Meth.’s music is a masterful blend of sludge, metal, post-hardcore, and noisecore, but the band’s vocalist, Seb Alvarez, points out that their inspirations reach far beyond those genres. That’s why, exclusively for Undertone, he put together a list of his favorite non-metal albums – and some of his picks are sure to surprise you!
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Tom Waits - Raindogs (1985)
Like with most of Tom Waits music, there’s a certain dingy dim-lit tone that flows through the spine of the record. As if you’ve been lured to an off-boardwalk carnival side show. Raindogs exemplifies his unique grit and feels like being suffocated in a smog of black market cigar smoke. This is the kind of weirdo big band record I’ve always wanted to make. It scratches every itch of incorporating any off kilter instrument and building a fucked of carny orchestra around it.
Shudder to Think - Pony Express Record (1994)
I have a big soft spot for 90s alt and alt-adjacent rock. Bands like Slint, Sunny Day Real Estate, Nirvana, Low, blah blah blah (too many bands to name) – but when I first heard Shudder to Think, it immediately caught me off guard and breathed some life into an era that I didn’t think I could still be surprised by. Everything from Craig Wedren’s beautifully executed vocal melodies, to the weirdness of the lyrics, to the deceivingly complex song structures, this album is everything I’d ever want to sing alone in a car to.
Kay Kay and His Weathered Underground - Kay Kay and His Weathered Underground (2008)
One of those albums that if you know it, you love it. Very much a SGT Pepper esque worship but through the eyes of delusion, addiction and mental illness. I saw them open for The Dear Hunter in a small town in Illinois around 2011 after being awake for 50 hours on a small Adderall induced bender. I was already a big fan of this record, but maybe it was the sleep deprivation mixed with the back to back shifts slinging day old scones (I worked at a bakery during this time period) – but seeing this album executed with 9-12 people on a stage that was small for half that number of people just took this record to a different level for me.
Buddy Rich - Blues Caravan (1962)
Drumming was my first true love when it came to music. I got my first kit when I was 16 years old but my interest in the instrument had been life long. When I started playing, I had been fascinated by modern drummers like Zach Hill, Brian Chippendale, Jon Karel and had a great respect for their craft. In a way, they were all jazz drummers first. Whether it be through the traditional technicality of their play like Jon Karel or more of the mindset and execution of the freedom in the artistic expression like Zach Hill, there was this overarching sense that drumming is everything you both want it to be and don’t need it to be. It can be the pure technical grit that comes with playing a song note for note or the blank canvas of improvisation and the reckless beauty that exists in that nature.
Anytime I wanted to dive a little deeper in my interests in drumming, it always always always came back to how intimidating jazz drumming was and still is to me. And nothing exemplifies that more than Buddy Rich. I’ve always leaned into improv and the expressionist aspect that comes with free-jazz and all of its adjacent genres it’s spawned throughout the years. But Buddy has always been on the other side of that. An artist dedicated to playing things the “correct” way and his extreme discipline to his craft. It takes a specific breed of neuroticism to level up to where Buddy lives on the mountain of the greats and I truly believe he exists at the top surrounded by no one. This was more of an excuse to talk about a legend than picking out a specific album, but Blues Caravan has been a record that’s sunk its teeth into me lately so it gets the nod.
Elliot Smith - XO (1998)
Last, but certainly not least, XO is a record that I’ve gone back to numerous times throughout my life. I wrote an analysis of Waltz #2 for a freshman year English project, I gave a nod to Sweet Adeline in a song that (politely) stole the name Adeline for a character it was about. It was also a record I got heavily into when my older brother joined and left for the Navy around that same time. Elliott Smith was one of his favorite artists at the time and I think in many ways it just kind of reminds me of him. It was a comfort in the wake of not having someone you looked up to be around anymore.