Fantastic Planet

Fantastic Planet is the third album of alternative rock band Failure. Maybe naming your band this way is predetermining the future success, though the lack of originality has not helped either. This record sounds like a lesser version of one of the several grunge bands at the time. Especially Bush come to mind. That band is neither one of the most original band ever, but they have at least created some great songs (though not too many). This album is much too long and full of generic material. It's not bad, but not interesting either.

Cool album. I like the heavier parts

A little backloaded but still good all the way through

That bass tone on Pillowhead is sick. Another Space song is cool. A very cool album, though maybe 20 years too late for me to find. super awesome though.

An incredibly dense, massive LP, reminds me of a darker, sludgier Hum in many ways. The core instrumental sound (or wall thereof) is striking, the heavy guitar interlocking perfectly with the pounding rhythm section to create tracks as dense as a concrete slab. The album's only weakness is too much of a good thing – there's a few repetitive tracks thrown in, cut out the fat and this would easily be a 5. Awesome add, we need some heavier 90s' era grunge/sludge on the list for sure.

This album kinda pisses me off, because how are you going to have two of the best songs ever written ("Another Space Song" and "Stuck on You") and then have the rest of the album just be really okay, 3/5 grunge. Imagine if halfway through "Songs In The Key of Life" Stevie Wonder just randomly started farting into the microphone. This is the opposite version of that.

I’ve heard this record before and didn’t get what the fuss was about. Listening to it again today, I’m still not seeing it. It feels aggressively average to me. It’s competently played mid 90’s alt-rock, sure, but I don’t feel like it has enough originality to warrant moving it into the cult-classic status that the record has obtained. Not to say it doesn’t have its moments, like “Another Space Song” and “Stuck On You” (in fact, the end of this record is quite a bit more interesting than the first half) but overall, it sort of seems like Failure is chasing something rather than blazing a trail.

It's just alright for me. Sounds like they were trying hard to be the next Nirvana. 3 stars.

Source material for APC and some underlying influences. Somewhat boring though.

Rating: 8/10 Best songs: Pillowhead, Pitiful, Stuck on you

Disclaimer: for reasons I am about to mention down there, this is gonna be a "write-as-you-go" review. Please bear with me with the lack of self-editing and possibly repeated points... I intended to listen to this nineties alt-rock / post-grunge / space rock release pretty soon, so the suggestion comes up at a great moment for me, even though I don't have enough time on my hands today to pen a proper review about it. Writing what you're reading right now as the first two songs of this album are played in my headphones -- guess I will keep on doing describing the music and my thoughts about it until the record ends. Said music starts with very good stuff -- the first batch of four / five songs feels massive and expansive, with a pretty deep sound for the drums, bass and guitars, suiting the genre well. Some of those guitar arrangements and manifold flourishes hit all the right chords for me, no pun intended. There are three reasons I wanted to listen to *Fantastic Planet*. A) Like so many middle-aged indie and alt-rock fans, this LP completely went over my head at the time of its release. Living in Europe during the nineties, there were even less chances I would be exposed to it back then (pre-internet days, very small promotion for the album, even in the US...). B) Failure very recently released an album. I wasn't smitten by it, to be very honest -- I thought there was something a bit awkward in its execution, beside the "been there before, done that before" feeling of the whole thing... That being said, the timing of that release is how I recently learned about the reputation of those old-timers, and that made me curious to know where they were coming from and what they were playing at the heyday of the genres they tackle. Never took the time to dig further, though. Until today... C) I saw that *Fantastic Planet* was coming up on the users list. Now that I have finished writing the previous paragraph, "Blank" is already playing in my headphones. Its slow motion, bittersweet indie-rock melody, and gently saturated organ part is a change of pace compared to the massive tracks that played before, but I guess that you need such changes of pace for a record that's so long (one hour and six minutes... Gasp!). For now, what I have listened to absolutely holds water decades down the line, while still being tied to its day and age. I strongly disagree with that one user claiming that Bush is a better band than Failure (at least for this album). There's none of the perfunctory dross and artificial sound of goddamn Bush to be found in *Fantastic Planet*. What you have instead is a lot of sophisticated arrangements and subtle melodies hitting all the right buttons for me. "Dirty Blue Balloons" is now playing and bringing back massively saturated power chords, and if we are not up to the level of impact of "Saturday Saviour" and "Sergeant Politeness" -- the two highlights opening the record -- the music keeps on hitting the right marks by the midway point of the album. Some of the more unhinged guitar parts are excessively cool-sounding (I simply can't picture Bush pulling that sort of thing off, very honestly). Wow, "Solaris" is bringing a huge surprise on the table: some post-punk intents laced with melodic arpeggios on the verse reminding me of... "SOS" by The Police???! Yet the song is still very much its own thing thanks to its great chorus and its... djembé percussions in the background??!! And "Pitiful"'s introduction is very catchy! Can't help noticing that the vocals display little "technical flaws" at times, but for this genre, that makes the whole pretty endearing for my ears. A glossy, overproduced sheen on the vocals would probably ruin the songs for me (yes, Bush, I am looking at you... AGAIN). 🤣 Very nice drop at the end of that one track, by the way! Ditto for the suddenly very angry vocals! And if "Leo" follows the exact same groove as "Pitiful", those songs are still not wearing out their welcome, as similar as they may sound on surface level. Another excellent key change yielding to a great effect-laden guitar "solo" propels the whole thing again in the middle of the last composition I have just mentioned, for instance. What can I say? I'll always be a sucker for those sort of dynamic shenanigans within an album tracklist! The album is very long, though, as said earlier. Guess that's why you need those three minimalistic instrumental "segues" to catch your breath. After the last one comes the somewhat tortured grunge ballad "The Nurse Who Loved Me". Not bad at all. I imagine someone could state that you have all the clichés of the genre represented here, but for someone who would have a soft spot for Soundgarden's "Black Hole Sun", I don't think having those clichés represented right in the middle of the tracklist is such a bad thing. And now come the two cuts that have been highlighted by many reviewers in this section: "Another Space Song" and "Stuck On You". Honestly, my first impression of the first minutes of the first of those songs is not exactly stellar, oddly enough -- maybe it's listener fatigue, plus me writing this review as I discover the whole record, something that I *never* do on this generator, ha ha. I admit that the build-up of that track is nicely executed, and that the guitar arrangements on it are hypnotic, as linear as the composition is. And then "Stuck On You" takes a page out of The Smashing Pumpkins' "Today" songbook with its shrill introductory riffing before slow yet massive power chords. And yeah, oddly enough, one can smell some very subtle Slint-adjacent whiffs in the verses of that song, right after a more predictable alt-rock melodic chorus surges on those same pretty formulaic power chords. And now comes the last leg of the LP. "Heliotropic" finally holds the promise of a true Space Rock offering uttered in the genre tags up there. Eerie and fascinating synth layers in the background, a seemingly detuned -- actually effects-laced -- guitar flourish -- like a paranoid robot speaking through a vocoder set up on the spaceship's control -- plus some long-winded elated vocals tripping out in the vast expanses of the anxiety-ridden cosmos suggested in the song... We're not so far from the "*White Pony*' planet Deftones would soon invade, amazingly. As for "Daylight", it's a great way to cap things off in an atmospheric fashion (that detuned piano and those creepy sounds during its verse...). And so now, as the last notes of "Daylight" are about to surge out of my headphones, I am ready to give my verdict. Yep, it's an excellent record -- maybe a touch derivative at times, plus an offering that could have benefitted from a minimum amount of self-editing, possibly. But it's still excellent all the same, and honestly, I really don't know which songs I should take out from the tracklist so make it more digestible. So, many thanks to the user who submitted this. I am being cautious with my grading right now and only leave a 4/5 grade to *Fantastic Planet", but chances are that if I can manage to return to this album and get more familiar with those songs in the near-future, I will change my grade to a 5. The creepy sounds played in the conclusion of the last song -- harking back to the ones heard in the very first seconds of the album, if my memory serves -- are fading away now. It's time for me to do other things today -- time for other (space) adventures... I'm not reading what I have written up here again. Good luck with the typos and awkward turns of phrase, lol. 3.5/5 for the purposes of this list dedicated to essential albums, rounded up to 4. 8.5/10 for more general purposes (5 for the musicianship and production values + 3.5 for the artistry) ---- Number of albums from the original list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 465 Albums from the original list I *might* include in mine later on: 288 Albums from the original list I won't include in mine: 336 ---- Number of albums from the users list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 117 Albums from the users list I *might* select for mine later on: 123 (including this one) Albums from the users list I won't select for mine: 278 ---- Émile, *quatre* nouveaux messages pour toi au dessus, du *Solid State Survivor* de Yellow Magic Orchestra au *Atrocity Exhibition* de Danny Brown.

Album #37 (1001 challenge extended): "Fantastic Planet" by Failure (1996) "Fantastic Planet" is the third studio album by American alternative rock band Failure. Alternative rock, post-grunge, space rock and art rock are the Wiki-listed genres. The album had space rock themes and was well received critically although it failed to chart. The bandmembers included Ken Andrew's ( vocals, guitar, bass), Greg Edwards (guitar, bass, piano, percussion) and Kelllii Scott (drums). The album opens with "Saturday Saviour." The sounds of birds and other noises progresses to a slow rhythm guitar/bass which gets overlayed by a lead guitar. Drums kick in and there's a slow rock grind. An echoing guitar solo. Post-grunge for sure. "Smoking Umbrellas" has a higher pitched strumming post-punk guitar. A melodic bass and shuffling drums. An eerie piano and dark lyrics of existential dread. "Pitiful" combines post-punk and post-grunge. An urgent, slashing guitar with loud drums and a thumping bass. The vocals goes from whispering to loud as Andrews' sings of repeated disconnections in relationships. A ripping guitar solo too. "Another Space Song" begins with high-pitched eerie guitar notes. Very Slint-esque. The song builds. Yes, very space like. High-pitched piercing guitar notes highlight the first single "Stuck on You.'" The song heads into a more melodic hard rock song. He can't get past a previous relationship. Driving, grungy, grinding or post-punk guitar(s) lead the songs. An upfront melodic bass and impressive drumming. Andrews' vocals are like a more gruff Scott Weiland and more anxious. The lyrics are eerie and dark and about disillusionment, detachment and drugs. This album does sound of its mid to late 90's time frame and bands like Hum and Slint. But, I really like those bands and that music so I also really liked this album. So, a strong recommendation for those fans of post-punk, grunge (post-grunge) or just plain hard rock. 4.5 out of 5

Fantastic Planet passed me by completely in the 90s, which is a shame because it would have landed perfectly then and it still lands now. Apparently Failure were critically appreciated but commercially invisible, and broke up almost immediately after. They sit squarely in that mid-90s alternative rock tradition with dense, layered guitar textures, a narcotic heaviness and production that rewards headphones, without sounding like anyone else in particular. The range across the album is wider than the sound suggests on first listen, and the guitar work throughout is genuinely rich. An incredibly solid record and thanks to the submitter for getting this band on my radar.

Grunge adjacent cult classic

I’m not a big grunge fan, but this was actually really great! I love how dynamic the genres were :) - 8/10

I long thought that any Grunge band couldn't impress me anymore, but I've found something different in Failure and this album's probably their best. I don't know if I would've added it to the list, but it's quite fun!

Seems like a typically good alt rock album. I think the more I listen the better it will get. 3/5 for now.

This was heaps better than I imagined. I liked it more as it went on - reading their history it sounds like they got screwed a bit by luck and timing...

Another mediocre way too long alt rock album from the 90s. Not doing anything that isn't covered by the other stuff on here. My personal rating: 3/5 My rating relative to the list: 3/5 Should this have been included on the original list? No.

Vaikea sanoa tästä sen enempää kuin että ysärirockiahan se.

Good enough

Decent

I like quite a lot of this. When I say quite a lot of it, I mean about forty minutes of it. Given it's 67 minutes long, I guess that's just over half. The shoegazey, over-long stuff really should have been cut. There's easily a great forty minute album in this - I'd possibly even extend to 45, because hey, leeway, but over an hour? Ouch.

Alternative rock, post-grunge, space rock, art rock. Ni fu ni fa.

Sure sounds like 1996 rock

Late era grungey rock, would have done well a few years earlier

Saw the cover and inwardly groaned but it's actually ok. Solid tunes and varied enough to be interesting.

Solid alt-rock of this particular era and genre, but there is a lot of this kind of thing out there. A little persistently down-tempo for me, and lyrically it never really grabbed me. Still, some interesting sounds, I certainly didn't dislike it.

Love the album art. Listened to my share of grunge back in the day but not sure why this passed me by… I found this all pretty ho-hum but maybe my grunge filter is full.

Failure

Yeah Fantastic Planet is just fairly forgettable grunge, 2/5.

I don’t think this brought anything new to the my brain disco and nothing stood out I’m afraid

Wtf, eh