Every Nirvana album sounds different. They are like Celtic Frost and Alice in Chains that way.
'In Utero' finds Nirvana adding in alot of noise rock elements to their sound, but they still have the same pop friendly type of song-writing present as well.
Still this is a drastic departure from 'Nevermind'. I couldn't imagine 'Scentless Apprentice' being on 'Nevermind'! Heck I find it hard to believe that such a hard-core song wasn't relegated to the b-side of this album. Guess the track listing proves that with this album Nirvana was going to do it their way!
Seriously though this album is pretty dang lo-fi-ish for a major label release. Nothing like this would be released today, nothing! 'In Utero' 20 years on helps to show how horrible the music industry has gotten recently! Everything is just so over-produced now! Yuck!
As for the production of this album (always a hot topic with Nirvana albums it seems) I actually kind of feel let down a little by Steve Albini. The guitar sounds good, the bass sounds good. But the drums don't have that 'Surfer Rosa' sound that I always anticipate an Albini album to have. Frankly I think the bass drum sounds like crud.
'In Utero' shows Nivana going out on top, they had everything going on this album. Mid-tempo jams like 'Serve the Servants', slow songs like 'All Apologies' and also fast aggressive Heavy Metal-like numbers such as 'Scentless Apprentice'!!
Wow! An (almost) entire Nirvana concert captured and totally remaster-ized with contemporary sound technology!
Hard Harry412 seems to remember seeing Nirvana perform on T.V. at the Reading festival, but after some googling and researching it seems that my memory must be of the 1991 Reading Festival.
Here is some archival footage to back that up, it is of Nirvana at the 1991 Reading Festival, with the MTV logo on the side of the video! (added a snip of it as well!)
This album is of the 1992 performance!
Anyhow it is still an awesome document! It is hard to believe that a power-trio could make that much noise and good music! This album finds Nirvana at the top of their live game. Kurts guitar playing is especially impressive given that he was never the best guitar player in the world.
Nirvana is one of the main reasons I got into Alt-rock!
To this day I can still remember being transfixed, viewing for the first time Nirvanas MTV studio performance of 'Territorial Pissings'!
Had never heard anything like that before! So fast! I went and got the cassette tape of 'Nevermind' and it must have been one of the real early ones because it did not have 'Endless, Nameless' on it:
One of the songs mastered at the session, a hidden track called "Endless, Nameless" intended to appear at the end of "Something in the Way", was accidentally left off initial pressings of the album. Weinberg recalled, "In the beginning, it was kind of a verbal thing to put that track at the end. Maybe I misconstrued their instructions, so you can call it my mistake if you want. Maybe I didn't write it down when Nirvana or the record company said to do it. So, when they pressed the first twenty thousand or so CDs, albums, and cassettes, it wasn't on there." When the band discovered the song's omission after listening to its copy of the album, Cobain called Weinberg and demanded he rectify the mistake.[22] Weinberg complied and added about ten minutes of silence between the end of "Something in the Way" and the start of the hidden track on future pressings of the album.[23]
Well 'Endless, Nameless' is assuredly on my edition of 'Nevermind Super Deluxe' and a lot more!
The best thing about this is the remastered version of 'Nevermind' itself. At first I wasn't really into it, probably since I had heard the first few tracks so many times before, but when 'Breed' came on.. well it was on! Sounded great!!!
Also 'Nevermind Super Deluxe' has complete Nirvana concert from 1991 at the Paramount Theatre on it! I like the Paramount because that is where I saw Leonard Cohen live at and also Alice in Chains have filmed a music video there as well. It is just a cool place with a lot of history!
The concert set-list is awesome! There is a lot of songs from 'Bleach' on there! I think 'Bleach' gets over-looked a lot so this is awesome. You know when Nirvana were on their 'In Utero' tour they didn't play much stuff from 'Bleach', and there is lots of live stuff from that tour out there (like MTVs 'Live and Loud') The high-light of this concert for me is the rendition of 'Love Buzz'. I can't stand the studio version, but this live version is pretty good.
As for the rest of 'Nevermind - Super Deluxe' there are some B-sides and boom-box recordings and also Butch Vigs original mix of the album, someday I am going to have to get around to listening to that. I'm glad it was included as there is so much controversy about the production of this album. Even Kurt Cobain kind of turned against it and said it was too polished essentially. Well my response to that is a hard-core Hard Harry412-ism 'So be it!' I like the album anyway!!!
This is a great compilation that serves to 'bridge' the time period between 'Bleach' and 'Nevermind' (although there is a little 'Nevermind' material on here)
One can hear Cobain evolving from his Classic Rock/ Metal sound on Bleach to the more 'Pixies-like' sound they would become famous for later.
'Sliver' is easily the song that best showcases this change as Cobain had even written it as sort of a kiss-off to Sub-Pop from my under-standing. Also as the only real single on this album I think it is the best!
The other two really good songs on here are 'Aero-Zepplin', which is a tribute to '70s hard rock and sounds a little like Led Zepplin and 'Aneurysm' which is very popular due to its totally rocking chorus. Seriously I think of all of Nirvanas songs only 'Smells like Teen Spirit's chorus rocks more then 'Aneurysm's!!!
Nirvana. Saw them live in Dec. 1993 only 5 months before Kurt tragically took his own life.
I have some great memories of Nirvana. They were the first band I ever got to see in concert (and it was a great gig, with the Melvins and Breeders opening! Totally awesome!)
But I digress, back to 'Bleach'. This is easily Nirvanas heaviest album. It is totally influenced by Heavy Metal and in fact reminds me quite a bit of early Soundgarden too.
But since it is so heavy, it has little mainstream appeal compared to Nirvanas later records. So sometimes it does not get the attention it deserves. However that may be changing. as 'Velvet Revolver' recently covered 'Negative Creep'
Wow. The Seattle bands and the L.A. bands used to feud quite a bit, and it is nice to see an L.A. band give a hat tip to Nirvana like this.
