Deep Cuts

Music writing for the long play

Tag

2000s rock

  1. Two Eclipses: Hardline and the Album That Couldn't Be Followed

    In April 1992, a Journey guitarist, two members of Bad English, and two brothers from Brooklyn released an arena-ready hard rock album into a marketplace that no longer existed. Ten years later, a different configuration of mostly the same band released the follow-up. Almost nobody heard either one. A look at Double Eclipse and II — the two albums that bracketed Hardline's actual commercial life, and the gap between them that made the second album the strange artifact it became.

    By Deep Cuts · Issue 03 · · 16 min read

  2. The Crumbling Empire: Queensrÿche After 1990

    In 1990, Queensrÿche made the album most progressive metal bands spend their careers chasing. Triple platinum, a top-ten single, Grammy nominations, and the kind of critical respect their genre rarely earned. Then, for the next two decades, they slowly came apart. A retrospective on the long unraveling of a band that did everything right at the wrong moment — and never recovered from being good enough to succeed.

    By Deep Cuts · Issue 02 · · 28 min read

  3. Scorpions and the Robot War: A Defense of Humanity: Hour I

    In 2007, four decades into their career, Scorpions made the strangest album of their lives — a concept record about a war between humans and machines, co-written with Bon Jovi's hitmaker, featuring Billy Corgan singing about Jesus and John 5 playing guitar on the opening track. Almost nobody bought it. This is the case for taking it seriously anyway.

    By Deep Cuts · Issue 01 · · 17 min read