Living Colour - Stain
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Free Music Notes for Stain
Free Music Review: Their best album ever
Hit: 5 Stars
Anybody would like this album. Its not too much rock, there are some mellower songs on the album. I can relate tot he songs very much. Recommend this album very highly.Free Music Review: Play it loud
Hit: 5 Stars
This is clearly the band's best effort. If you like ANYTHING these guys have done previously, just fork over the bucks.Free Music Review: The most straightforward rocker in LC's catalogue
Hit: 4 Stars
LC defined funky hard rock. They produced such a great, bouncy yet rockin' debut that they owned funk rock circa 1988. Type had explored some of the possibilities opened by Vivid but was a little fragmented despite the hits. On Stain we get a third album in a row with it's own flavour. This album is the darkets of the bands early phase. More succint and focussed than Times Up, the bounce squeezed out of it to leave the listener with their most metal release. Whether the departure of Muzz Skillings to be replaced by Doug Wimish had anything to do with this, well it's perhaps useless to speculate.
What is obvious is that here the funk takes a back seat. Instead this album hits the listener over the head with an iron bar. From opening opus Go Away through Ignorance is Bliss, Leave it Alone, Bi, Mind Your Own Business... heck all the album up to track #8 - Nothingness, is just one rocker after the next. Top stuff, but a bit of a shock to their fans, the close feeling of the arrangements, Vernon Reid crunching riff after riff out of his instrument, really proving he was an versatile axesmith and not just reliant on feedback for his sound. All through the album Glover sings like someone just spilled his pint and he's not thrilled. Sure there is still some humour such as in Bi but it's 'ha ha got you' humour rather than party slapstick fun kind of stuff.
The later parts of the album are also dense such as WTFF and This Little Pig not to mention the mellow yet claustrophobic, practically spoken work Hemp. And don't expect a repeat dose of Love Rears it's Ugly Head either. Oh there is a whimsical sounding tune - it's called Nothingness. Play this a few times in a darkened room and the whimsical element will give way to a darker set of emotions.
This is a pretty meaty hard rock cum metal album. And unlike many bands this is one bunch of guys who got heavier as they aged. Don't believe the aura of 'downer' that seems to surround this album. View this slice of riff heavy wattage as part of an overall LC catalogue and you'll find plenty to enjoy here. Pity about the (yet another) crap cover but it is a little more indicative of what's going on musically I suppose.
Free Music Review: Lost in obscurity
Hit: 4 Stars
In support of their groundbreaking debut, 'Vivid', Living Colour ended up opening for the Rolling Stones' arena tour in 1989. With the same style, artwork, and producer, they appeared again with 'Time's Up' in 1990. But between their second record and 'Stain' in 1993 would come the grunge movement, which was in many ways threatening on a band whose halmark was embracing varyious musical styles.The good news is that, musically speaking, Living Colour refused to follow the trend. The bad news is that this record was left underappreciated by alternative radio.
In many ways, 'Stain' is a departure from the previous two records - in fact, bassist Muzz Skillings had been replaced by Doug Wimbish, producer Ed Stasium had been replaced by Ron St. Germain, and the bright pop art of the first two records had been replaced by a stark image of an imprisoned woman-child. Even Corey Glover had cut his locks.
Taking a page from the Metallica/Bob Rock playbook, the production is very clean and the guitars are in your face. Most of the tracks can be characterized as unmemorable hard rock ("Ignorance is Bliss", "Wall") or punk ("This Little Pig", "Mind Your Own Busines"), with just a few dashes of sonic experimentation that seems a little forced ("WTFF", "Hemp"). Nonetheless, there are a few standouts that make this record worthy of 3 1/2 stars - the beautifully orchestrated "Nothingness", the tongue-in-cheek novelty tune "Bi", and the hard-driving to-the-point single "Auslander".
I do not think that Living Colour can make a bad record. In the end, however, there is nothing particularly ahead of its time on 'Stain'. Still, the record does not deserve the commercial obscurity caused simply by bad timing.
Free Music Review: Their heaviest and darkest album
Hit: 4 Stars
Stain would be Living Colour's last album before they broke up and then reunited and released Collideoscope 10 years later. On Stain, it appears that the band was listening to some grunge at the time they recorded this as it features much less soloing from Vernon Reid and has a muddier production which hurts the album slightly. Stain features many strong tracks but none on the par of "Cult Of Personality", "Open Letter (To A Landlord}", or "Elvis Is Dead."
That's not to say this is a bad album by any means. The heavier tracks such as "Go Away", "Auslander", and "Postman" are all killer. Doug Wimbish's bass is way up in the mix and his playing is fantastic throughout the album, particularly on the excellent ballad "Nothingness." Vernon Reid continues to write some great riffs on strong tracks such as "Ignorance Is Bliss", "Leave It Alone", and "Never Satisfied." Other good songs include "Wall", "Bi", and "Mind Your Business." The album tends to lose steam near the end with the techno sounding "WTFF" and the heavy riffing of "This Little Pig." This is a very good album that grows on you with repeated listens. Definitely worth checking out.