The General Electric

Cool discovery. Bever heard of this band, but liked them very much

This is some really good rock that surprised me as I listened to it without knowing anything about it except the cover and name. I loved lots of this and am glad to see that we're getting a little something from New Zealand!

Decent enough, not sure they'd quite decided what they wanted to be.

Mid after mid

Jihadis if they fought for shit music:

Intro gets you settled in for the ride and My Mind's Sedate hits the accelerator. Pacifier (hello name change 👋), Thin White Line, and Life In Cars are the standouts for me — and Brightest Star, ironically, brings you back down to earth (or sends you drifting off into space, maybe).

Rating: 7/10 Best songs: My mind’s sedate, Just like everybody else

Shihad was big in Australia when I was a teenager. They'd had a few albums as something almost like a thrash metal band, but were an Incubus knockoff by the late 90s. After 9/11 they changed their name to pacifier. It was a big deal at the time, we all thought they were total pussies for doing it. They changed it back after a while, but everyone had stopped caring about them by that point. None of those Aussie/Kiwi bands lasted more than a few years, anyway - these guys, Grinspoon, Jebediah, Regurgitator etc. Still fun to hear most of this album for the first time in 20 years or so though. Pacifier (the song) still gets a bit of radio play, but the rest is kinda forgotten these days. 4/5.

Alternative rock, industrial rock, hard rock. Entretenido. Un 4, venga.

Part of the DNA of my kiwi adolescence, Shihad are NZ's best hard rock band. On this album they combine battering ram rhythm section intensity with super hooky melodic vocals. Fuck yeah!

Reminds me a lot of a bunch of (semi-) lost British rock bands of the same sort of time, such a 3 Colours Red, A, King Adora, My Vitriol, Dark Star and, on a couple of tracks, Mogwai. I love (or loved) most of those bands though, so i really enjoyed this. Not sure it's an essential inclusion in a future edition, but for me as a Scottish 90s kid, it was one I really enjoyed

Straight ahead hard core rock and roll. Lots of energy, lots of fun. Not groundbreaking but I'm happy to have had it shared with me, got me going.

It’s so cool to get an album from New Zealand that hasn’t had much exposure outside of the Pacific. Shihad is currently on their farewell tour around New Zealand so their first big album on this list is well-timed. As far as the anthemic stadium rock exemplified on the album, it’s appropriately stirring and toe-tapping. It’s probably not everyone’s cuppa, but I’m pleased at its selection.

Alternative rock, industrial rock, hard rock. Entretenido. Un 4, venga.

Grew on me more and more as it went on, was quite enjoyable. A solid hard rock/alt rock album, worthy of being in the main list IMO. Good choice.

Ah! Ok, I was enjoying this and then looked up the band. I'm actually more familiar with the "Pacifier" version of the band, as they had a song on one of the MVP Baseball soundtracks back in the day. Bullitproof, Great song. Solid, turn-of-the-century alt-rock. I liked this!

Better than expected

When My Mind Sedate started I knew that this was not the band or the album I knew it from. Back in 2003 I bought a CD by Pacifier that had this song but not the others. Then I find out that was probably just the US version of another album, which is now by a band called Shihad? Very strange.

Solid hardcore rock. Not sure it's all that much beyond that, but I enjoyed it, and it facilitated the slog through another workout.

It’s nice to know that people in New Zealand can write generic rock songs too

Alt rock you listen to with a closed fist

The music is pretty fun on this album, but the lyrics are not great and really start to grate on me from time to time. I don't think this album is bad, but if the lead songwriter dug a bit deeper with the lyrics, I think this album could be really cool 3/5

The General Electric is the fourth studio album by Shihad. Nice rock songs sometimes reminding me of Faith No More in the heavier and bombastic parts. Good to have another New Zealand entry (as far as I can remember Crowded House is the only other one).

hmmm... a 4th studio album. How clever and original. It's pretty decent. The metal is hard, I'd rate it as a 53 or 54 on the Rockwell scale. I appreciate that I can understand the lyrics.

That's sure some late 90s hard rock. Elevated a little bit by successfully doing the "sounds like it's being played in a city under the ocean" thing that Oasis sometimes manages

This went way harder than it should have, but still felt pretty tame. Not a bad band, but not one that I would necessarily seek out again in the future.

Soild heavy rock album

Vanilla alt rock from the late 90's. Not bad. Good music for anyone trying to dip their toes in the genre. Not too heavy or out there. Similar to light alt rock bands like P.O.D. or, in their first few songs which were more industrial, Living Color. Nice to see New Zealand repped. Favorite songs: Pacifier, My Mind's Sedate, The General Electric, The Metal Song, Thin White Line, Just Like Everybody Else Least favorite songs: Brightest Star, Spacing 3/5

Mid. My personal rating: 3/5 My rating relative to the list: 3/5 Should this have been included on the original list? No.

Nice of The General Electric to bring some very late 90s rock stylings to the party this morning. It's certainly not original or groundbreaking, it's straight ahead rock, a few decent riffs and melodies, but it's super generic. Pacifier the best, a low 3 because we've had a ton of crap I didn't want to listen to and this was better than those, even though it was beige as fuck.

Pretty great stuff, not sure it's completely by bag but I still had fun listening to this

Pretty good

Records show this is only the second Kiwi album I've listened to this year besides Lorde's almost-great Virgin (2025). That's my bad :( HL: "Pacifier", "Sport and Religion", "Brightest Star" iz decent

This was a bit flat and bland for my tastes. A consistent level of sound all the way through with no real definition between tracks. If you're into the one sound this record had, it probably pretty good. I won't listen again.

Meh. Was ok

Good tunes 🇳🇿

Alternative rock, industrial rock, hard rock. Un poco rollo. No me llama.

Pretty decent metal, although the songs did get a bit repetitive. Work on the lyrics some more and we'll talk. After the intro, the kick off song really kicks butt. "My Mind's Sedate" was also a bit repetitive, but the brevity helped. Interesting stuff. Top tracks: "My Mind's Sedate," "The Pacifier" Top tracks:

It was fine, i forgot it was on.

There were plenty of bands like this around 2000, sitting somewhere between nu-metal, post-hardcore, grunge, and pop. It's in a similar vein to what Bush and Powderfinger were doing in the late '90s and Alien Ant Farm and Hoobastank did a couple of years later. The album itself isn't particularly good or bad, but it's a good addition from a different part of the world.

2.5/5

Fun alt rock that had some good bangers, but doesn't really do anything novel at all.

Every week or so I get another album from one of these random rock bands and they’re always fine and I don’t mind but I’m so confused as to how people are finding these and liking them enough to add to the list over anything else No hate though it’s still alright

Starts off with some solid energy and genuine passion, but quickly devolves into standard late-90s rock without much new to say. There were moments that reminded me of Incubus or Deftones, but more in an emulatory sense than the band trying to make their own artistic statement.

Dips its toes into a pretty cool industrial sound, then goes "yikes ouchie ouchie too hot" and decides to rather stay in generic 90s hard rock territory.

This is more of that rock that is so very 90s its almost painful. very pop commercial stuff. Sport And Religion give big U2 vibes. The Metal Song is very much not fucking metal. That's a docked star.

This seems crazy surprising that this album would have been No.1 and triple platinum. The vocalist is tragically uninteresting and seems flat in places. The rock is generic and though there are couple of OK tracks, Wait and See and Just Like Everybody Else, it felt like an hour of rock filler.

Oh lawdy, it’s been two days and I can’t remember a thing about it.

Quite generic - not awful but nothing new. Tired cliches and musical structures. It's like a mishmash of 80s and 90s American Rock and Metal bands. It seems half the albums proffered up in the user chart are personal favourites regardless of whether there's anything special in the album?

First listen I thought this was alright, but over the weekend it slipped down in my favour and by Monday morning it had settled firmly in “subpar”.

Sort of middle of the road nothingness

A dated, slightly knock off, modern rock sound. Unique for this list, but not great.

Teetering on the edge of a one, I've never heard an album be so unsure of what sound it wants to being to the table, while still sounding absolutely generic the whole time. It's just a late 90s rock album. Nothing less, and certainly nothing more.

The Apple Music link takes you to a 16 minute EP. Thought that was a bit brief and found the actual album. Safe to say I preferred the EP. This is music that would be played in a streaming mma movie. It’s nothing special. 4.8/10

Nothing special.

"My Mind's Sedate" is an excellent opener in that groovy hard rock genre -- dynamic, lively, restless. Yet a very short moment in one of its repeated transitions, displaying melodic vocals in quite a blatantly "glossy" fashion, betrays the fact that we will be heading toward somewhat risible waters at times. Which is confirmed with the title track, pestered by some of the worst vocal parts on the album (more on that later), or with "Wait And See". That synth pattern in the latter sounds very good, but composition-wise, the song doesn't really go anywhere. Same with the two boring rock ballads "Pacifier" and "Only Time". Some time later, punk-rock-inspired number "Just Like Everybody Else" fortunately returns to the dynamics of the opener, and it fares far better, thanks to its killer riffs. And that one cut is at least devoid of those Rush and Stone Temple Pilots-adjacent shenanigans or hackneyed gen-x dad-rock rhythms that made some of the other tracks age like milk (another example of those lame shenanigans : "The Metal Song"). And on the other side of the musical spectrum, you have prog flavours on the ambient closer "Brightest Star", pulled off in quite an elegant fashion, even if the song itself sounds more like a final footnote to the tracklist than anything else. One other important influence behind some of those songs seems to be Faith No More. It yields to varying results, from the half-baked "Thin White Line" to the great "Life In Cars", also owing to Big Star, oddly enough. "Sport And Religion" is also an interesting cut, reminding me of what contemporary britpop bands such as Manic Street Preachers or Stereophonics were doing at the time, which is another surprise. And here Shihad were taking a page out of what those britpop acts did best, at least, and not the dross they could also produce. Plus, there's another great synth riff on that one, and you gotta admit this Kiwi band had a knack including those sorts of non-"rock" sounds into their rock compositions in ways that made sense somehow. What I ultimately like about this record is how open-minded to a whole lot of different rock styles it is -- even if my personal mileage on those different styles varies a lot, and so influences my appreciation of the songs, admittedly. And the album's sound manages to remain cohesive in spite of that variety (producer Garth Richardson's expertise probably helped a lot here). Of course, *The General Electric* is still the textbook definition of "hit or miss" for me. And it's amazing how there's very rarely a middle ground here. So with five songs that I absolutely hate (including all but one of its most popular tracks on my streaming service, very ironically), one I'm rather neutral towards (the aptly titled "Thin White Line") and six that I absolutely love -- even if they're not always placed in the most prominent points of the tracklist -- it looks like I should go for a rather neutral grade overall, right? Yet that's not counting how Jon Toogood's vocal performance gets on my nerves on the worst moments of this record. There's a hamfisted delivery on those moments which sounds so ridiculous to my ears that the needle is bound to tilt further towards the negative, I'm afraid -- at least if your measuring tool is about supposedly "essential" albums. For broader measurement, this record is certainly not among the worst ones I've had the misfortune to listen to. Vocals are always a key ingredient, are they not? If you can't vibe with them, it's always very hard to open your shakras... 2/5 for the purposes of this list of essential albums. 7/10 for more general purposes (5 + 2) ---- 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: 63 (including this one). Albums from the users list I *might* select for mine later on: 81 Albums from the users list I won't select for mine: 148 ---- Emile... Ma propre balise temporelle... Tu trouveras mes trois dernières réponses sous les albums d'Eric B. & Rakim, Shpongle et Ookla The Mok

It's the yelling and the gang vocals that make me feel like the guy on the cover. Music is alright; nothing too cutting-edge or different but I do appreciate the melodic release on occasion. Overall: no thank you. 4/10 2 stars. IMO: Belonged in the book? No

Kinda meh, but thanks for sharing.

Wanted to go to their concert, but couldn't find the venue on the map.

Super template-y 80s alt — buoyant-bouncy, bellowing, and bombastic. One likes only those cuts their hardest-core fans would no doubt find to be the lamest (eg, “Pacifier,” “Brightset Star”) but not so much to find this any more than average. No need to move to list proper, despite their Spotify photo making them look like perfectly decent blokes.

Butt rock knows no borders. Sorry to New Zealand for this shameful export that seems to have captured some possibly talented musicians.

i was not in the mood for this. but even if i was i dont think i would like it. its just too bland?

I felt like this started strong, but in the end it's just a mushy pile of rock slop.

Rather forgettable I reckon. 3/10

The band would sound better if they played better music and not 2000s alternative rock/metal

The Apple Music link takes you to a 4 song EP, but I assume I should be listening to the full album from 1999. Just a heads up in case others hit the same snag. This record kind of feels a bit like Incubus in a way, but maybe less space-y. It’s a solid rock record and it’s played well - sonically, it’s not really my thing and I don’t see myself revisiting, but I did appreciate that it was a little more adventurous than a lot of mainstream rock of the era.

everything I hate in music wrapped in one of the worst albums I've ever heard... 1/10 troll, op

So wow. Who picks this album out of all and says hey, I love this, let me share it with the world. Because I never want to meet this person. Thanks bye