Judgment Night, Then and Now
David Cantwell on a classic album as part of 1993 Week
From 1992 through 1995, I was the music editor and a cultural columnist for The New Times, an alternative weekly in Kansas City, MO. Each issue, we published a page, page and a half of capsule reviews, graded A to F—an approach stretching back to Robert Christgau’s “Consumer Guide” but that honestly owed at least as much in our case to the pages of Entertainment Weekly. For our 1993 Week here at NFR, I dug out the appropriate issues, looking for ideas, and was tickled enough with one of my reviews that I thought I’d share it here. From the October 7, 1993 issue, lightly edited because, c’mon, it was 30 years ago…
Various Artists Judgment Night (Immortal/EpicSoundtrax)
A few of the metal/hardcore/grunge + rap combos here don’t amount to much. Helmet + House of Pain = two separate songs rammed end to end. Cypress Hill + Sonic Youth somehow = Cypress Hill – Sonic Youth. Other pairings sound less interesting than the bands do on their own (Teenage Fanclub + De La Soul = Me Phi Me?) Yet the incredible bulk of Judgment Night adds up to far more than the sum of its parts, even when that sum is precisely what you would have predicted. Slayer + Ice T = Body Count, except with sharper teeth and no joking around. And even better is when the outcome’s unpredictable—who’d have thought Mudhoney + Sir Mix-a-lot = surf music? Best of all is when Dinosaur Jr. teams with Del the Funky Homosapien on the absolutely inconceivable “Missing Link,” maybe the best thing either act has ever done. With J. Mascis layering his squalling guitars and the Homosapien proving why he’s Funky, the two acts do their own thing, neither one giving an inch. At particularly chaotic moments, it sounds as if they’re all but oblivious to one another, and their rock + rap = nothing I’ve ever heard before. B
After relistening to the album, a couple of times last week, and for the first time maybe since I turned in my TNT copy, I felt pretty happy with what I’d written back then though I do have to confess needing to google Me Phi Me before understanding my little (now-dated-even-to-me) joke. I also think my grade was stingy. Today, I’d give it a B+, at minimum. Robert Christgau marked it A- at the time, and he was probably right. (Tom Sinclair gave it a full-on A at EW. The album placed at #60 in the “Pazz & Jop” poll.)
My 2023 hearings, done while on long walks with my dog (which is so very 2023-me of me) also reinforced how fresh the soundtrack sounded to me back in the day. Rap had been working with rock guitar since forever even then. Think of Rick Rubin sampling power chords into Run DMC (with or without Aerosmith), Beasties and LL Cool J records. But as Charles pointed out Monday, The Roots and their “real” band rhythm section had released their debut album only that year and only in Europe. And racially integrated rap-rock combos were then unheard of, mostly, when it came to bringing the noise, and still are. One of my favorites of the type, “All About The Benjamins,” with select Foo Fighters and co. banging away behind Diddy, Lil Kim, and Biggie was still a few years off. The sub-genre remains small.
My main takeaway is that the sonic mashup possibilities suggested by the Judgement Night pairings, and their political potentialities even more so, seem to me like major missed opportunities, fun and freeing roads not taken. White rock musicians, and their white audiences, have picked up on the heavier, hip-hoppy sounds, sure enough—there had already been Faith No More and the Chili Peppers and Rage Against the Machine, and there have been a thousand smash mouthed white boys, plenty of them country singers, ever since. The equation remains the same: White musicians + black sounds – black people = the more things change…
(Note: Kansas City’s The New Times was not affiliated with New Times Media and its stable of New Times newspapers in Miami, Phoenix, etc. Confusingly, The Pitch, the main KC altweekly where I’d once worked and would later work again, did eventually become a New Times Media member. The quote from critic and friend Mike Warren, in my Turn It Up blurb for Paw’s “Jessie” earlier this week, was from the New-Times-unaffiliated New Times.) - DC
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