Number Five

All-time top five albums... all that's left is 5 of 5. You'd think that the drum roll would've been saved for number one, and yet I've opted to roll the red carpet out for the final cut. And of course by "opted", I mean that I became overwhelmed by a tsunami of indecisiveness and had to reevaluate the remaining contenders and single one out as The Best of What's Left. There were a healthy handful of nominations, including Weezer's Blue Album, AC/DC's "Back In Black", Cake's "Fashion Nugget", self titled efforts from Beautiful Creatures, Soulfly, and Rage Against the Machine, Paul Simon's "Graceland", Marilyn Manson's "Antichrist Superstar", and by far the hardest one to veto, The Refreshments' "Fizzy Fuzzy Big and Buzzy". But in the end, I had to go with White Zombie's "Astro-Creep: 2000 (Songs of Love, Destruction and Other Synthetic Delusions of the Electric Head)".
This album is simply too enjoyable, too much of a personal favorite to leave off. As far as I'm concerned, it's an absolute masterpiece from one of the most creative forces in pop culture, Rob Zombie. From the eerie movie reel to creepy synthetic organ to roller coaster-ish clickity-clack intro that slams you into a brick wall of drums and power riffs, all the way to the slow and simple yet powerful final track ("Blood, Milk, and Sky"), there isn't a single dull moment on the entire album. In retrospect, I don't know how I questioned the Top-5 status of this perfectly crafted work of art in the first place.