Author: fgt

Oklahoma City experimental, psychedelic, alternative rock band The Flaming Lips have spent the last four and a bit decades casually and gleefully ripping up their own rule book. Skillfully transitioning from noisy, underground, art-rock oddities to arena-conquering, mainstream-courting, dream-pop crossover heroes, and back to explorative, psych-cult elder scene statesmen. 

There really have been few careers in modern music that have managed to pack in quite as much as Wayne Coyne and his crew. In that time, they’ve released 16 studio albums that range wildly in style, but here they all are, ranked from worst to best.

16. Hear It Is (1986)

Not only is Hear It Is The Flaming Lips’ first full length album, it’s also their first release to feature Wayne Coyne on vocals following the departure of his brother Mark the previous year. It’s an interesting document of a band in their infancy, and the screaming, squealing opening noise-rock of With You or the slow burning dread of seven-minute album highlight Jesus Shooting Heroin probably sounded great upon release. But with the knowledge of where the band would go as their career progressed, this rather rudimentary Cramps-meets-Butthole Surfers punk rock can be filed under “interesting” rather than “essential”.

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15. King’s Mouth (2019)

Initially released for Record Store Day, with a limited edition run of just 4000 copies pressed, King’s Mouth was conceived as the soundtrack to an art exhibition, with Mick Jones from The Clash providing narration throughout the album. It’s certainly worth a listen for completists. But, although many enjoyed the band stylistically harking back to the Yoshimi… era, this is some way off that album’s quality in pure songwriting terms, and feels like something created with focus elsewhere.

14. Oh My Gawd!!!… (1987)

A year on from their debut, The Flaming Lips exhibited a great deal of growth as a band on their follow up. Oh My Gawd!!!… is by no means the finished article, but there are plenty of signs that this was a band who were not going to be content being another bog standards noise-rock band. There’s obvious influences taken from ’70’s rock, and the maniacal nine-minute-plus journey of One Million Billionth of a Millisecond on a Sunday Morning was comfortably their finest song to date. That said, there are stodgy moments on here as well, so it’s a mixed bag overall.

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13. Zaireeka (1997)

Having basically done everything they felt they could do with the traditional sound of rock music, of course The Flaming Lips would decide to make an album of experimental dream-pop comprised of four separate releases that all need to be played simultaneously on four different sound systems. An interesting idea, not without its merits as a piece of music, but, especially back in 1997, a total nightmare to listen to as intended for anyone who didn’t have access to their own recording studio. The desire to change should be encouraged, but this is the sound of a band chucking the baby out with the bathwater.

12. The Terror (2013)

Although there is plenty of melody on it, The Terror is aptly named. This is one of the harder Flaming Lips albums to fully appreciate and understand. Long, experimental jams, passages of throbbing, electronic buzz, Coyne’s vocals sounding disconnected and ghostly, a fifteen-minute-long drone song named You Lust, yep, The Terror sure is a daunting listen for those people who just remembered She Don’t Use Jelly. There’s pleasure to be had here if you really put the work in, but this is no place to start for newbies.

11. Telepathic Surgery (1989)

Initially intended as a one-track, 30-minute soundscape, Telepathic Surgery may not have come out as first intended, but not all of those ideas were binned off completely. It’s an odd album, with the gruff, industrialised riffing of Drug Machine In Heaven and Right Now kicking things off, before we get 29-seconds of aimless noise called Michael, Time to Wake Up and then Chrome Plated Suicide deliberately and shamelessly ripping off Guns ‘n’ Roses’ Sweet Child O’ Mine. It never really gets any easier after that maddening opening. File under ‘divisive’.

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10. Embryonic (2009)

Three years after their biggest chart success, of course The Flaming Lips were going to make a sprawling, acid rock double album. Embryonic peaked at an astonishing number 8 on the US Billboard 200, which for a 70-minute-long trip that features the bug-eyed garage, psychedelia of Aquarius Sabotage, the freeform noise of Scorpio Sword and the ambient krautrock of The Ego’s Last Stand is wild. Despite the length, form and general weirdness of the album, it remains a coherent and fascinating listen.

9. Oczy Mlody (2017)

After finding the formula to conquer the mainstream and then promptly doing everything in their power to reject it, The Flaming Lips hit on something of a middle ground with their thirteenth album. Oczy Mlody continues the weird experimentation of their previous pair of records but re-introduces some of the pop nous that made their late ’90s/early 2000s work so successful. So, we get the shimmering synth pop of There Should Be Unicorns alongside the weird seven-minute trip of Listening to Frogs with Demon Eyes. The best of both rather excellent worlds.

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8. American Head (2020)

Easily the most straightforward album The Flaming Lips have made in decades, their most recent effort is a charmingly subtle and personal effort that leans heavily on classic Americana and soothing acoustic driven songs. At it’s best, American Head is an incredible listen, with the wonderful Dinosaurs on the Mountain and the tearjerking piano ballad Mother Please Don’t Be Sad coming across as if Neil Young had been the fifth Beatle. Releasing material this strong 16 albums into a career is a hugely impressive feat.

7. Hit To Death In The Future Head (1992)

The band’s major label debut is a lovely little bridge between their noisier indie years and the grandeur that they would come to embrace in the future. Hit Me Like You Did The First Time comes across like a nerdier US Jesus and Mary Chain, the woozy Halloween On The Barbary Coast sounds like R.E.M. after having their drinks spiked, whilst the brilliantly driving, straight-ahead rock of Frogs had all the potential to be a classic ’90s chart bothering single. Not everyone was onboard, however: citing musical differences, guitarist Jonathan Donahue and drummer Nathan Roberts left soon after its release, the former to focus on Mercury Rev.

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6. In A Priest Driven Ambulance (1990)

Four albums in, The Flaming Lips finally hit upon a sound that really worked for them. A concept album of sorts, based on Coyne’s intrigue at religion, In A Priest Driven Ambulance is where we say hello to the meld of jaunty, lo-fi melody and fuzzy, erratic indie rock that would become their calling card over the next few albums. When it’s good, …Ambulance takes some beating; Unconsciously Screaming is oddly anthemic and the post-punk throb of Take Meta Mars and God Walks Among Us Now’s Sonic Youth-go-country both ooze cool. It earned them a major label record deal the following year, quite a coup for a band so odd.

5. Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots (2002)

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4. At War With The Mystics (2006)

Coming off the back of their best-selling album, The Flaming Lips were now a very big deal indeed. It’s something they obviously felt comfortable with, as much of At War With The Mystics is another gorgeous pop record that features some of the most conventional songs they had released at this point. An opening one-two of The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song, with its joyous, fizziness, and the geek-Stones shuffle of Free Radicals is some way to kick the album off. But, obviously, it’s far from straightforward all the time: the prog-flute funk out of The Wizard Turns On… is just one example of a band unafraid to keep their freak flag flying. The song also won them a well-deserved Grammy for Best Rock Instrumental Performance in 2007.

3. Transmissions from the Satellite Heart (1993)

AKA, the one with the really big hit on it. Even the most casual fan of The Flaming Lips will know the massive crossover hit She Don’t Use Jelly, unquestionably the most famous song of their early years. It’s a typically weird, but instantaneous, lo-fi indie banger, but it’s far from being the only moment of worth on Transmissions… Opener Turn it On is fantastic, the swerving garage riff of Superhumans is also great and When Yer Twenty-Two might be the best Janes Addiction song that Janes Addiction never got round to writing. An album that deserves to be remembered for far more than just one singular crossover tune.

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There’s a reason that The Flaming Lips’ seventh album was their final to truly fall under the umbrella of “alternative rock”; this is as perfect a document of the style as the band were ever going to manage, so why bother trying to top it? It’s understandable that there are some fans who dropped the band after Clouds…, The Flaming Lips never again came close to replicating the glorious, slacker noise of the likes of Lightning Strikes The Postman or Placebo Headwound. But listening back to the album, you fully understand why they felt the need to move on. Indie rock? Completed it mate. 

1. The Soft Bulletin (1999)

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Since blagging his way onto the Hammer team a decade ago, Stephen has written countless features and reviews for the magazine, usually specialising in punk, hardcore and 90s metal, and still holds out the faint hope of one day getting his beloved U2 into the pages of the mag. He also regularly spouts his opinions on the Metal Hammer Podcast.

In the cartoonish wild west of the nu metal era, few band-on-band beefs were more iconic than Slipknot vs Mushroomhead. Despite having donned horror-influenced masks for years before Slipknot exploded in popularity with the release of their 1999 debut, Mushroomhead were often accused of riding on the Des Moines giants’ coattails, leading to some bitter wars of words and even an infamous incident where Slipknot were allegedly pelted with missiles by fans while playing a show in Mushroomhead’s home state of Cleveland.

Today, it seems cooler heads have prevailed. Speaking to Metal Hammer in their latest issue, Mushroomhead leader Steve ‘Skinny’ Felton insists that much of the feuding between the two bands was exaggerated by the media, and has nothing but positive things to say about Slipknot.

“Slipknot, man, amazing,” he effuses. “One of the biggest heavy metal bands in the world. Holy shit, it’s gigantically huge and what they have done is amazing. And I think it opens the doors for other bands as well as my own. People like this masked metal. They like theatrics.”

When asked by Metal Hammer‘s Paul Travers about the Cleveland incident specifically, Skinny suggests that it was nowhere near as bad as made out at the time. “A bit of it over time has been inflated,” he insists. “I wasn’t there personally and I’ve heard 20 different versions over the years. And let’s not forget that it was popular in that era to have beefs in bands and stack people against each other. It was huge with the West Coast and East Coast rappers. The media fuelled it and fans bought into it.”

Skinny is also philosophical when pondering how his band’s careers may have turned out had Mushroomhead been signed to Roadrunner instead of Slipknot, once again giving Slipknot praise for their status in the scene and the battles they’ve faced over the years. 

“There were lots of people signing lots of bands in the day, he explains. “It wasn’t like we got the exact same offer by the same guy who signed Slipknot. And I have a lot of compassion for them, because they’ve put up with a lot of bullshit just to make music and art, and they’ve lost good people. I commend them for everything they do and it just goes to show that I wasn’t that far off many years ago that this type of thing was going to be bigger than we even knew. I wasn’t wrong. It just wasn’t my band.”

While Slipknot have gone on to become one of the biggest bands in the history of heavy metal, Skinny has enjoyed a long and healthy career with Mushroomhead, with the band’s ninth album Call The Devil releasing earlier this month. Read the rest of Mushroomhead’s interview in the new issue of Metal Hammer, out now.

Merlin moved into his role as Executive Editor of Louder in early 2022, following over ten years working at Metal Hammer. While there, he served as Online Editor and Deputy Editor, before being promoted to Editor in 2016. Before joining Metal Hammer, Merlin worked as Associate Editor at Terrorizer Magazine and has previously written for the likes of Classic Rock, Rock Sound, eFestivals and others. Across his career he has interviewed legends including Ozzy Osbourne, Lemmy, Metallica, Iron Maiden (including getting a trip on Ed Force One courtesy of Bruce Dickinson), Guns N’ Roses, KISS, Slipknot, System Of A Down and Meat Loaf. He has also presented and produced the Metal Hammer Podcast, presented the Metal Hammer Radio Show and is probably responsible for 90% of all nu metal-related content making it onto the site. 

Peter Gabriel and Steve Hackett have paid tribute to the former Genesis and Gabriel tour manager and “sixth-member” Richard Macphail, who has died, aged 73.

“Very upset to learn of Richard Macphail‘s death last night,” Gabriel wrote eon his Facebook page. “We had sixty years of history together, from when we were at school and he was the cool singer in the band called the Anon to when I spoke to him last week after he had had a nasty fall.

“Rich was the person who time after time bailed us out of difficult situations. When we couldn’t afford a rehearsal space he persuaded his parents to let us have their family’s country cottage in Abinger Hammer for a year and when we couldn’t afford a van he persuaded his father to let us have an old Hovis bread van that we drove around the country. When some of the band were having doubts about our future, he would inspire all of us and convince us to carry on.

“He went from friend and champion to became Genesis’s tour manager and then my own tour manager when i started working agin. His determination, good humour and enthusiasm got us all through so many difficult moments.

“Richard, I can’t believe you are no longer here. Ours wasn’t always an easy relationship but it was built on love respect and shared experience and there’s now a huge hole in my life. Going to miss you Rich.”

“I’m incredibly shocked and sad to hear about the passing of Richard Macphail,” Hackett posted on X, formerly known as Twitter. “He was one of the most special people I’ve ever known and he brought out the best in everyone. He was so kind to me in those early Genesis days and he remained a lifelong friend.”

Amand Lehmann, who works closely with Hackett also added, “I am so sad and shocked to hear about the passing of Richard Macphail. He was a truly lovely man, one of life’s absolute gems. He will be missed by so many and my thoughts are with Maggie and his family.”

A contemporary of Tony Banks, Gabriel, Anthony Phillips, Mike Rutherford and Chris Stewart at Charterhouse school, Macphail sang in the group Anon, which featured  Phillips, and later Rutherford. Those two eventually hooked up with Gabriel, Banks and Stewart of the Garden Wall to form Genesis.

Macphail may have quit Anon, but he did not quit on his schoolmates, and after returning from a kibbutz, he instigated, thanks to his parents, the use of Christmas Cottage near Wotton in Surrey, rent-free for Genesis as they developed their sound above and beyond that of their From Genesis To Revelation album.

Having been otehr the band and Gabriel’s  tour manager, he later ventured off for a career in ecological and environmental fields.

Macphail was well known to the prog community, not just for appearing on the Genesis album covers for Foxtrot and Live, the latter of which bore the inscription “This album is dedicated to Richard Macphail who left April 1973,”, but also for the release in 2018 of My Book Of Genesis, which looked at his time with the band. Prog attended the launch of his book on the band, attended by Banks, Gabriel, Hackett and Rutherford at Daunt Books on Holland Park Avenue.

Writer and broadcaster Jerry Ewing is the Editor of Prog Magazine which he founded for Future Publishing in 2009. He grew up in Sydney and began his writing career in London for Metal Forces magazine in 1989. He has since written for Metal Hammer, Maxim, Vox, Stuff and Bizarre magazines, among others. He created and edited Classic Rock Magazine for Dennis Publishing in 1998 and is the author of a variety of books on both music and sport, including Wonderous Stories; A Journey Through The Landscape Of Progressive Rock.

A recent news report has revealed the astonishing numbers behind Metallica’s ongoing M72 world tour.

US news station WCCO–CBS went backstage before the metal juggernauts’ two concerts in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on August 16 and 18. They interviewed tour coordinator Jon-Michael Marino and published some impressive stats about the team that put together the Minneapolis gigs, which was reportedly more than 400-strong. It included 156 of Metallica’s own crew, 40 steelworkers, 148 local production staff and 92 truck drivers.

Metallica used eight video towers for the Minneapolis shows, which, according to Marino, took 36 hours each to build. The stage itself and the audio-visual production took another 12 hours to put together.

Marino also revealed that Metallica take 64 guitars on tour with them, 36 of which need to be ready at all times during live performances. This is so the band can quickly play songs in different tunings, but also in case of technical problems like a string breaking.

In addition, Blabbermouth reports that Metallica get through 6,000 guitar picks at every concert. While some of these are used by guitar players James Hetfield (also vocals) and Kirk Hammett, the vast majority are thrown out into the audience at the end of the night. Meanwhile, drummer Lars Ulrich makes his way through an average of 25 sticks per show.

Metallica play the last two US dates of the 2024 M72 tour this weekend, taking the stage at Lumen Field in Seattle on August 30 and September 1. They’ll then host a four-show residency at Foro Sol, Mexico City, from September 20 to 29. See the full details below. The band haven’t announced any further concerts at time of publication.

Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett and bassist Robert Trujillo recently jammed a cover of Rush’s Working Man at an M72 stop in Edmonton, Canada. This month, the band donated $40,000 to Minnesota charity People Serving People, which aids individuals and families experiencing homelessness.

Aug 30: Seattle Lumen Field, WA, USA
Sep 01: Seattle Lumen Field, WA, USA
Sep 20: Mexico City Foro Sol, Mexico
Sep 22: Mexico City Foro Sol, Mexico
Sep 27: Mexico City Foro Sol, Mexico
Sep 29: Mexico City Foro Sol, Mexico

Louder’s resident Gojira obsessive was still at uni when he joined the team in 2017. Since then, Matt’s become a regular in Prog and Metal Hammer, at his happiest when interviewing the most forward-thinking artists heavy music can muster. He’s got bylines in The Guardian, The Telegraph, NME, Guitar and many others, too. When he’s not writing, you’ll probably find him skydiving, scuba diving or coasteering.