This Is the Day...This Is the Hour...This Is This! is the second studio album by English rock band Pop Will Eat Itself, released on 1 May 1989 by RCA Records. It builds upon the band's 1987 debut Box Frenzy in its extensive usage of sampling, combining influences from punk rock, hip hop, heavy metal, and disco music, with samples and lyrics that reference, among many subjects, pop culture and otaku culture. Particularly influential on the album's musical style were hip hop group Public Enemy, while the album's own subtle post-punk touches would later be credited as influential. Some critics regard it as a sound collage. The album artwork, designed by The Designer's Republic, touches on nuclear warfare themes.
The album peaked at #24 for two weeks on the UK Albums Chart, and at #169 on the US Billboard 200 for six weeks. The three singles from the album – "Def. Con. One", "Can U Dig It?", and "Wise Up! Sucker" – were among the band's most successful to date. The album received critical acclaim, with praise for its invention, humour, and self-contained style. Cherry Red Records released a two-disc deluxe edition of the album in 2011 that includes unreleased bonus tracks.
"This Is the Day...This Is the Hour...This Is This!" is a cross-over rock and electronics album. It is from 1989 and sounds very like the music from that time. Like contemporaries like Happy Mondays, The Charlatans, 808 State and Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine it has a certain production and feeling that is very dated. The late 1980s are my teenage years, so I have some positive sentiment, though I can understand that many people would agree this has not aged well.
I liked this quite a bit. I think if I had listened to this back in ‘89 it might have altered my musical course a bit - young me would have listened to a lot of this!
I gave this one a couple of rounds. I didn't think much of it on the first go, but it ended really well. Not Now James, We're Busy and Wake Up, Time to Die are both absolute bangers. The rest of the album is kinda mid.
Goign to stick with a 3 on this one, because the album as a whole didn't grab me, but there are some solid tracks on there.
This is a fun album, but ultimately an unremarkable one for me. I already knew the big singles, and after a couple of full listens I feel the rest of the record sits in that “typical product of its era” zone. It’s energetic, experimental, and full of late-’80s social commentary, but not always consistent.
The highlights are obvious: “Def.Con.One,” “Can U Dig It,” and “Wise Up Sucker” still land. Those song I should really add to some of my driving playlists. Outside of those, the album loses some steam. Tracks like “Inject Me” and “Wake Up! Time to Die…” haven’t aged well. They lean too heavily on late-’80s clichés and the thinner production makes them feel a bit dated rather than charming.
It’s a decent album and it shows a band willing to take risks, but not every experiment works. For fans of alternative dance rock from that period, it’s worth hearing. For me, it has its limits. It's not an album I'll return to.
Not a fan of this almost breakbeat, wall-to-wall LP. I was a little surprised this band bills itself as alternative rock when this feels more like the house/dance output of Primal Scream. Whatever genre the band may roll with, there's little melodic cohesion to glue this entire thing together – I love noise music, but even the harshest tracks in that genre have some sort of hook or sense of artistic direction to make them interesting. This LP felt more like throwing sounds at the wall and seeing what sticks, and just seemed to drag as a result.
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