Happy 1998

It's 1998 in the Year-a-Month Project.

Iron Maiden: Virtual XI - Blaze Bayley returns as the lead singer on this album, and he's growing on me. I find him as easy to listen to as Bruce Dickinson, and his influence hasn't seemed to hurt the Iron Maiden style very much. But in a couple of years (2000) Bruce will be back, and that's just fine with me, too.

Anthrax: Volume 8: The Threat Is Real - The critics didn't care for this album (2.5/5), but I thought it was a pretty good offering by Anthrax. Of course, any album without Joey Belladonna on vocals automatically gets an extra star in my book. The 46-second track Cupajoe ("I really need a cup of coffee/go get me a cupajoe!") will probably be cycling in my head every morning for the foreseeable future.

KoRn: Follow The Leader - Every month, KoRn gets a little stranger. This album starts with 12 tracks of silence, each about 5 seconds long, and the last track has the 1990s obligatory long silent stretch followed by some stoner spoken-word. In between, the circus-like insanity-metal is nearly as pronounced as Mr Bungle, and is broken up by some truly bizarre metal-rap featuring Ice Cube.

Stabbing Westward: Darkest Days - This felt like a continuation of Wither Blister Burn and Peel, but without the passion. I hope it helped to finance their heroin habit, because it wasn't good for much else. Some consider this to be Stabbing Westward's best album; all I can say is, "Meh."