What a classic. Layne Stanley knows how to talk about heroin and he knows how to communicate that pain. I can't count the amount of times I listened to "Down in a Hole" when I was an active alcoholic and thought about being too deep in. "Rooster" will always be a favorite to me with the guitar playing such a major role in boosting the song's grungy nature. This is peak 90s Seattle Grunge and has all the elements to make it one of the best.

A return to form for the Stones. While the tracklist is solid and no track stands out as objectively bad, the Rolling Stones have tread this ground before. What comes out is a perfectly fine album with fantastic songs but nothing innovative or unique from what we have already heard. Worth a 4 for composition, not mixing.

Artful and tasteful. It's quintissential late 90s early 2000s brit rock at its core and deserves to be acknowledged as such.

Droning. ZZ Top is already a bit out of my personal realm but this is a fairly generic rock album that could be applied to a number of different bands without noticing.

I've reviewed this album before on a prior playthrough and to be honest, I still am not entirely onboard with giving it a 5. The album itself is a work of art and has so many moments where you think, "This is the Beatles!" but it just can't escape it in a bad way. Every time I think Paul is gonna come on the mic and it isn't there. This is by no means a bad album or undeserving of a 5, but I hyper-focus on this genre and anything 60s to 80s and when I put it up against it's legends, it just doesnt break the barrier.