Sony/Columbia
2004
Death Before Musick (Explicit)
About This Album
Newsflash: Casey Chaos is still pissed off. Four years after the promising, yet largely ignored We Have Come for Your Parents, Amen returns with Chaos, its only veteran participant. As the story goes, the mates opted out when Virgin decided Amen didn't have a prayer, leaving Chaos to soldier on with the American equalizer of credit as his only benefactor. That pile of band and label baggage certainly weighed on the famously angry singer. But damn it if the political climate of the early 21st century didn't want to cooperate with Chaos' fragile psyche, either. It caused him grief from D.C. and W. to Sac-Town and Arnold. Jeez, can't an iconoclast catch a break anymore? As it turns out, yes. Amen is revitalized with Death Before Musick, which appears through System of a Down guitarist Daron Malakian's eatURmusic vanity imprint. It features a batch of songs performed nearly exclusively by Chaos himself, since the rest of the dudes in Amen jumped ship. It could also be some of the firebrand's best work, unrolling anger and rousing melody over roiling templates of 1977 punk anthemics, post-punk dissolution, and industrial metal sludge. Cuts like "California Bleeding" and "Oblivion Stereo" emphasize the Johnny Rotten qualities of Chaos' voice over raucously ringing guitars, while the awesomely named "We Got the Bait" and "Neutron Liars" are mid-album lightning rods of nihilist consciousness-raising.
Track List (try tracks 2,4,7,10 and 14)

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