PORK SODA

Primus has been one of my favorite bands ever since i first heard them as a wee 10 year old kid, back in 1999. Over the years, the band and its frontman/bass virtuoso Les Claypool have experimented with lots of different sounds and styles, some of wich i've enjoyed and others that i have had a harder time appreciating. In my opinion "Frizzle Fry" is their great Hard Rock album, "Sailing The Seas Of Cheese" their great Prog album and "Pork Soda" their great Primus album wich is not necessarily just a good thing.

One thing that always irks me whenever i listen to Pork Soda is that its TOO experimental. Primus main sound is groovy Hard Rock with highly virtuosic bass and drums right? Well the first song we are treated to "My Name Is Mud" is just that. Tim Alexander plays a steady marching beat while Les slaps out a bass line so low and dark that it borders on infrasound. It rules. After that comes "Welcome To This World" and "Bob" wich are boring in my opinion. They suffer from bad guitar work and rather boring bass lines also. Things pick up again in DMV wich is a straight forward rocker about the evils of transport agency bureaucracy (as someone who is currently going through my driving lessons i can only say that i feel your pain, Les) The next two songs are great (special mention goes to the Raga Rock inspired "ol Diamondback Sturgeon".) But then we get to the percussion solo called "Wounded Knee". It basically serves no purpose and screws up the pace of the album for me. Things truck on in about the same manner for the rest of the album until we get to the conclusion, the 8 minute "Hamburger Train". This is one of the least accessible song Primus has ever done, or rather it is a test of endurance. Its straight 4/4 while Les plays a VERY repetetive bass line and Larry Lalonde makes noises that sometimes can be indentified as coming from an electric guitar. In conclusion though, this album gets 4 stars from me. It is without a doubt the least accessible album Primus has ever done but lately i have begun thinking it is great. I am generally against forcing yourself to like an album (there is a big difference between doing that and having it grown on you) but this one really needed hundreds of listens over several years for me to realize how good it really is. If you are new to Primus, then start with "Sailing The Seas Of Cheese" and work your way to this and see if you fall for it too.