Forgotten Album of the Month: Local H

Forgotten Album of the Month: Local H

While everyone should remember Local H, it seems to be the only song you hear on the radio is “Bound for the Floor;” while it’s a great song, it not the best song the band ever had. To hear that, one will have to pick up the band’s 1996 masterpiece As Good As Dead. Although it came out in the midst of the Bush/Silverchair overseas grunge explosion, the band were able to break through the airwaves with infectious and sometimes ironic songs that still stand the test of time.

Starting off with a little experiment, “Manifest Density Pt. 1,” the album really kicks off with the amazingly fierce “High Fiving MF,” which is probably one of the biggest diss tracks ever heard on a rock record. The amazing thing about this track is that it actually made it to the radio in some areas but because it was so heavily edited, it lost a lot of its meaning but it was still a great song. After “Bound for the Floor,” the record lags a bit with an okay song and a hard rocker that just livens up the pace but then the band drops a bomb (in a good way) with the song “No Problem,” a quiet acoustic track that’s unlike anything else on the record. But that just shows how powerful the band of Scott Lucas on vocals, guitar and everything else and Joe Daniels on drums can be no matter what genre they’re tackling.

Then comes one of the best songs of the alternative rock era, “Eddie Vedder,” which at the time was seen as a bit of a diss on the Pearl Jam frontman but really surmises that a band would be more popular if the frontman said he was Eddie. Then after a few more rockers, the band slows things way down with “O.K.” a possible tribute to a deceased alternative rock frontman and how his words will live on years after his death. Finishing up with “Manifest Density Pt. 2,” a rocking finale to part one, the band closes the book on what quickly became one of the most talked about albums of 1996. But after that, they kind of withered a bit with subsequent albums, not regaining full strength until at least 12 Angry Months. But they’re still touring giving people what they want but in the meantime, go back to their catalogue and begin to realize, especially with this album, how much of a kickass band they were and how much they helped the whole alternative rock scene.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOmRhOKhkOI (Eddie Vedder)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCHNL3-FZOA (High-Fiving MF)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oM8QXdp8wU (Bound for the Floor)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KHoLogLoGg (Fritz’s Corner)

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