The Nicsperiment's Top Nine Albums of 1998
1998 was quite an eventful year in my life: I turned 17, got my driver's license,
saw a lot of great films, played a lot of great video games, experienced my
first bout with depression, but perhaps most consequentially, got my first car,
a white 1996 Thunderbird. That car meant freedom, and its stereo meant music all
the time. I dialed into the local college station, discovered metal, and also
discovered that there were a few indie rock bands I liked, and a whole lot that
I didn't. Inexplicably, despite anything Einstein might have said, 1998 is now
25 years ago, so I've decided to make a ranked list of my nine favorite albums
from that year, along with a paragraph of honorable mentions. To prep for
this piece, I went through my collection, but I also perused several other
online lists to make sure I didn't miss anything. Inexplicably, and on this
Einstein and I will likely agree, Pitchfork's top 50 list populates the top of
the Google search screen if you look up BEST ALBUMS OF 1998. I gave a bunch of
those indie rock albums another shot for this piece, though, and found that I
still don't like Mercury Rev, or Silver Jews, or Belle and Sebastian or Boards of Canada, or the majority of stuff that weak online music magazine pushed, including mainstream hip hop, as I'm not one of those early 40s white dudes
who calls Jay Z "Jay" and says I liked hip hop before it was cool. I didn't. No
shade to mainstream hip hop and other early 40s white dudes who love it, particularly my
early 40s white dude friends who love it (though much shade to Pitchfork), but I liked and still like the genre in which my parents
raised me: rock...so don't expect much more than rock music below.
9. The Appleseed Cast -- The End of the Ring Wars
The Appleseed Cast's debut is the odd album out in their catalogue, featuring an emo sound they would almost immediately abandon, along with whiny vocals frontman, Christopher Crisci, would soon leave behind. However, I've come to regard The End of the Ring Wars nearly as highly as the great albums that came after it, as the victorious, thrumming guitars, the vigorous drums (this is their only album to feature Louie Ruiz behind the kit), and periodic uplifting sax make for an incredibly invigorating, cathartic experience.
8. Death -- The Sound of Perserverance
All of the additional research I did for this beyond my own music collection only led to one new find. I don't know how I've never heard Death's The Sound of Perseverance before this, as it feels like the progenitor for all the extreme metal I've enjoyed in the years since. Featuring incredible musicianship from frontman/guitarist, Chuck Shuldiner, lead guitarist, Shannon Hamm, Scott Clendinen on bass, and Richard Christy on drums, the album flows like a violent river, but also contains the perfect amount of space in moody breaks and sudden fiery guitar solos. As dark and menacing as the album sounds, there's also a surprising feeling of goodwill here, even as Shuldiner screams about evil people doing evil things.
7. Slick Shoes -- Burn Out
Slick Shoes debut, Rusty, is about as sunny as it gets, a SoCal punk album full of infectious energy. The subsequent change in emotion with this sophomore effort is betrayed by the title, as the band switch to I HATE YOU mode, and it rules. As Slick Shoes were literally burned out from a full year on the road getting screwed over, Burn Out features a full emotional arc of setting out optimistically, having hope crushed, pointing the finger at everyone who crushed it, then trying to move on and learn from the experience. Slick Shoes unfairly got labeled as pop punk in those days because their songs have good choruses, but they've quite fairly argued that if anything, they were tech-punk, as the musicianship on these songs borders on insane for the genre, the drums played so fast at times they feel like a train that hasn't gone off the tracks, but has obliterated them, and dual guitars that feature lightning fast, scorched earth leads, along with a bass player talented enough to keep up with the mayhem. However, the galvanizing factor here is that the band are literally being fronted by a child, as singer, Ryan Kepke, isn't even old enough to drive. I know his singing might not be for everyone, but I think it suits this music perfectly, as Kepke comes off as a kid in absolute shock that the adults in the industry around him are so morally bankrupt. Burn Out rules.
6. Project 86 -- Project 86
Like Appleseed Cast's End of the Ring Wars, Project 86's self-titled debut is a bit of a catalogue anomaly. It has a far more minimalist sound: churning bass, guitar that generally moves from crunchy power chords to electric chiming, and unique, technically proficient drumming, behind Andrew Schwab's rhythmically shouted vocals. Schwab's lyrics here are more sprawling, poetic, and labyrinthine, and the sound is more monochrome, like the band is soundtracking a torch-lit cavern. That disparate sound in comparison to Project 86's later work used to make this album a pariah to my ears, but now it helps Project 86 stand out, and in the past 25 years, it's only grown stronger in my estimation.
5. Fear Factory -- Obsolete
Here is the first of three times I am going to use the phrase "fin de siècle." A year before 1999's The Matrix is released to theaters, industrial metal pioneers, Fear Factory, present Obsolete, a concept album about mankind's future enslavement by robots. The apocalyptic album boasts booming double-kicked drums, mechanical, shredding guitars, and Burton C. Bell moving back and forth between shredding his vocal chords, and letting out a soaring, majestic, near medieval melodic croon in an album that is 1998 in all the best ways, soaked in burning atmosphere, full of apocalyptic fin de siècle dread, and just a little bit of hope.
4. The Cardigans -- Gran Turismo
Up to this point, The Cardigans albums feature a sort of kitschy space-age pop, led by sweet singing, though beneath the shimmering surface runs a deep, pitch black current of bleak and hopeless lyricism, to the degree that the last five words on their sunny previous album, First Band On the Moon, are "choke on it and die." Here they just skip the sunny altogether, as the music finally matches the darkness of the lyrics, featuring a sort of chamber pop-rock, where that chamber feels like a prison cell in a very sad person's mind, and yet somehow...this album is pretty fun! Dripping with that lovely 1998 fin de siècle dread I mentioned a paragraph ago, albeit in an entirely different flavor, Gran Turismo is an incredible emotional journey, climaxing in the unbelievably great "Junk of the Hearts,", before the quiet, ship-sinking final instrumental, "Nil," fades as it makes the album's overall nihilism explicit.
3. Neutral Milk Hotel -- In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
Somehow, through an album of impenetrable, surrealist lyricism, full of references to Anne Frank, a carnivalesque trailer park, strange familial relations, bizarre romance, and religion, Jeff Mangum and his weird, lo-fi, psychedelic folk rock band create a lasting work of art that hundreds of thousands of are held to tightly by a hyper-personal connection. Acoustic guitar bounces off musical saws, horns, accordions, raucous drums, and all manner of noises, all miraculously working perfectly throughout 100% of In the Aeroplane Over the Sea's runtime, to create an all-time great album that's far easier to feel than to describe.
2. Portishead -- Roseland NYC Live
Portishead are the coolest band that ever existed, but with only three albums of original material over the last 32 years, they're not exactly prolific. Thankfully, they've also recorded this live album with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra that gives a perfect summation of their core sound, blending Beth Gibbons' haunting voice, Adrian Utley's 60s spy-film soundtrack guitar, Geoff Barrows' strangely timeless, cinematic, and sometimes sci-fi electronics and samples, and in this case, live drums and an orchestra. It's music for an abandoned late night alley, where the streetlamp is flickering, the detritus of the 20th Century hovering high above your head, fin de siècle dread raining down. It's Portishead distilled to their very essence, and it's the coolest thing that has ever existed.
1. Kent -- Isola
Isola is simply a great rock album. The guitars have a perfectly satisfying crunch and fantastic interplay, the basslines are thick and full, the drumming is crisp and in perfect sync with the bass, the dense keyboards add some late 90s Scandinavian atmosphere and flavor, Joakim Berg sings in a mystical tenor, and the songwriting is top-notch. Originally released in the Swedish band's native tongue in 1997, this 1998 version of Isola features vocals in English and a stunning new track. Isola's vast array of musical textures are stunning, string accoutrements welcome, and its lyrics, which feature multiple references to the 1982 science fiction classic, Blade Runner, and also seem to allude to a doomed romance, are a lot better than most of the lyrics written by native English speakers in 1998. Succinctly put, Isola is a classic. Wait...did I not get "cathartic" in there? "747," Isola's closer, is as cathartic as it gets!
NOTABLE RELEASES IN MY WORLD:
Massive Attack's Mezzanine is a trip-hop album so cool, Neo listened to it while hacking at the start of the Matrix, but I wish it was less dense and had more space. MxPx's Slowly Going the Way of the Buffalo was once my favorite MxPx album, but it's fallen a little bit for me since then, as the second half does contain some filler. 1996's Life In General is the definitive, best MXPX album, and I'm almost at a point where I may even like 2000's Ever Passing Moment better than SGTWOTB...I still love Buffalo, though, as well as the MxPx odds 'n sods comp, Let It Happen, also released in 1998, which gives a great overview of the band's sound up to that point. I also love Craig's Brother's debut album, Homecoming, an excellent punk album full of grit, attitude, and some sweet guitar licks and vocal harmonies--between this, the two MxPx albums, and Slick Shoes, Tooth & Nail Records had a banner year for punk records. Zao is one of my favorite bands, and I know Where Blood and Fire Bring Rest is generally considered their best album, but for some reason it doesn't do much for me--I much prefer the experimentation in the three albums that followed. I actually prefer their Zao's split E.P. with Training for Utopia from that very same year, which features some incredibly epic, face-melting work in particular from TFU. Paul Oakenfold's Tranceport is the Star Wars of techno/trance albums, though it gets pretty hokey in its final quarter. It's not a stretch to call Skillet's Hey You I Love Your Soul the greatest Christian industrial rock album ever, considering there are like five other Christian industrial rock albums, but the production touches are great (the album feels like an oasis in the desert), and the songwriting is really strong--Hey You...was really important to me when I had a bit of faith renaissance at the turn of the century. Newsboys' Step Up to the Microphone also takes some production risks that would have never flown even just a few years later in the stodgy world of CCM rock, but most work, and the songwriting is also really strong, meaning this album paired well with that Skillet album in the aforementioned faith renaissance. I really like The Dingees' debut album, Armageddon Massive, which is a cool blend of punk, ska, and even a little bit of reggae, featuring an all-timer in "Could be Worse"...or maybe the song is called "Workin' Man's Blues"...I've seen it listed as both. The garage rock, punk-flavored Ped Squad debut album, No Doy!, won't be everyone's cup of tea, but there's something so steadfastly '90s about it, I can't help but love it. Unkle's Psyence Fiction is an uneven, unfinished mess, but it features one of the best three song stretches (from "Bloodstain" to "Lonely Soul") of any album from 1998. John Williams work on Saving Private Ryan is the best score of 1998, though its CD release has some goofy quirks, like starting and ending with the exact same piece...but still, I love it, like 1998 itself, warts and all.
9. The Appleseed Cast -- The End of the Ring Wars
The Appleseed Cast's debut is the odd album out in their catalogue, featuring an emo sound they would almost immediately abandon, along with whiny vocals frontman, Christopher Crisci, would soon leave behind. However, I've come to regard The End of the Ring Wars nearly as highly as the great albums that came after it, as the victorious, thrumming guitars, the vigorous drums (this is their only album to feature Louie Ruiz behind the kit), and periodic uplifting sax make for an incredibly invigorating, cathartic experience.
8. Death -- The Sound of Perserverance
All of the additional research I did for this beyond my own music collection only led to one new find. I don't know how I've never heard Death's The Sound of Perseverance before this, as it feels like the progenitor for all the extreme metal I've enjoyed in the years since. Featuring incredible musicianship from frontman/guitarist, Chuck Shuldiner, lead guitarist, Shannon Hamm, Scott Clendinen on bass, and Richard Christy on drums, the album flows like a violent river, but also contains the perfect amount of space in moody breaks and sudden fiery guitar solos. As dark and menacing as the album sounds, there's also a surprising feeling of goodwill here, even as Shuldiner screams about evil people doing evil things.
7. Slick Shoes -- Burn Out
Slick Shoes debut, Rusty, is about as sunny as it gets, a SoCal punk album full of infectious energy. The subsequent change in emotion with this sophomore effort is betrayed by the title, as the band switch to I HATE YOU mode, and it rules. As Slick Shoes were literally burned out from a full year on the road getting screwed over, Burn Out features a full emotional arc of setting out optimistically, having hope crushed, pointing the finger at everyone who crushed it, then trying to move on and learn from the experience. Slick Shoes unfairly got labeled as pop punk in those days because their songs have good choruses, but they've quite fairly argued that if anything, they were tech-punk, as the musicianship on these songs borders on insane for the genre, the drums played so fast at times they feel like a train that hasn't gone off the tracks, but has obliterated them, and dual guitars that feature lightning fast, scorched earth leads, along with a bass player talented enough to keep up with the mayhem. However, the galvanizing factor here is that the band are literally being fronted by a child, as singer, Ryan Kepke, isn't even old enough to drive. I know his singing might not be for everyone, but I think it suits this music perfectly, as Kepke comes off as a kid in absolute shock that the adults in the industry around him are so morally bankrupt. Burn Out rules.
6. Project 86 -- Project 86
Like Appleseed Cast's End of the Ring Wars, Project 86's self-titled debut is a bit of a catalogue anomaly. It has a far more minimalist sound: churning bass, guitar that generally moves from crunchy power chords to electric chiming, and unique, technically proficient drumming, behind Andrew Schwab's rhythmically shouted vocals. Schwab's lyrics here are more sprawling, poetic, and labyrinthine, and the sound is more monochrome, like the band is soundtracking a torch-lit cavern. That disparate sound in comparison to Project 86's later work used to make this album a pariah to my ears, but now it helps Project 86 stand out, and in the past 25 years, it's only grown stronger in my estimation.
5. Fear Factory -- Obsolete
Here is the first of three times I am going to use the phrase "fin de siècle." A year before 1999's The Matrix is released to theaters, industrial metal pioneers, Fear Factory, present Obsolete, a concept album about mankind's future enslavement by robots. The apocalyptic album boasts booming double-kicked drums, mechanical, shredding guitars, and Burton C. Bell moving back and forth between shredding his vocal chords, and letting out a soaring, majestic, near medieval melodic croon in an album that is 1998 in all the best ways, soaked in burning atmosphere, full of apocalyptic fin de siècle dread, and just a little bit of hope.
4. The Cardigans -- Gran Turismo
Up to this point, The Cardigans albums feature a sort of kitschy space-age pop, led by sweet singing, though beneath the shimmering surface runs a deep, pitch black current of bleak and hopeless lyricism, to the degree that the last five words on their sunny previous album, First Band On the Moon, are "choke on it and die." Here they just skip the sunny altogether, as the music finally matches the darkness of the lyrics, featuring a sort of chamber pop-rock, where that chamber feels like a prison cell in a very sad person's mind, and yet somehow...this album is pretty fun! Dripping with that lovely 1998 fin de siècle dread I mentioned a paragraph ago, albeit in an entirely different flavor, Gran Turismo is an incredible emotional journey, climaxing in the unbelievably great "Junk of the Hearts,", before the quiet, ship-sinking final instrumental, "Nil," fades as it makes the album's overall nihilism explicit.
3. Neutral Milk Hotel -- In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
Somehow, through an album of impenetrable, surrealist lyricism, full of references to Anne Frank, a carnivalesque trailer park, strange familial relations, bizarre romance, and religion, Jeff Mangum and his weird, lo-fi, psychedelic folk rock band create a lasting work of art that hundreds of thousands of are held to tightly by a hyper-personal connection. Acoustic guitar bounces off musical saws, horns, accordions, raucous drums, and all manner of noises, all miraculously working perfectly throughout 100% of In the Aeroplane Over the Sea's runtime, to create an all-time great album that's far easier to feel than to describe.
2. Portishead -- Roseland NYC Live
Portishead are the coolest band that ever existed, but with only three albums of original material over the last 32 years, they're not exactly prolific. Thankfully, they've also recorded this live album with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra that gives a perfect summation of their core sound, blending Beth Gibbons' haunting voice, Adrian Utley's 60s spy-film soundtrack guitar, Geoff Barrows' strangely timeless, cinematic, and sometimes sci-fi electronics and samples, and in this case, live drums and an orchestra. It's music for an abandoned late night alley, where the streetlamp is flickering, the detritus of the 20th Century hovering high above your head, fin de siècle dread raining down. It's Portishead distilled to their very essence, and it's the coolest thing that has ever existed.
1. Kent -- Isola
Isola is simply a great rock album. The guitars have a perfectly satisfying crunch and fantastic interplay, the basslines are thick and full, the drumming is crisp and in perfect sync with the bass, the dense keyboards add some late 90s Scandinavian atmosphere and flavor, Joakim Berg sings in a mystical tenor, and the songwriting is top-notch. Originally released in the Swedish band's native tongue in 1997, this 1998 version of Isola features vocals in English and a stunning new track. Isola's vast array of musical textures are stunning, string accoutrements welcome, and its lyrics, which feature multiple references to the 1982 science fiction classic, Blade Runner, and also seem to allude to a doomed romance, are a lot better than most of the lyrics written by native English speakers in 1998. Succinctly put, Isola is a classic. Wait...did I not get "cathartic" in there? "747," Isola's closer, is as cathartic as it gets!
NOTABLE RELEASES IN MY WORLD:
Massive Attack's Mezzanine is a trip-hop album so cool, Neo listened to it while hacking at the start of the Matrix, but I wish it was less dense and had more space. MxPx's Slowly Going the Way of the Buffalo was once my favorite MxPx album, but it's fallen a little bit for me since then, as the second half does contain some filler. 1996's Life In General is the definitive, best MXPX album, and I'm almost at a point where I may even like 2000's Ever Passing Moment better than SGTWOTB...I still love Buffalo, though, as well as the MxPx odds 'n sods comp, Let It Happen, also released in 1998, which gives a great overview of the band's sound up to that point. I also love Craig's Brother's debut album, Homecoming, an excellent punk album full of grit, attitude, and some sweet guitar licks and vocal harmonies--between this, the two MxPx albums, and Slick Shoes, Tooth & Nail Records had a banner year for punk records. Zao is one of my favorite bands, and I know Where Blood and Fire Bring Rest is generally considered their best album, but for some reason it doesn't do much for me--I much prefer the experimentation in the three albums that followed. I actually prefer their Zao's split E.P. with Training for Utopia from that very same year, which features some incredibly epic, face-melting work in particular from TFU. Paul Oakenfold's Tranceport is the Star Wars of techno/trance albums, though it gets pretty hokey in its final quarter. It's not a stretch to call Skillet's Hey You I Love Your Soul the greatest Christian industrial rock album ever, considering there are like five other Christian industrial rock albums, but the production touches are great (the album feels like an oasis in the desert), and the songwriting is really strong--Hey You...was really important to me when I had a bit of faith renaissance at the turn of the century. Newsboys' Step Up to the Microphone also takes some production risks that would have never flown even just a few years later in the stodgy world of CCM rock, but most work, and the songwriting is also really strong, meaning this album paired well with that Skillet album in the aforementioned faith renaissance. I really like The Dingees' debut album, Armageddon Massive, which is a cool blend of punk, ska, and even a little bit of reggae, featuring an all-timer in "Could be Worse"...or maybe the song is called "Workin' Man's Blues"...I've seen it listed as both. The garage rock, punk-flavored Ped Squad debut album, No Doy!, won't be everyone's cup of tea, but there's something so steadfastly '90s about it, I can't help but love it. Unkle's Psyence Fiction is an uneven, unfinished mess, but it features one of the best three song stretches (from "Bloodstain" to "Lonely Soul") of any album from 1998. John Williams work on Saving Private Ryan is the best score of 1998, though its CD release has some goofy quirks, like starting and ending with the exact same piece...but still, I love it, like 1998 itself, warts and all.
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