2000 was quite the year. The dawn of a new millennium, CD sales at their absolute height with over 13 billion sold in the US, and nu metal at its most popular (and its most obnoxious).
For many of us growing up at the turn of the millennium, 2000 was a formative year in music. Rock and heavy metal bands were mainstream, Eminem became a household name, Britney did it again, and Radiohead's Kid A debuted at #1 and never slipped in our estimations.
Yes, there may be a clear bias towards the more rock and metal genres in this list (we didn't even get around to mentioning Disturbed's The Sickness), but that goes to show just how much this kind of music was in the public consciousness, and how much of a lasting impact it had on our writers.
It can be difficult to gauge the passing of time in mere years, but hearing that some of your favourite albums are now 25 years old certainly puts things into perspective. We feel rather old, but we still absolutely love these albums from 2000.
A Perfect Circle – Mer De Noms
Back in 2000, I was just 18 years old, and I hadn’t yet developed an appreciation for Tool. A Perfect Circle, though – that’s a band I ‘got’ instantly.
The first time the debut single, Judith, popped up on Kerrang! TV (remember that?) was like being hit by a sledgehammer. It was as if all of the best bits of my favourite bands and genres had been mashed together into one, incredible song.
It was brutally heavy, but with a soaring melody and perhaps the most enchanting vocal performance I’d ever heard. I was spellbound.
Subsequent album Mer De Noms delivered on all counts. Complex but accessible, with gentler alt-rock elements to break up the more unusual and/or heavy bits, it turned out to be my gateway drug to more serious heavy metal, math rock, prog rock and, yes, Tool.
I suspect there’s no album I’ve listened to more over the last 25 years than Mer De Noms, and I maintain that it’s close to perfection.
It’s also an album that rewards those with a serious hi-fi that has the detail recovery and low-level dynamic subtlety to deliver the texture baked into every track, as well as the spatial and rhythmic skills to balance the crunching guitars, thumping drums and Maynard James-Keenan’s irresistible vocals.
Words by Tom Parsons
Hybrid Theory by Linkin Park
![In The End [Official HD Music Video] - Linkin Park - YouTube](https://img.youtube.com/vi/eVTXPUF4Oz4/maxresdefault.jpg)
It was once fashionable to scoff at what I’ve often referred to as the, “No mom, I won’t tidy my room!" brigade, that odd subculture of fans who, hands in sleeves and eyes gazing downwards at their scuffed Vans, grew up nourished by the delightful demonic gruel of Korn, System Of A Down and Slipknot. But things appear to have come full circle.
Those of us who grew up in the 1990s and early 2000s now have nothing but affection for the post-grunge nu-metallers enjoying frequent rotation within our go-to streaming arsenal.
What bands such as Linkin Park and their seminal debut Hybrid Theory offered was a sort of rock gateway, a way into those enticing musical realms not covered by your dad’s record collection or hearing Radio 1 in the car on the way to school.
You can’t argue with the roster of head-banging hits, either. In The End remains a stonewall classic no matter your musical preference, while One Step Closer and Crawling pulled back the curtain to reveal the turmoiled vulnerability of vocalist Chester Bennington’s sadly prescient internal struggles.
For what it is, Hybrid Theory remains a masterpiece, and the world is a poorer place without such records and the lead vocalist who helped birth them.
Words by Harry McKerrell
1000 Hurts by Shellac
The late Steve Albini, who died suddenly last year, was responsible for engineering (he didn’t like the term ‘producer’) some of the most critically acclaimed albums of all time, including Nirvana’s In Utero, Surfer Rosa by the Pixies, and PJ Harvey’s Rid Of Me. But he also spent time on the other side of the mixing desk as a member of Shellac.
Albini took recording his own band as seriously as if he was being paid to do it. 1000 Hurts, the three-piece’s third album, opens with a voice reading the technical specifications of the recording itself (very What Hi-Fi?) before launching into the closest thing they’ve ever had to a hit – a caustic murder ballad of sorts called Prayer To God.
What follows is just over 35 minutes of abrasive, minimalist rock propelled by Bob Weston’s urgent basslines and Todd Trainer’s full-throttle drumming, ending with Albini offering the listener out for a fight on Watch Song. No band has ever sounded like Shellac – and no other band ever will.
Words by Tom Wiggins
Kid A by Radiohead
As inevitable as Thanos’ arrival in Avengers: Infinity War, you knew that Kid A would be showing up for more than a passing cameo here.
Above all other Radiohead albums, perhaps all other testing perennials full stop, it’s the one record to which fans, testers, reviewers, engineers and aficionados continue to return. Heck, it was barely a week ago that I was sitting in our own test room listening to how Everything In Its Right Place sounded through two pairs of rival floorstanders.
Everything In Its Right Place might as well be the album’s manifesto. Everything you hear on Kid A, be it the undulating bass riff and building chaos of The National Anthem to the ethereal mournfulness of Motion Picture Soundtrack, is right where it’s supposed to be.
Provided, of course, you’re listening through the right hi-fi or headphones.
Words by Harry McKerrell
Figure 8 by Elliott Smith
The last album Elliott Smith released before he tragically died by apparent suicide in 2003, Figure 8 isn’t usually held in as high regard as XO or Either/Or, but it perhaps epitomises everything that makes him so sorely missed.
While Smith made his name with sparsely recorded acoustic guitar songs, he never hid his love for the Beatles, and Figure 8 is a bit like taking those early sketches of songs and turning them into full technicolour paintings.
His trademark acoustic guitar and lyrical vulnerability are still present throughout, but it’s now backed by lush instrumentation that often has a cinematic quality to it, particularly on tracks such as Stupidity Tries, Better Be Quiet Now and the dream-like instrumental closer Bye.
Much of Figure 8 was actually recorded at Abbey Road, where his heroes also made their final album, a fact that hopefully brought Smith some joy before he passed aged just 34.
Words by Tom Wiggins
Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven by Godspeed You! Black Emperor
With their confusing approach to punctuation (did we definitely get that exclamation mark in the right place?), fluid approach to membership, and apparent insistence on dividing their albums into ‘movements’ rather than songs, Godspeed You! Black Emperor are an easy target for accusations of pretentiousness. And that’s before we’ve even got to the music.
But when the rest of the alternative music scene around the millennium seemed preoccupied with adding a DJ to everything or recording ironic covers of pop songs, the Canadian post-rock anarchists offered a much-needed alternative to the alternative.
While 1999’s Slow Riot For New Zero Kanada EP is the most succinct example of Godspeed’s powers, at almost 90 minutes long, Lift Your Skinny Fists… remains their magnum opus. It’s a record that rewards full immersion and is easy to get lost in; ambient soundscapes give way to more dramatic passages and thrilling crescendos that sound like they were recorded for a movie that never got made.
By the end you’ll be referring to them as movements too.
Words by Tom Wiggins
Relationship of Command by At the Drive In
Released less than a year before the band announced they were going on an “indefinite hiatus” – a break that ended with their first reunion in 2012 – Relationship Of Command felt like the ultimate parting gift from At The Drive-In. An incendiary record that left fans wanting more.
Formed in 1994 in El Paso, Texas, At the Drive-In had released two albums of post-hardcore at the end of the decade, but neither managed to combine the punk intensity and irresistible melodies as consistently as Relationship Of Command.
From the opening of Arcarsenal – which includes the sound of singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala taking deep breaths as if he’s readying himself for the physical assault that’s to come over the next 50 minutes – to his anguished screams at the finale of Catacombs, it’s an album that rarely takes its foot off the gas.
A decade after the album’s release, guitarist Omar Rodríguez-López claimed that Andy Wallace’s mix of the record didn’t capture the true energy of the band, but anyone who’s ever seen one of the band’s full-throttle live performances will surely struggle to agree with his assessment.
Words by Tom Wiggins
Spiritual Machines by Our Lady Peace
It would be no surprise if you’ve never heard of Our Lady Peace, let alone Spiritual Machines, one of the band’s least well-known albums. Absolutely huge in their homeland of Canada and a pretty big deal in the US, Our Lady Peace have never had any real impact in the UK.
I was introduced to them (and their Canadian alt-rock contemporaries Moist and I Mother Earth) by my Toronto-based cousins back in 1997, who were kind enough to give me a cassette of their second album, Clumsy. I immediately fell in love with the band, particularly Raine Maida’s energetically unhinged falsetto vocals.
Clumsy was quickly followed by the awkwardly titled but extremely good Happiness… Is Not A Fish That You Can Catch in 1999, and while the band was still touring that album, it produced its fourth, Spiritual Machines, which came out in 2000.
Perhaps it was just too soon after Happiness…, or perhaps it’s the fact that it was a concept album about the future of AI, based on the work of futurist Ray Kurzweil, but Spritiual Machines didn’t set the airwaves alight as its predecessors had.
That’s a shame, because it’s a cracking album, and the last one that sounds like a ‘proper’ Our Lady Peace album to me, with a change of producer, line-up and musical style – not to mention the near-retirement of Maida’s signature falsetto – meaning that the band’s subsequent records lacked the charm that I had fallen for.
Words by Tom Parsons
The Marshall Mathers LP by Eminem
The Marshall Mathers LP changed mainstream music forever. It's no exaggeration: Eminem's third studio album didn't just catapult him to legendary status, but it marked a turning point in the kind of lyrics and topics that could enjoy mainstream success.
The album has its controversies and critics, and is critically acclaimed in equal measure. Eminem unflinchingly takes aim at societal hypocrisies, the downsides of his rising fame, tackling previously (and in many ways, still) taboo subjects as drugs, violence, abuse and sex while picking apart every element with knife-sharp precision and dark humour.
The production on the album is fantastic, and the range of creative compositions and sampling throughout ensures there are multiple melodies that hook themselves into your brain. The Way I Am is a test track staple for its coiled rage and propulsive rhythm, while Stan (feat. Dido) remains hauntingly poetic and elegantly introspective; even the demented silliness of The Real Slim Shady is fizzing with energy and an instantly-recognisable beat.
But above all, it's Eminem's masterful lyricism that takes centre stage. The way every word is carefully chosen and strung together to flow melodically – with unusual rhymes and clever alliteration to deliver the desired impact – remains astonishing. His crystal clear delivery means you never miss a single word no matter how fast he raps, while his emotions are bared through with every biting word.
20 years on, the album remains a shocking listen, but lyrics and wordplay remain a marvel. A stone-cold classic.
Words by Kash Kabir
White Pony by Deftones
![Deftones - Change (In The House Of Flies) [Official Music Video] - YouTube](https://img.youtube.com/vi/WPpDyIJdasg/maxresdefault.jpg)
It has always been difficult to pigeonhole Deftones into one specific genre – alternative rock seems too wide, nu-metal too reductive (and very much a label rejected by the band). This is especially true when White Pony weaves in influences from other sub-genres like art rock, trip hop, shoegaze and, possibly most aptly, post-rock.
While undoubtedly heavy-sounding, Deftones' songs have a 'softer' texture that stands out from their contemporaries, helped by lead vocalist Chino Moreno's voice that can veer from delicate to screaming in mere moments.
White Pony is a more mature, sophisticated refinement of the band's sound, heard in Passengers (which features APC/Tool vocalist Maynard James Keenan) and, undoubtedly the standout hit, Change (In the House of Flies). Perhaps unusually in this era of rock/metal music, the slow build-up in the quieter verses feels more like the main moments of the song rather than the guitar-heavy chorus and crescendoes.
Ambiguous in lyrics and sound, the shape-shifting, experimental nature of White Pony remains a complex, involving listen. There are no obvious hooks, but a whole lot of interesting textures, tones and noises that will sink their teeth into you.
Words by Kash Kabir
Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea by PJ Harvey
An album about love; and a love letter to New York City. My favourite of PJ Harvey's albums is also her at her most uplifting, or rather, at her least dark.
There are big chunky guitar riffs, lushly layered and full-sounding production, and her voice is bold and melodious without ever losing her rebellious edge. Harvey herself said in an interview with Q magazine in 2001 that she wanted this album to "sound as beautiful as possible... No, I want absolute beauty. I want this album to sing and fly and be full of reverb and lush layers of melody. I want it to be my beautiful, sumptuous, lovely piece of work."
That emotion spills over in Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea, from the opening track Big Exit to the bluesy-punk This Is Love, the latter of which fully captures her intent with the album.
In a male-heavy era of music, PJ Harvey's distinct voice and outlook cut through the noise and, despite having many hallmarks of that era's alternative sound, has a timeless quality that sounds just as current today.
Words by Kash Kabir
Stankonia by Outkast
Andre 3000 and Big Boi – the duo that make up Outkast – cut through the East Coast/West Coast hip-hop rivalry of the 90s by giving everyone a taste of what the south had to offer.
Cementing Atlanta, Georgia as the epicentre of southern hip-hop music and propelling the Dirty South sound into popularity, Outkast offered a fresh and different perspective from the dominant hip-hop and rap scenes of the time.
And we got some great tunes, too. The generally more laidback tone of the South is infused with faster rapping and more chaotic tempos in 2000's Stankonia, along with psychedelic, funk, rave music and gospel influences.
Gasoline Dreams is an explosive, confident opener to the album; So Fresh, So Clean is funkadelic with a smooth, catchy chorus; while B.O.B. (Bombs Over Baghdad) has a wildly frenetic tempo that isn't afraid to go in bold directions, with rapid-fire drum and bass combined with a guitar solo and gospel chorus.
Infectious earworm Ms. Jackson wears its 80s hip-hop influence on its sleeve with genuine lyrics that are a contrast to the usual misogynistic tones associated with the genre. And it has one of the best mis-heard/mis-quoted lyrics of all time: I'm sorry Ms Jackson, oooh, I am four eels.
Words by Kash Kabir
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