Stabbing Westward: Darkest Days

Stabbing Westward's albums will be kitsch feasts in a few years: How many other acts go so comically overboard trying to capture and capitalize on teen angst For the time being, the Chicago band is a calculated product of the moment, mixing the self-loathing of a thousand Alice In Chains knockoffs with lots of little electronic touches, though the industrial sounds of the group's 1993 debut UNGOD have been stripped away on much of Darkest Days. Stabbing Westward seems fairly non-descript these days—you know, standard-issue industro-metal howling—but it'll be hilarious soon enough: Just imagine how hard you'll laugh at its barrage of lyrics like "Everything about me is a lie!," "I will become the thing I hate!," "Everything I touch I break!," "I am just as fucked as you!," "You treat me like I am a worthless piece of shit!," and "I feel so useless!" Blah, blah, blah, obsession, blah, blah, blah, disease, blah, blah, blah, darkness. At least UNGOD showed a flair for surprisingly subtle dynamics, but like that album's awful follow-up (1996's Wither, Blister, Burn + Peel), Darkest Days is just nihilistic neo-metal slop. Singer Christopher Hall even sounds like Kip Winger when he lets it rip, but a few years down the line, removed from the bad-music-for-sullen-teens time capsule, you'll prefer Winger. At least that band knew how to have fun once in a while.