Toadies / tba

Some will tell you they sounded too much like Nirvana to be of any consequence. Those people are not to be trusted. The Toadies brought the rock like nobody else, putting a ZZ Top-style spin on grunge and unleashing a torrent of metallic guitar riffs and dark, twisted lyrics about murder and desperation on great albums like Rubberneck (which featured the MTV heavily rotated single "Possum Kingdom") and Hell Below/Stars Above, the followup that was delayed forever by record-label shenanigans. Anyway, early returns from No Deliverance: It's got riffs aplenty and surges with just as much energy, darkness and heaviness as their early stuff, and the title track is a monster, as is "So Long Lovey Eyes." Slower, but still huge and scary, "Flower" and "Man Of Stone" cause mini-earthquakes with every second of pounding noise they deliver.