Review Summary: Success can be a cruel mistress.
By the turn of the millennium, nu metal had become a cultural phenomenon, but in early 1998 it was still something of an underground movement. Korn and Limp Bizkit had yet to release their breakthrough albums, respectively
Follow the Leader and
Significant Other, while it would be a couple of years before Linkin Park and Papa Roach found themselves dominating MTV. Nope, time was, record labels weren't in such a rush to sign every band with baggy jeans and downtuned seven-string guitars, which might explain the paltry success enjoyed by Ultraspank. Formed from the ashes of speed-metal band Indica, they released two albums on Epic and supported the likes of Sevendust, Static-X and Rob Zombie (who suggested their band name) before being dropped by their label due to low record sales, leading to their demise. Vocalist Pete Murray and guitarists Neil Godfrey and Jerry Oliviera would find some moderate success with their next band, Lo-Pro, but there is a reason why Ultraspank are hailed as cult heroes of a much-derided genre, and their self-titled debut shows it.
The album opens with a rising gust of wind followed by a blood-curdling scream, before giving way to the first song, "Five". This is the best-known tune of Ultraspank's entire output, due to the fact it was featured in the PSone title
3XTREME. Understandably, then, it's one of the more accessible tracks on the album, although Pete's yelling "I'm coming apart!" in the bridge reminds you that this isn't exactly a pop-rock record. From then on, it only gets darker. Most of the songs here are based around up-tempo grooves with guitars and bass locking in tightly with each other, and often borrow the old grunge dynamic of soft verse-loud chorus. Of course, it's not entirely devoid of nu metal tropes - "Slip" begins with a two-note guitar riff overlayed with some turntable scratching - but overall, the group seems to have made fairly inventive use of the resources at their disposal. "Wrapped" sees them grinding along to a house beat, in an interesting deviation from the nu metal formula if not a particularly drastic one. There is some light reprieve with "Sponge", a slower song that recalls Tool in many areas - the dragging guitar and bass runs, the soft arpeggio that comes in at the second verse. But it's immediately followed by possibly the hardest-hitting and least melodic song on the album, "Fired", which sounds like a very pissed-off Helmet giving army drills. The album ends with a drawn-out instrumental that feels like it goes on way longer than it ought to, but you can't fault them for mixing things up that little bit more.
There's also something to be said for the lyrics. Plenty of nu metal acts were brilliant at writing so-called "heartfelt" lyrics that took very little, if any, effort to interpret (ahem, Earshot...). While
Ultraspank does deal with some emotional anguish, it's never made to sound cringey or overly self-pitying. With lines like
"Crawl from my hole, covered in mud/Force my face up towards the Sun" (from penultimate track "Burnt"), it's somewhat easy to pick out the meanings, but you can tell it took them more than a few moments to come up with them. Not to mention, Pete's vocals are anything but whiny, and half the time it's almost impossible to make out the lyrics anyway.
Ultimately,
Ultraspank is the sound of a band that showed plenty of promise, but was sadly never given much of an opportunity to realise it. With their second effort
Progress, released two years later, they would expand on the melodic elements that some of this record hints at, while keeping much of the heaviness intact. So while they might not win many new converts to the nu metal genre, if you're after something angry that won't deduct too much street cred, you could certainly do worse.
