After two full days of activities, drenched in sweat and probably stinking, what excited me more was that I had gotten the new CrazyTown amidst the insanity: our final location was a bowling alley, near which was a multimedia store that luckily had the new CrazyTown that I actually managed to give a go on my way home - a subway ride of roughly thirty minutes, and then a fifteen-to-twenty minute uphill walk. Dirty, hungry, miserable, tired, head full of notions like the fact that I was told one of the girls there had taken a liking to me*, all I cared about was: listening to the album, getting home, eating, taking a shower, listening to it again, and sleeping for two weeks. In that order.
Thing is, this wasn't my daddy's CrazyTown. They had gone in quite a different direction than the amazing The Gift of Game (1999) It was still CrazyTown, with Shifty Shellshock and Epic Mazur exchanging verses, singing choruses, spitting rhymes... but the mood was different. Even though the cover image carried that angel-devil* I knew, the vibe was entirely different.
For one thing, Darkhorse is undoubtedly the superior album among the two. It's production is cleaner, glossier - the rhymes thrown are harder-hitting. The rock/metal aspect has been pushed up a few notches and taken center stage, so the music is largely in harmony with the vocals rather than play a hip-hop beat-like second fiddle. This harder approach makes for some wonderful moments: Battle Cry ("I used to stay quiet but look at me now!") being a clear-cut example.
This bleeds into the second difference: Darkhorse is a darker album by all counts. Right from the get-go, CrazyTown takes to my favourite kind of opener* with Decorated, dealing with drug addiction and the insanity induced by it, invoking a sort of head-in-hands misery. The trend continues in other songs as well - the first single, Drowning is a testament to how well a simple, down-to-earth song about being and feeling lost can be. This sentiment echoes in Change, the wonderful summer-depression song that hit home during several difficult times in my life*. The sugar-coated but desperate Candy Coated ("-pain is the ball and chain, pulling me closer to death") also adds to this misery.
As for the aggression, it's clearer in two distinctive songs: Battle Cry which at times features pretty sweet drumming and is a riot; and the smile-inducing Take It to the Bridge which actually uses a phrase my mother used on me a couple of times: "Would you jump off the bridge if I told you to?" (only her version was "Would you jump off the bridge if they did?") The somewhat scream-like vocals in the chorus of Take It to the Bridge and the still impressive fist-in-the-air duet delivery of the final line, "We'll take it to the bridge to jump the fuck off!" gets the blood boiling.
The album has softer moments that I couldn't believe worked as well as they did. The poppish half-ballad, Hurt You So Bad and the soft-spoken but bitter and vindictive Sorry are two of those.
But there is no song on this album like the absolutely beautiful, melancholic, personal apocalyptic misery song that closes the main album, Beautiful. The thing about this song is that it felt, as it feels every time, like it's twisting a splinter in my chest. There is an interesting balance here, as Shifty takes it to the personal level, drags it down and makes it smaller, but Epic Mazur, with the chorus, expands it: "'cause nothing could be more beautiful than watching the whole world crumbling down on me / so beautiful, so beautiful, to witness the end" and when coupled with Shifty's self-questioning, "How far will I go; and will I grow? Will I learn to know?"
There are two sore thumbs, however, that break the routine, but while one does it while managing to keep up with the album's overall flow, the other breaks it, and just before the best song on there. The former is Waste of My Time, which gives one side of a messy, summer-day break-up with a lot of bullshit involved, and is a breath of fresh air in and of itself. Its aloof vibe balances out the relentlessly dark flow.
However, the latter, Skulls & Stars is not as successful. Thing is, the album has two bonus/hidden tracks, titled You're the One* and the reggae-influenced, mindlessly fun trek through Shifty and Epic's nostalgia that is Them Days. That's where the point is - both Skulls & Stars and Them Days deal with the same topic, of going from an underground act to a success, but Skulls & Stars does it with a watered-down, more poetic sort of way that falls short. Them Days cuts loose, doesn't give a fuck about whatever, and as a result, is a far superior song.
On the whole, however, Darkhorse was a few steps up for CrazyTown, and it remains one of my favourites. I have had friends bewildered at the fact that I still listen to it sometimes, and welcome the memories it brings. Because CrazyTown was never poised to be the "next big thing in rock", nor did they have such a claim. CrazyTown is and always was there to make good, memorable songs. Yes, their claim to fame was a song that heavily sampled a Red Hot Chilli Peppers song, sure. But Darkhorse proved that it wasn't all just fun and games.
Thing is, Darkhorse is, for me, also the first instance of finding a band or an album, loving it in every way, and then never seeing a follow-up, or hearing from the band again. It's 2015 now, thirteen years after the release of Darkhorse, and while things are slowly happening, the third album still isn't out.
Yes, I have been following. Yes, I'm dedicated to the point of obsession when following certain bands.
*Footnote: 1- Self-loathing takes time to mature, but suffice to say that my somewhat unusually high EQ had been an enemy all my life. Given the way I had been treated throughout my teen years, I remember finding this notion laughable - in fact, I did laugh at my cousin when he told me. Funny thing is, completely unrelated, this girl, the one date we had and countless texts exchanged would set the precedent for a quirk in my relationships: picking unlikely candidates for "our song." In her case, it was System of a Down, Prison Song.
2- The cover of The Gift of Game also had her, which Shifty had said in an interview was the girl outlined in Lollipop Porn - carrying devil horns, but with a halo over her head, angel and devil in one.
3- The kind that doesn't fuck around with intros and ambient passages and whatever. It's go time, let's fucking go!
4- "Sometimes I wonder if I'll change / can I change, will I change, or am I always gonna be the same? / I blame the world for making me such a freak / but the world wants to blame it on me" and the impressive "I'm like a piece of shard glass / laying in the frame of a window that was broken by the bricks of pain" which a dear, dear friend found to be interesting enough to hit me with it years later.
5- It's basically Shifty Shellshock talking about a girl he met that he was taken with. He tried to stretch this song out in his failed solo venture, Happy Love Sick (2004), but it didn't work in Darkhorse, and so having more of it wasn't such a good idea.
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