Review Summary: Showing that being commercial isn’t always a bad thing
What the hell happened?
After one of the greatest and most underrated albums of the 90’s “Earth Vs The Wildhearts” and the excellent follow up “P.H.U.Q.” comes “Endless, Nameless”, the polarising album named (and styled) after the near-unlistenable bonus track at the end of “Nevermind” by Nirvana.
The Wildhearts have always combined hard hitting rock riffs with melodic pop hooks, creating anthems such as “Welcome To Sh*tsville”, “Caffeine Bomb” or “Everlone”.
Instead of playing it safe on their third album, the band decided to take a risk and create an unconventional noise rock/punk album with no clear structure in the songs, incredible amounts of distortion and some weird-ass production.
The production in this album is all over the place, drums are too loud and guitars are way too distorted to figure out any distinguishable pitch, all while the bottom end blows out your speakers, creating a clusterf*ck of distortion and noise. The vocals are also drowned in a weird filter, giving you the impression he’s yelling down a cheap PA system.
And people say that Metallica’s “St. Anger” had an annoying drum sound.
Instead of the clear-cut, yet crusty-to-provide-edge production as seen on previous albums, the band seems to have compressed every channel and just fling the instrumental volume up, while leaving Ginger’s vocals low in the mix.
RIP any headphone users listening to this.
Occasionally, the album shows the band returning to their commercial sound, such as the song “Anthem”, one of the few songs on the album that have a distinguishable melody and structure, and without a doubt is the highlight of the album.
'Endless Nameless' is what happens when you replace great songwriting with, well, heroin. Lots of heroin. Mired in those drug-induced troubles, a couple of good tracks make it out of this static-fuelled, industrial-strength mess of an album, but not enough to warrant its purchase.
