Of course, the real answer is that luck plays more of a part in life than we like to admit. Much as people talk about pulling yourself up by the bootstraps, and manifesting the destiny you want, the truth of the matter is that being in the right place at the right time is as much a factor as anything else. All the talent and drive in the world means nothing if you don't have someone who can open a door to success, and people with open eyes and ears to embrace what you have done.
Thirty-five years ago, Trouble underwent an extreme rebranding under the tutelage of Rick Rubin. Much as he had stripped Slayer down to the studs for the concentrated and clinical "Reign In Blood", he took the same approach with Trouble. They were a big name in American doom, but that scene was so small you would be forgiven for not knowing it even existed. Trouble was eyeing something bigger, and Rubin was the person who could guide them toward that future.
The result of their collaboration was the 1990 self-titled album, which remains a seminal album in the trajectory of doom and stoner metal, as well as one of the truly great 'guitar albums' of all time. Trouble's driving force was always the guitar duo of Bruce Franklin and Rick Wartell, who blended crushing doom riffs with hints of groove and psychedelia, giving their music a sense of swing that was often missing from straight-ahead metal. Combined with a guitar tone that was a thick, gritty soup of distortion, Trouble was one of the heaviest bands on the scene.
Or they should have been.
Trouble was not impressive when I first heard them, and I the same is true for many others, because the early days of CDs were often a failed experiment. The sound we heard was not Trouble as they should have been heard, but a thin replication of what needed to be put on a vinyl record to make the result sound right on massive old hi-fi systems. The album was a brittle production, dry by most standards, but without the razor-sharp clarity of "Reign In Blood". Trouble was actually heavier than Slayer, but didn't sound it, due to the terrible transfer to the new medium.
I did my own remastering of the record, and boosting the bass frequencies opened up a new world of sound. Suddenly, Trouble's sound was as thick and powerful as anything from that time period. The chunky muted riffs in "R.I.P." became percussive blasts, while the ending to "All Is Forgiven" closed the album with crushing distortion. The same complaints have been leveled against "And Justice For All", but no amount of fan-made restoration has had as much an impact in that case.
The only thing Rick Rubin has ever been good at shines through on this album, which is his ability to convince bands to strip away the excess in their writing, and to focus on writing the most direct songs possible. Trouble doesn't waste time cycling through riffs that drone on, or playing endless solos that go nowhere, instead penning songs that are only doom by the band's prior reputation. This is the genesis of stoner metal, and a yin-yang with the early Danzig albums. The balance of fuzz and clarity was perfect, as was the balance between guitar excess and striking hooks.
Whether a riff or vocal, every song on the record makes an immediate impact. The pounding rhythm in "R.I.P.", Eric Wagner's piercing vocal in "The Wolf", the band was not wasting any time on songs that put mood over substance. Much as Slayer had pared down their early songs into two-minute bursts of fury, Trouble were using every piece of their songs to prove their worth as a band deserving of more attention than they had received.
In guitar circles, they achieved that. Guitar players and metal fans know Trouble, and consider this album a stone-cold classic. In the wider world, though, Trouble is a band that never made the leap. They didn't have the speed or controversy of a band like Slayer, nor the touring tenacity of Metallica, so they languished in the underground as one of the best kept secrets around. They would follow this record with "Manic Frustration", which was nearly as good a record, but perhaps played a little too obviously to a mainstream audience.
"Trouble" was a singular moment in time when a band fused all of their influences together in a lightning storm of inspiration. I would argue Slayer did the same with "Reign In Blood", which may or may not be a coincidence. Between you and me, I don't think it's much of a contest. "Reign In Blood" might be legendary, but the middle eight songs blend together in a way that makes the thirty minutes sound as if the whole album is just three songs. "Trouble" holds up from beginning to end as a masterclass in how you can make a guitar album that works as more than just a guitar album.
Eric Wagner's shrill, piercing voice is not for everybody, but Trouble isn't trouble without him. When they would later try to make an album without him, it simply wasn't the same. Wagner's occult-hippie vibe was the sharpness that created the cracks for the band's hammer to pound mercilessly.
Some cult classics are adored by a small clique for obvious reasons, because there was something about them too off-putting for the mainstream to ever embrace them. "Evil Dead 2" was never going to be a blockbuster, because the masses won't get the appeal of watching a man sever his own hand with a chainsaw, and then get into a slapstick fight with it. "Trouble" is not a cult classic in that sense, because there is no obvious reason why people who were buying Metallica albums by the millions couldn't have also loved Trouble. Maybe it was simply bad luck.
"Trouble" is one of my favorite metal albums of all time, and is one of those albums that set a bar few modern bands have been able to scrape with their fingernails as they reach. Metal doesn't always understand what the mission is, but Rick Rubin showed Trouble the path to musical enlightenment. Thirty-five years later, "Trouble" is still a stunning achievement.
*In 2020, a remastered edition of the album was finally released. That is the mandatory version of the album, as it fixes the issues the original CDs had. Listen to that version, and maybe you'll hear what I always heard, maybe you'll join the cult.
No comments:
Post a Comment