D.A.D - Helpyourselfish
rock/hard-rock/metal/1995
***Favourite Album***
Along with Simpatico, this album makes up the clear peak of this bands output. They're still active to this date and has in the vicinity of 15 studio albums to their name. Before
Helpyourselfish they struck me as a slightly silly band, though, and after
Simpatico they gradually lost their keen sence of memorable hooks. That is all just my opinion of course. Plenty of people still insist that D.A.D remains an impressively vital rock band to this day and their live shows are pretty much universally considered exemplary.
Helpyourselfish fits right in to the zeitgeist of 1995 in rock music. It is dark, grungey, melancholy and borderline metal. What sets this apart from so many other such albums from that time is just how gripping the riffs and vocal lines are. Some seriously strong song writing is at play here, although the self-aware and silly lyrics are an aquired taste:
I'm down on my knees for crying out low
I'm praying to a god that always says no
The light at the end of the tunnel
is nothing but the burglar alarm
and
Don't take your garbage
- Anywhere but out..
Before the pup in your heart
- Becomes a dog in your mind
And it's licking my brains...
Sucking reason out
It will be cooking my head
With the lid on tight
and
I'm all right, I'm habituated
So I tip my hand, afraid to play it..
And then my ribs goes twang
- And off they fly..
It wasn't meant for human eyes
... and so on. It is what it is and I like the lyrics. At least they're not boring. Then there's the solos and they're of course great since Jacob Binzer is incapable of playing a solo that isn't at least moderately gripping. The album mostly consists of a bunch of heavy, sometimes lightly bluesy hard rockers with a metal edge. The last few tracks shake things up a bit with a lighter rock song, an almost thrashy song and a melancholic acoustic track respectively. I feel like the first 8 tracks of 12 are the strongest part of the album, but overall I love this disc.