Review: Alien Ant Farm – ANThology
Released: March 6, 2001
Label: Dreamworks
ASIN:
B00005A7TW
I hadn’t heard of Alien Ant Farm
until I ran across their cover of Michael Jackson’s “Smooth
Criminal”. When I heard that performance, I realized that
anyone who could actually make me LIKE a Michael Jackson song must
indeed have some talent. I decided to check them out. This
album sounded like a good start.
ANThology includes 13 tracks:
- Courage
- Movies
- Flesh and Bone
- Whisper
- Summer
- Sticks and
Stones - Attitude
- Stranded
- Wish
- Calico
- Happy Death
Day - Smooth Criminal
- Universe
After a quick play through the album, I was surprised how
many of the tracks I’d actually heard on the radio in the past – I just
didn’t know who performed them.
Alien Ant Farm
(AAF) has a very energetic, emotional grunge-rock metal sound that is
very nearly classifiable as “punk” (though it’s a bit more
polished than most punk bands). The music is full of powerful guitar
riffs and angry, almost “shouted” vocals. Once you’ve heard
one of the songs on this album, if you heard any of the other
Alien Ant Farm songs on the radio you’d find them
easily identifiable. The band’s sound is distinctive yet somehow it
blends in with the typical playlist of any “alternative rock”
station such as Columbus’ own CD101. Their songs are edgy but with a
sense of humor.
The album has several stand-out tracks on it. The
best of all is clearly “Smooth Criminal”. If AAF maintained
this kind of sound for the majority of their music, this album’s overall
rating would probably be considerably higher. Other good tracks are
“Courage”, “Movies” (sometimes panned by critics but
I like its “pop-like” sound and lyrics), “Attitude”
(which I find catchy though a bit repetitive), “Wish” (strong
heavy metal sound, which I don’t care as much for), and “Happy
Death Day” (decent lyrics which match the slower beat reasonably
well). I kind of like “Flesh and Bone”, too, mostly for the
strength of its lyrics.
Tracks I don’t care as much for are
“Whisper” (which is kind of a whining rant about the music
industry), “Stranded” (which features some great guitar work
but has some odd tempo changes that I didn’t care for though it features
an interesting rhyme of “sea anemone” and “my
enemy”), “Calico” (not their best lyrics), and
“Universe”.
Overall, I’d give the Alien Ant
Farm ANThology album about a 6.5 out of 10. The stronger
tracks, aside from “Smooth Criminal”, aren’t strong enough to
make up for the weaker ones. If you extracted just the better tracks and
rated the resulting album, that wouldn’t move it to more than a 7 or
7.25 maybe. It’s a decent album, but not a great one.