less interesting tunes have some addicting vocal lines or effects which take my fingers off the skip button, and there are some deep, hypnotic grooves in cuts like "Without Hope" and "Slicing"; or a slight spin back to robotic thrash metal with "Mansruin", a tune likely to please that 90s industrial metal audience weaned on "Stigmata", "Ultra" and "Jesus Built My Hotrod". No surprise really that Tommy would go on to play with Ministry himself for awhile as Raven did.

It would be easy to write off Rude Awakening for the variety of influences tainting the band's original thrash concept, or because of its unfortunately parallels to the bad metal trends of its day, but it comes together really well, simplistic but engaging and memorable, almost like a automated factory version of Helmet, who were also trending hard at the time (and rightly so). Another of my favorite Prong albums, even long after its novelty had worn off, and I'm always happy to break it down off the shelf and go exploring through it again. Sadly, this would be the last album before the band would go on a sizable hiatus, before returning with something less creative and/or interesting, but in the interim Victor got to play with Ministry, and even Danzig, where he remains today in a more lucrative role.

Verdict: Win [8.75/10] (there is no kindness to waste)

https://prongmusic.com/

Prong - Cleansing (1994)

I don't think you could listen through albums like Beg to Differ and Prove You Wrong and NOT think Tommy Victor had a fascination with industrial or electronic music. While those were organic thrash manifestations for the most part, there was clearly an undercurrent of clinical, machine-like riffing, beats and production which made an album like Cleansing almost inevitable. But it's not until this 1994 effort that Prong embarked on a more even split between its thrashing roots and the electronic experimentation; I'm of course excluding the remix EP from a couple years prior which was an abomination. What I'm most impressed with, is that rather than merely aping the flavors of the day, such as Ministry, who were enjoying massive success due to Psalm 69 and steady touring, they made something of their own out of this stylistic crossbreeding. Not to say that there aren't a couple riffs here, as in "Whose Fist is This Anyway?", which Alain Jourgensen might have penned himself, but this one manages to stand out and even outlive a lot of other US industrial rock bands why fell by the wayside somewhere around the late 90s when emo and nu-metal started to bifurcate their projected audiences.

What really surprises me is just how laid back this record is. Similar to Beg to Differ it's exceedingly simple and subliminal in how it's constructed. While there are programmed beats occasionally, they were still leaning on Ted Parsons for the actual drumming, and he sets up a well-produced set of grooves here that give all the guitars, samples, and pluggy little bass-lines room to work upon the listener's expectations. The rhythm guitars are extremely minimal patterns, but even where they feel familiar there is something refreshing about how they serve the overall aesthetic of the album. The tone is punchy and processed, but works equally well whether Victor is cycling through some of his basic palm mutings or the more expressive, dissonant, often warm open chords that are used to detail out some of the verses and choruses. Tracks like "Another Worldly Device" and "Cut-Rate" are still heavily rooted in the thrash we'd come to expect, but the band really stretches itself out with things like the funky guitar line in "Broken Peace" or "Not of This Earth", which twists a riff similar to "Hell If I Could" from Prove You Wrong into something that almost sounds like a darker Jane's Addiction. Another interesting piece was "Home Rule" which reminded me a lot of Voivod with its jarring, wonderful chord progressions and the swerving bass grooves.

Of course, this is all brought into the Prong stable by Tommy Victor's blunt voice, which connects this all to their greater body of work, and fits in really well with the mechanistic blueprints whether he's going straight at the mic or putting a little industrial filtering on their. What further thrusts this into that genre is the liberal use of sampling that sits just behind the main instruments and vocals, almost as if its afraid to truly intrude, but loud enough to matter when categorizing Cleansing. There are political/authoritarian rants, crowd chants, and machine noises in there, all adding to the sonic palette without detracting or distracting. I can't actually pick out a weak track in the bunch...perhaps there are a couple overly repetitive passages on the album, or a few groove metal licks that are a little too generic in retrospect, but this one manages to fill out nearly an entire hour and maintain its consistency and immersion, all the way to the catchy but mellowed thrashing throughout "Test". I've mentioned that the album felt 'laid back' to me, but I don't want that to imply that it lacks energy; it's aggression is simply focused on the robotic nature of its rhythms, the tautness of the lower end guitars that is counterbalanced by the delicious processed open chords which appear later.

Even within this small microcosm of Prong's sound there is a good dynamic balance which leaves me with a fulfilling impression for one of my favorite albums in their whole 30+ year history. This was also the hottest I think the band had ever been thanks largely to the MTV video rotation for "Snap Your Fingers, Snap Your Neck", which was also lampooned on Beavis & Butt-head. And deservedly so...this was a still a band hungry to explore what it could achieve, never balking at stretching its parameters and as a result we've got about a decade of quality albums which build upon their predecessors in interesting ways. For me, the streak didn't end here.

Verdict: Win [8.75/10] (all the spaces between bleed)

https://prongmusic.com/

Prong - Whose Fist is This Anyway? EP (1992)

This EP always struck me as a rather strange, unfortunate sort of experiment, the main reasons being that 1) the track "Whose Fist is This Anyway?" isn't even present, though it would appear a couple years later on the Cleansing album. I suppose they could have just thought it was a clever title and then one that deserved to be used for more than just a largely throwaway label-filler release like this one, but in retrospect anyone encountering that album first would probably be confused when they were tracking this down from the limited catalog Prong had available at the time. 2) I just don't think industrial/dance remixes of tracks off Prove You Wrong was bound to work out all that well, and this sort of thing could have waited, again for Cleansing, of which the material feels a lot more adjacent to being techno-fied, industrialized and otherwise fucked with.

What's more, this is just bad...this is possibly the worst release in the entire Prong discography. The electro mixes are almost all awful, with few changes other than clanging and banging and annoyance that people would have only thought made for good industrial music in the early 90s. Okay, to be fair, sometimes they did, but the strength of Prong is the riffs, vocals and energy and it just doesn't benefit a track like "Prove You Wrong" or "Hell If I Could" to be fragmented off and repurposed like this. The latter is particularly bad, a series of boring beats and bass-lines that suddenly morphs into the proper guitar riffs and some heavily filtered vocals. Granted, that vocal effect might have been cool in the original tune, but here it just feels like a bunch of buttons are being pressed, and that's one of the critical flaws...'What would this part sound like if we added this effect?' is fun for dicking around in the studio with your buds, but later turning it into a commercial release in some wishful attempt to align with the KDMFMs and Ministry's of the world just isn't effective here. And ALL the alternate mixes of their original songs here are laughable at best, like the miserable 'Safety Mix' of "Irrelevant Thoughts", a song I happened to like a lot. And there are TWO mixes of "Prove You Wrong" which both suck...

Interestingly, they also remix their Stranglers' cover "Get a Grip (On Yourself)" so now it sounds like total nonsense, and then they add a cover of The Music Machine's "Talk Talk", which might be the best tune on here only by the process of elimination, but is otherwise mediocre enough that I'm happy they didn't soil Prove You Wrong by including it. They turn the song into a bouncing bore that doesn't do much justice to the original and certainly isn't interesting in context to the great material I enjoyed from Prong throughout the 90s. So basically this entire release is useless musically, a waste of 26 minutes. The cover image is kind of interesting, I like how they split the 'prong' icon into the three circles, but that's the most memorable thing about it. I enjoy the first five Prong albums a lot but this was a very unfortunate misstep which at one point had me dreading what might come after Prove You Wrong. Luckily, that turned out a LOT fucking better than I thought.

Verdict: Fail [2.25/10]

https://prongmusic.com/

Prong - Prove You Wrong (1991)

Prove You Wrong is one of those really unique records of that early 90s period which I didn't take to at first, apart from a couple tracks, but later started to grow on me (like Kreator's Renewal), to the extent that now I put it on almost the same level as Beg to Differ, which was an album that a lot more thrashers I know paid attention to. I encountered a nearly unanimous disregard or disappointment towards this one composed to the two albums sandwiching it, probably because the sophomore was their big label debut right, in before the thrash genre started to wane, and Cleansing was carried on the success of "Snap Your Fingers, Snap Your Neck". At any rate, this one actually sounds better to me now then when I first heard it, so whatever production choices were made have really stood the test of time, whereas Beg to Differ does seem a little less potent mix-wise than I remembered in my youth, not that it really dulls the music, but Prove You Wrong is louder, bolder, and more organic.

This is also a very transitional record, with feelers to both the band's thrash past, and the industrial, alternative and groove metal that would dominate the remainder of their 90s output. Hell, even the cover here, with its great sculptures of the band's iconography, reminded me a lot of what a lot of alt rock/Lollapalooza types were using back in these days. Troy Gregory of Flotsam & Jetsam stepped in to replace the departing Mike Kirkland, and while it might not be a prevailing opinion, I thought Troy's tone here hit a little harder...the bass lines were always fairly thick, but here they're quite corpulent and it stands out more. In fact, the production on the bass is one of my favorite elements to this one, it's perfect. The drums and some of the rhythm guitar riffing patterns here aren't a far cry from Beg to Differ, with a focus on very simplistic, memorable, mechanical progressions. There is no lacking for energy, with the opening volley of the tribal, pounding "Irrelevant Thoughts" and the more traditional thrashing of the excellent "Unconditional". Victor was continuing to grow more confident in his vocal abilities, so the slightly higher pitched lines from the prior album were growing even more developed and melodic when he'd hit a chorus here, and his presence is pretty seamless whether the trio was thrashing out hard or experimenting more with the title track, which has almost as much in common with a band like Primus as Prong.

As great as "Unconditional" is, most of my favorites on this one come in the middle; "Hell If I Could" with its eerie, dissonant verse riffing and fat bass lines during the choppy chorus; and "Torn Between" with that amazing groove riff. "Brainwave" is another highly, one of the more taut thrashing bits and one that might have fit the most with the material off the first two full-lengths. The later chunk of the album remains solid but it doesn't quite live up to some of the material before it, despite their honest attempt at a cover of The Stranglers' "Get a Grip (On Yourself)". There are no bad tracks, but had it ended with "Brainwave" or the instrumental "Territorial Rites" it would feel more consistent overall, and this is why I hold a fraction below Beg to Differ even though there are aspects of this disc that are much stronger. I have to say I find this underrated, I know I've seen people complain that it was too groovy, almost a proto form of nu-metal in places, or that the album feels rushed, but apart from 7-8 minutes of bloat I just can't agree with that. It's another unique, forward-thinking effort. Prong could have written a grunge album or started crossing over into death metal like a lot of other thrash bands of the era, but instead did something altogether different, and this wasn't at all the last time.

Verdict: Win [8/10] (uninvited with open arms)

https://prongmusic.com/

Prong - Beg to Differ (1990)

If Force Fed had a vibe that channeled the filth, detritus, and decay of dense urban existence, on a street or subterranean level, then Beg to Differ was quite the opposite, with a polished, corporate, clinical feel to it that was quite a slap in the face when I first heard it. Not to say that the two albums don't share the same thrashing DNA, but apart from the few connecting tissues like Tommy Victor's vocals and a few of the guitar patterns with his patented pinch and squeal, they could have been two different bands and I would have been none the wiser. This was yet another example of how Prong really felt out its first decade with some steady shifts in style and production, while somehow maintaining its core attitude; a band that was able to modernize itself through changing times without in my opinion really dumbing itself down too much...unless you thought it was all dumb to begin with, then touche.

Guided by its iconic Pushead image, this record marked the band's major label signing to Epic, which likely had something to do with the cleaning up of their sound. This one's slick and accessible, rather than rollicking in the grating, grimy crunch and atmosphere of its predecessor. I reckon this was considered a bit of a 'thinking man's' thrash album at the time, at least among other fans I knew, not because it was highly technical or challenging, but because it honed in on a stricter sense of groove and rhythm, almost subliminal patterns emerging through the compartmental thrashing in tunes like the title track, and its extremely simple but effective riffing; the mellow chugs of "Your Fear" which lift into that great little guitar lick behind Tommy's vocals in the verses; the great "Intermenstrual, D.S.B" which at times reminded me the most of an instrumental that would have fit right in with Force Fed if only it were noisier; or the almost mantra-inducing creep of "Prime Cut", which is one of my favorite tracks in the band's catalog. In addition to his really interesting guitars, Victor also expands himself here as a vocalist with some more subdued whispers, a slightly more melodic tint to his inflection, although there are plenty of the good old grunts here to maintain the aggression.

There are still some fist-pumping thrash anthems here, like the opener "For Dear Life", but even there this new direction is apparent in some of the vocalizations and rhythmic choices. The other 2/3rds of the tiro, Kirkland and Parsons, sounded great here also, again...not too flashily proficient, but the solid bass tone and almost tribal fills and rhythms make the perfect accompaniment to the thin punch of the guitar tone and the bluntness of the vocals. A couple of transitions here or there feel a bit jarring and just seem like a rush to get a new riff going, but honestly the whole album is consistent in that there's rarely a track where some progression didn't get my lustrous teenage locks flailing around in the air, and I still feel the push and pull of its mechanisms in follically challenged geezerhood. The lyrics and minimalist but insightful, often abstracting away from their subject matter where other Eastern Seaboard thrashers of this age were hitting things right on the nose (you don't accuse Nuclear Assault or Overkill of any subtlety). In truth Beg to Differ is just as distinct as the debut, if not quite as excellent, and it's still a great example of a band trying to write its own language out of a musical trend; not to the extent of a Voivod, but certainly in that ballpark of distinctiveness. It's also the establishing shot for their more mechanical albums to come through the 90s.

Verdict: Win [8.25/10] (be true to our grudges)

https://prongmusic.com/

Prong - Peel Sessions EP (1989)

Once upon a time, The Peel Sessions was like an MTV Unplugged, only for cool people, featuring cooler bands, and not unplugged. John Peel was an eclectic English radio host who would promote all manner of underground musical genres by having bands perform a quartet of tracks live on the air, and a good number of these were turned into commercial products. This has actually become quite a popular premise in the age of YouTube, with several radio channels or online shows hosting lots of varied bands in comfortable little studio settings and giving fans a free, concise show. Back in the early extreme metal scene, names like Carcass, Bolt Thrower, Napalm Death and Extreme Noise Terror were part of this, and the Peel Sessions arguably helped grind and deathgrind reach some of its highest visibility...or audibility ever, during the late 80s and 90s. Prong was an interesting case as one of the few US bands to be broadcast, naturally it tended towards the British bands who were more local to the radio channel itself.

The trio's choices leaned heavily on Force Fed, their most recent album at that time, with "Decay" and "Senseless Abuse" represented, while Primitive Origins is present through "In My Veins". The final selection was pretty interesting, "Defiant", which would be the B-side on the "For Dear Life" single to promote the forthcoming Beg to Differ. It's a passable tune, one can see why it wasn't rhythmically interesting enough to make the album itself, but what really surprises me the most is how it sort of set the tone for all the material here, which comes off cleaner and tighter than you'd expect from the band's first two official releases. On the one hand, it shows Tommy Victor and crew were quite proficient and professional in the live arena even at this point, and on the other that the direction of their material would be using a punchier, more polished guitar tone. Although the songs sound fine in this context, I do admit that they lost a bit of their edge and volatility for me, but then again live sounds offer differ for many bands; there's simply a small chance that you'll always be able to reproduce the studio conditions in either a live venue or live broadcast.

I do think the bass line suffer here a little, drowned out by the snap of the drums, that pugilistic guitar tone and the Victor's McGruff the Crime Dog vocals, but otherwise it all sounds pretty smooth, the playing nearly perfect to the studio recordings. I doubt I'd ever go to grab this when I prefer the more uncouth Force Fed versions of the songs, but it's cool to hear "Defiant" as I have never owned the single it appeared on. This is another of those releases which has been out of print now for going on 30 years, and so today it serves largely as a collector's item and tribute to Peel's legacy of having on great bands which he saw something in, many of which have gone on to steady or illustrious careers despite having little to no coverage in more mainstream access media outside their genres. It was a little more exciting when it came out, I remember grabbing all the cassette versions of these when I could find them, but few of them had anything I didn't already own from the bands on their albums.

Verdict: Indifference [5.75/10]

https://prongmusic.com/

Prong - Primitive Origins EP (1987)

Primitive Origins might have served personally as more of a primer for the brilliant record to follow, but it's apparent that even in its origins, Prong was a slight standout from the rest of the crossover crowd. Not forward, nor above, but sideways, and below, sporting a novel approach to the style that would drip straight into their sewer-thrash future. I liken this EP to a mix of their NYC peers and the West Coast splatterthrash crossover of acts like Cryptic Slaughter or The Accüsed. This isn't quite so forceful or powerful as a disc like the Crumbsuckers' Life of Dreams, but it certainly takes a more nuanced and left-field approach to its riffing, which would carry through to all of their later releases as they morphed their sound throughout the 90s and beyond, until only recently when they seem to have settled on a particular polished thrash style for a number of subsequent albums.

While the whole three-piece lineup here is solid, I think it's really Tommy Victor who contributes the most distinct ingredients. His vocals have a downtrodden gruffness to them which is both abusive and ugly, somewhat more primitive even than a lot of the other tough guy barkers in the NYC crowd. It's almost like having some battered construction worker or public works engineer coming off shift and grumbling at you in some late night greasy spoon, and yet the lyrics are quite heavily sociopolitical and fairly interesting even by the pissed off standards of the 80s. His guitars, though, are even more interesting, raw and fast but not afraid to inject a little eerie dissonance into the chord choices that makes them feel subterranean, or some more pure metallic tremolo picking parts like the intro to "In My Veins" or the bridge of "Watching". There are frilly, wild lead guitars here too, something you don't always expect due to the punk roots it has sprouted from. Don't get me wrong, there is plenty of angry hardcore charge riffing happening all over the place, so fans of Agnostic Front and Sick of It All will find plenty to love here, but Prong certainly didn't shy away from the longhair aspect of their band, and it's this complete embrace of the varying aspects, and those they'd adopt down the road, that propels them.

Now, granted, I don't personally find a lot of the riffing here to be quite that memorable, especially the more standard hardcore/crossover riffs of which there are a good amount. Some of the patterns certainly set up tracks they'd write for Force Fed, my favorite Prong album to this day, but the notes just don't always fall into place, and this actually has a cleaner production than that album, crude by some standards but not as rash and raw and atmospheric sounding as the successor. But with eight tracks in under 20 minutes, its concise and energetic enough that you don't ever have time to get bored with whatever material you find lesser, and there are enough of those interesting little shifts here to keep your attention. I'd also say that, despite the production differences, this was one of the periods where the group's sound evolved the least between releases. Sure, Force Fed has more of a dynamic range, stickier riffs, and more abrasive production, but the style between the two is overall comparable enough that if you enjoy one you'd be drawn to the other.

Considering the historical value of this record, and the subcultural popularity of New York hardcore which thrives on to this day, I'm kind of surprised Primitive Origins hasn't seen some sort of large label re-release with one of the imprints Prong later circulated around towards. For all I know there is some sort of legal issue or lack of interest by the band, but I think this is one that fits right in with an interest in that time period, and while I'm not as much a fan of this as I am Brightside, Blood Sweat and No Tears, Life of Dreams or even the Crumbsucker's own metallic evolution Beast On My Back, it's a good one to break out once in awhile for those genuine old tones, and its earnest energy. At the same time, it's really just hovering over the manhole the band would plunge into for one of the best, grimiest, and still relatively underappreciated albums to ever hail from that scene.

Verdict: Win [7/10] (the walking skeletons still cling to life)

https://prongmusic.com/

Prong - Force Fed (1988)

Straight up sewercore. How else would one describe the first few albums of New York's legendary crossover outfit Prong? Many might favor the more thrash-lite polish of Beg to Differ, or the later, industrial metal infusion that the band has used from the early 90s to the present day, but their second album Force Fed is arguably the strongest output of their career. Combine the proto-thrashcore of their debut Primitive Origins with a bristling sewage distortion and an unbelievable array of riffs, and you've got another convincing reason why 1988 was the strongest year in history for metal music.

"Freezer Burn" creates immediate immersion into the drains and back alley lowlight, lowlife world of Prong. Bursts of memorable thrash riffing, with an almost playful overtone below the blunt vocals of Tommy Victor. This is the classic lineup: Kirkland's muddy, efficient bass, Victor's savage riffing and the drum barrage of Ted Parsons. "Forgery" is a morbid and inviting fusion of NYHC and a wastrel-like, almost early Voivod vocal pattern. "Senseless Abuse" is a strong, memorable thrasher, with both a doomy breakdown and a killer death metal bridge riff! "Aggravated Condition" is another fetchy thrasher, surprising how much the riffs evoke the perfect atmosphere for the subject matter.

Squeeze the abcess, squirting release
Press past dry, meanwhile reinfect
Breaks out again, no callous forms
From scratching the scab
Worsen the eventual scar

Did someone just make poetry out of a boil or zit? I believe so. "The Coliseum" is a drudging, dirty instrumental track which creates epic imagery through the slow pace of its riffs and drums, and the distorted angst layered across. "Decay" is another wild thrashcore slugfest with obvious pit implications. "It's Been Decided" is another instrumental, and perhaps too soon, but the riffs are once again catchy. For the remainder of the album, "Bought and Sold" rules, "The Taming" is another track that reminds of a more hardcore version of early Voivod, and "Look Up at the Sun" has some of the catchies riffs on the album behind Victor's thoughtful grunts.

Look up at the sun, turning
Eleven thousand degrees, burning
There's no siren, no fireman
Is it night or day, ninety three million miles away
He's got a gun, pulled out from behind
A thousand mistakes, generalizations
He was beyond reason
He fired three shells
He fired three shells
He fired three shells

Did 80s thrash/hardcore have any right to be so poetic? Apparently so.

Force Fed is suitably primal, with one of the best 'raw' mixes in thrashistory. The guitars blister and scream, the bass is suitably dense and distorted, the vocals seem to cascade about in their claustrophobic conditions, yet with the firm New York gruffness. Riff for riff, this is superior to any other Prong album, but not the only I'd recommend (Beg to Differ and Rude Awakening are their other finest hours, but you can't go wrong with many of their efforts). It's a unique and inspired blend of extreme music genres with an intriguing subterranean atmosphere. This doesn't capture the tough guy streets of the city, but the thriving lifeline of its bowels, where all the piss and poop is washed away with so much of the metropolis' memories and detritus.

Verdict: Epic Win [9.5/10] (systematic self interest)

http://www.prongmusic.com/