Time for my routine Monday night hill interval sweatfest.
Yay.
Fortunately, I have some good old school tunes to keep me motivated, the ‘Sonic Temple‘ Album by The Cult.
This was a high school staple and, truthfully, I probably haven’t listened to it since.
Released in 1989, this album is more varied than its predecessors, and finds the band trying several different metal styles, from crunchy ‘Electric‘-era ’70s grooves and the fuzzy, noisy psychedelia of ‘Love‘, to mellow ballads and commercial ’80s hard rock. Not all of the experiments work, as some of the songs lean toward ponderousness, but enough of them do to send the album easily into the Billboard Top Ten, largely due to the exposure provided by the hit single ‘Fire Woman‘, which still finds some regular play in my spin class playlists from time to time. Personally, I’m a big fan of both ‘Soldier Blue‘ and ‘New York City‘ and ‘Automatic Blues‘…they sure helped apply the pedal to the medal, so to speak.
The album has some other good tunes on it though, like ‘Sun King‘, ‘Edie (Ciao Baby)‘ and ‘Sweet Soul Sister‘. Oh, and here’s an interesting tidbit you might not know, ‘Sonic Temple’ was the last album recorded with longtime bassist Jamie Stewart, who left in 1990, and the first to feature former Hall & Oates and then-current Bryan Adams drummer, Mickey Curry. Huh.
The big surprise for me was the inclusion of an unreleased track here that’s only available on the 25th Anniversary release of the album, ‘The River‘. Holy shit! I have to wonder why that song was never included in the place. Absolutely killer!
Anyway, one workout down (the third on the day)…one more to go.
Music in Motion 