Review Summary: If you were too young for Nu-Metal, you'll get bored quickly. Otherwise, just a trip back to middle school for us aging 90's kids.
So, I'm going through my old CDs, seeing what should survive the transfer to my hard drive. I've come to the CDs I never listen to anymore. Snot Alive! fits easily in this category. I don't think I've popped this disk in since the late 90s.
First impression: Didn't age well. Sorry, I know he's a rock martyr and all, but Lynn Straight was a typical nu-metal era frontman. The fake Jamaican-ish accent, the cheesy rapping, the throaty singing. He sounds best on the punk tunes (Joy Ride, Choose What?), and Snooze Button and Stoopid, where the band sounds a little less derivative and loose.
The guitars and drums have that super-dry PRS through a Mesa-Boogie sound that defines the nu-metal sound. The band was clearly influenced by Sublime and punk rock more than most bands in the genre; they have a little more muscle and space than most were capable of. It still seems derivative. I feel like I'm listening to Whitesnake or something. It's old, dated, and not even the Motley Crue of the style. Put this album next to Limp Bizkit or Sublime, and it lacks. Not that Limp put out a great catalog or anything, but at least it was fresh in '94 or whenever. This is very stale.
I remember getting into Snot via Soulfly, who put out an album with a lot of Lynn Straight artwork. Snot even name-checks Soulfly on this album. Anything Max told me must be true, and he said this was great. I still love Soulfly, but this kinda sucks. I hope the local CD store will buy it for credit. I feel a need to buy something from 2009...
