Judgment Night. Part 2.
Oh lord. What they don’t tell you is that this one track is actually a medley of Exploited songs, which given Slayer’s thrash punk roots isn’t too surprising. Neither is it surprising that Ice T would be up for it, given his metal tenancies with his other project, Body Count. What is surprising is how difficult it is to tell Ice T’s vocals apart from Tom Araya’s. Other than some weathered grit from Araya and T’s subtle lisp, they sound really really similar. Also, there is no hip hop here at all. It’s a death metal band covering a thrash punk band.
Winner: Ice T, for liking metal enough not to force any hip hop in there.
6. Faith No More / Boo-Ya T.R.I.B.E.
Now I don’t have a clue who Boo-Ya Tribe, excuse me, T.R.I.B.E. is. Their rapping seems fine. At first glance, the song seems to be in line with most of the others on the record: heavy rhythmic rock with rapping over top. Then the chorus comes. See, with these other rock groups, the execs could probably get away with asking their lead singer to step back for a song. But this is Mike Patton we are talking about here. Mike Patton absolutely must make his presence felt in one way, shape, or form. This form? How about Mike doing his best ghost impression? Well that’s not all! Act now and you’ll receive scat-screaming into a distortion pedal free of charge.
Also, I would pay for someone to edit some sweet battle axes into the hands of everyone in the video. There are so many thick harry dudes in this video, it’s like two bands worth of singing Conan villains.
Winner: Mike Patton, for single handedly (throated-ly?) transforming this otherwise unremarkable mashup into, well, a goofy Hammer horror Mike Patton song. It’s like Vincent Price is tip-toeing though the background. Dood is the only non-jazz singer to be able to get away with scatting.
7. Sonic Youth / Cypress Hill
Pop culture paydirt! Like the the Teenage Fanclub/DeLa Soul track (and another coming up) I imagine the brass that put this together had no idea what to do with either of these groups. The Hill just had their first hit (see link above), and were big fans of rock and metal instrumentation in their own stuff, hence their appearance twice on this soundtrack. Sonic Youth had put out two immensely important records on Geffen. What happens when you put two creative but diverse artists in a room together? They smoke alot of pot, apparently (the track is called ‘I Love Mary Jane’). I guess this isn’t too surprising, considering 75% of Cypress Hill’s songs are about pot. But against all odds, the song works; The Youth lay down a rolling, bass heavy beat, Moore punctuating those beats with a spacey high little riff. Even Kim Gordon’s raspy whisper fits the spooky laziness of the track. Come to think of it, this sound very similar to something DJ Muggs would have spun anyway. Of course you’ll either love or have B-Real’s ridiculous nose rapping; no mistaking Cypress hill here.
Winner: Sonic Youth, for totally catering to their partner while sounding like themselves. And lets face it, you know they got the hook up; The Hill probably knows all the best smoke. So the real winner was probably their drug dealer.
8. Mudhoney / Sir Mix-a-Lot
I with I knew how to type the vomiting / gurgling noises that are bubbling up my esophagus. Mudhoney was just having another alcohol fueled jam session when nosy neighbor and instant pop culture joke Mix-a-Lot brings his microphone and dookie rope chainz over to play. I imagine that the execs lured Mudhoney into a studio full of instruments by dangling hotdogs and Colt 45 over the door, but little did they know that a trashy one hit wonder was hiding one sound booth over, ready to rap over what ever happened after they figured out there were guitars behind the hotdogs. Here is a clip, but please, be careful.
Winner: I Dunno. Hotdogs? Hotdogs are good.
9. Dinosaur Jr. / Del the Funky Homosapien
This is it, this is the other awesome track on this record that I’ve been hinting about since #2. So maybe it’s not actually ‘awesome,’ per say, but it is Dinosaur Jr. and Del on the same track, that is like awesome on some karmic level. As in, “there must be a God, if Del and Jr. can end up in the same room at some point in history.” The track itself is just fine, even if no effort was put in by either party. Should we even expect effort from these two? Part of both of these guys appeal is their slacker genus. So yea, Dinosaur Jr. plays a Dinosaur Jr. song, and Del spins his silly/awesome rhymes over J Mascis’ incessant soloing. It’s more like a music nerd’s fever dream than a good song, but I for one and glad that it exists. It’s called Missing Link (terrible pun intended).
10. Therapy?/Fatal
Know who Therapy? is (yes, the question mark is part of their band name)? Northern Irish goatee-metal. Real grindy. I had a brief fan-ship when I was 15; I had found out about them from the Black Sabbath tribute album. That fandom peaked and dropped when I bought a therapy t-shirt in London that disintegrated by the end of the night. They were ok I guess. Funny thing is, they could be so popular now if they were a new band; the have that whole pop metal thing going on. Know who Fatal is? Neither do I, nor can I find any information on them. This track fails to inspire curiosity in either.
Winner: Whatever.
11. Pearl Jam / Cypress Hill
Cypress Hill, part 2. Seriously, there could be any band playing backup here, it’s so generic. This track could have easily been Cannibal Corpse / Cypress Hill or Foghat / Cypress Hill or Petra / Cypress Hill and nobody would have been the wiser. The Hill, however, works pretty well with rock instrumentation; until the chorus, that is. Sen Dog feels compelled to grunt out “Real thing” like he’s in the middle of the real number 2 thing. It’s just dumb. Throw in those terrible cheesy record scratches from the Run D.M.C. track, and you have one stupid song. B-Real, the lone interesting thing here, seems like he is trying desperately to escape the song, only to have his path constantly blocked by Universal executives dressed as knotty trees.
Winner: Did Peal Jam even show up? Cypress Hill, by forfeit.
If I would have gotten my hands on this disc back in 93, I would have been pretty disappointed. It’s hardly metal enough for 14 year old me, except for that Slayer /Ice T track. Now-a-days, however, I couldn’t be more happy for this big label experiment / corporate cluelessness. Big labels are constantly grasping at straws when it comes to figuring out what is going to be popular; that’s the danger of treating art like a business. At the end of the day, the Judgment Night soundtrack is one of those rare pop culture nuggets that anybody that considers themselves a music fan should hear at some point.
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