Life of Agony's River Runs Red pt. 1

Today, I rang out a copy of Life of Agony's "River Runs Red" for a co-worker. If you're reading this and you're asking yourself a) who is Life of Agony or b) is this about the first plague that Moses delivered to Pharaoh, than the following might be hard to follow.

Life of Agony was (and I think still is, probably due in no small part to sentimentality) a band from the early/mid-90's who hailed from Brooklyn, New York. They also made an album that I'm willing to bet that I've sold more of than either Metallica's Black Album or Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon", regardless of what Soundscan sells. Two things are a constant in the music business, at least as far as sales go: 1) semi-alienated guys in their early teens will discover Led Zeppelin and all of a sudden "get it", prompting them to buy Zep's first, second, fourth, and fifth albums (leaving the third and sixth albums for when they really get it and Presence and In Through The Out Door for when they really, really get it and/or they're bored) and 2) there will ALWAYS be people in the Albany, NY area who will want "River Runs Red".

When, then, is "River Runs Red"? In short, it was a really depressing hardcore-ish album. At its root, it seemed to appeal to people who were into New York Hardcore but I remember one of my neighbors being really into it two. He asked me to dub a tape copy for him for his car when I was a freshman in high school and he was a senior. He would drive me and his brother to school every morning, which was cool because him and his brother (who was my age) were the two coolest people I knew in my new school and I was overweight and into metal. We listened to it every other morning which would seem unremarkable if you didn't take into account that the other tape we listed to when we weren't listening to River Runs Red was Tim McGraw's "Not A Moment Too Soon". "This Time" and "Indian Outlaw" will always sound like 7am before school started. We would also have time for about half a song because it took about a minute-a-half to drive to school in the morning.

"River Runs Red" is the definition of palatable hardcore and if people were really honest with themselves, they'd recognize that it sounds like Godsmack with cleaner vocals. I hate Godsmack but strangely, I still like River Runs Red. It's the Never, Neverland of albums because it represents never growing up. It's probably more like a bad comic book convention because it also represents never growing up in the worst possible ways. The album deals with suicide and not conforming, even though what you could be conforming to is always ill-defined. I'll never really get what that brand of non-conformism really means. Rage Against the Machine (another band I hate) had a song called Killing in the Name where the last portion of the song was Zach de la Rocha repeatedly shouting "F*** you I won't do whatcha tell me!". I never really got he's being told to do but whatever it is, he probably won't do it. Ill-defined non-conformism is a mystery to me because "they" are always out to keep you down and "they" are "them".

One of my top 10 favorite rock moments in history (somewhere ahead of Faith No More on Saturday Night Live but definitely not ahead of the day Black Sabbath released "Sabotage") was when I was at a frat bar in Albany watching a cover band and they played Killing in the Name. They had one of their friends, a skinny guy in his 20's wearing a baseball hat and looking very serious, come up and sing the song. Besides the skinny kid in his 20's wearing a baseball hat emulating the hip-hop "stylings" of Zach de la Rocha to T, something which in itself was hilarious and heartbreaking all at once, the craziest part of the performance was the audience reaction. They all knew the song. This crowd was not a somber metal crowd or even a bunch of aged Gen-Xers. They were ostensibly frat and sorority types. They were all probably in college or college-educated. In other words: they had nothing to rail against. They had no idea who the "cha" in the "whatcha tell me" was and what they were telling them. Moreover, they were way more into singing along to this song than most audiences are when they're watching real bands. I wonder what the impromptu singer felt like after he preached the Gospel of Rage. I would hate to think that he felt like he "did his part" and somehow people "got it".

I keep thinking that I wish I had a Diet Pepsi. I think I was thirsty.