Day 3: "The Sickness" - Disturbed (2000)

Ooooooooo-AH-AH-AH-AH.

Listen to me here

The record which spawned a meme, a thousand terrible karaoke performances, and arguably was the tipping point for bands like Limp Bizkit and Papa Roach to give way from the Rap/Metal crossover to the nu-Metal era at the turn of the millennium.  

When I said in the mission post at the start of this blog that these albums all come with some kind of memory, I can't listen to this album without thinking about my friend Alex.  I kind of knew Alex peripherally for a while.  I'd met his sister back in the days when I was helping to DJ the Rock Nights on a Saturday Night at the now demolished Queens Park Hotel in Chesterfield, as sorry a gathering of metal and rock fans of all ages in a dilapidated function room as you will ever see.  When that closed down, I would run into Alex's sister from time to time;  through her, I met a girl called Kate who would be my first real girlfriend; and through Kate, I got to know Alex and his circle of friends.

Despite me being a few years older than them, Alex and I connected almost immediately over a strong set of common interests - late 90's professional wrestling, rock & metal music, massively nerdy hobbies, drinking, and being outrageous flirts.  There was a long period of time, perhaps 5 years or so (and long after my relationship with Kate had flamed out) where every single week me and Alex would get together to indulge in several of those interests, often at the same time.

While there are other albums which remind me of specific nights or events with Alex, this is the one that just makes me think about him generally.  I think Alex almost adopted this album as a compilation of his own theme tunes;  He uses "Stupefy" off here as the custom theme song for his wrestling game persona "Mr Jeeves";  For a long time, I had "The Game" off this album as a custom ringtone for when Alex called me.   Alex would make mix tapes to get himself hyped up for our Saturday night trips to Corporation in Sheffield; almost all of them would contain a song off here.

Alex, and his sister Becky, had a large circle of friends, a disproportionate amount of which were young women, which meant that often those years of drinking, dancing and flirting came with a heaping side order of betrayals, secret hookups, and terrible teenage dating decisions.  We were Dawson's Creek with a nu-metal soundtrack.  Alex had an unerring tendency to commit headlong to the stupidest decision he could make, and somehow find his way out of it relatively unscathed a few weeks later.  I'm not going to go into any details because I am sure he wouldn't want me to, but there was a time when Alex would send me a text, or a message over MSN Messenger saying "so I need some advice.." and I could be sure he had make a spectacularly bad decision he needed talking out of.

One New Year's Eve, a friend of ours officiated over our marriage in the back room of a terrible metal club called The Green Room which had sprung up after the Queens Park Hotel was shut down.  I don't think he's ever forgiven me for drunkenly trying to kiss him then.  He still calls me 'husband' when we see each other though, so I don't think he minded too much.

Since I moved away from Chesterfield for the big lights of the city of Sheffield, I don't see Alex as much any more.  We caught up at a friends birthday party a couple of months ago and it reminded me a lot of the fun we had together.  I missed his birthday party just a few days ago because my partner had committed us to a prior engagement before I realised what day it was - I still feel bad about that.

I'd like to say he's grown up and calmed down a lot now, and that the decisions he makes are more considered.  I think even he might admit that's not entirely true - maybe the universe has just given up on trying to punish him for his boneheaded schemes and has decided just to let him get on with whatever he wants to do.  He's getting married this year, a fact that I still find hard to process.

I listened through the album again as I wrote this.  You know, its still pretty decent 17 years later.  Sure, I could do without the cover of Tears for Fear's "Shout" which, ironically, is the same but just with more shouting, and the breakdown in the middle of "The Sickness" is truly cringeworthy, but I found myself instinctively singing along with some of the songs, and jacking the volume all the way up when "Stupefy" came on.  If this was the launchpad for the nu-metal era, it was at least a good one - driving, energetic, but without devolving into turgid growling or unintelligible screeching.  It's of its era, but maybe its possible that the meme has overshadowed what was secretly a highly competent rock album.