Opiate for the Masses

The Spore (2005)

Jordan Rogowski

There's a reason I don't listen to the radio anymore. There's a reason I go out and buy albums, I read reviews, and I constantly seek out new things to listen to. That reason is the complete lack of anything decent whatsoever to listen to on the radio. It's a format so devoid and bankrupt of creativity that it's impossible to find even one single redeeming value.

I really am not quite sure which alternative radio rock bands that Opiate for the Masses should be sandwiched in between. There's some Nickelback, there's some Disturbed, and maybe even a bit of Rob Zombie thrown in for good, well, for measure. Trying to pick out elements in this album to talk about is just like trying to pick one blade of grass in your yard that's better than the rest. It's a fruitless and futile struggle. This is boring, bland, and entirely too long of an effort for the kind of music being presented. "Drown" is representative of pretty much the entire album, and there's little to no style variation from this song anywhere else on the album. Slow verses with repetitive drum beats, then the guitars are tuned down for the chorus as the volume picks up just a little bit, just enough to differentiate between those choruses. The guitar work is just one, long, sludgy and uneventful bore-fest. The band barely has any sense of rhythm and an even lesser sense of melody. They're coherent musicians, but the music they throw together is as uninspired as anything else I can ever remember hearing. The vocals are monotone through most of the duration, picking up a little bit of scruff here and there to at least somewhat change the inflection, but too little too late.

The Spore is a boring, monotonous trip into a zone I don't ever want to return to. I had a hard time even listening to the whole thing, not only because of the complete lack of thought or attention put into it, but because my roommates threatened to piss on me when I slept tonight if I kept playing this.