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!

Mid after mid

Jihadis if they fought for shit music:

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.

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

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).

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

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.

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

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