SPILL ALBUM REVIEW: POWERMAN 5000 – MEGA!! KUNG FU RADIO

POWERMAN 5000
MEGA!! KUNG FU RADIO
REAL GONE MUSIC

The Blood-Splat Rating System was the debut album by Powerman 5000. Initially released in 1995, the album’s success led to a reissue two years later in 1997, under the title Mega!! Kung Fu Radio. Now Real Gone Music has released Mega!! Kung Fu Radio on vinyl for the first time ever. Looking back at the album, it has not aged as well as other nu metal records. It is not a complete dud of an album, but it is far from the best of the genre. As far as nu metal records go, it is a little above average.

Where this album struggles is with the rapping. All the criticisms you have heard about Nu metal vocals are true here, especially on “Car Crash” and “A Swim with the Sharks”. The latter is a miss of a song, as the instrumentation is rather poorly mixed. The rapping on “Standing 8” suffers as well but it has a sort of charm to it that makes it enjoyable.

Another problem the record has is the instrumentation. It is a mixed bag. Occasionally, there is some truly magnetic and magnificent stuff happening. “Mega!! Kung Fu Radio”, “Tokyo Vigilante #1”, and “20 Miles to Texas 25 to Hell” are the main standouts. All are super chaotic and bizarre, experiment with many different styles, and are extremely cool.

However, tracks like “Public Menace, Freak, Human Fly” and “Earth vs. Me” have nothing special happening. The riffs have brief moments of excitement, but they lack complexity, are way too generic and are somewhat monotonous. Nothing unique is done to set the riffs apart from most rock or nu metal riffs.

The best song from the record is “Organizized”. It is a fantastic track that raises the record out of mediocrity and deserves to be in a playlist of the greatest nu metal tracks. It is funky, psychedelic, trippy, sexy, and hard-rocking. Very few tracks from the 90s come close to matching the bad-ass grooves of this song.

The mixture of industrial, electronic rock, heavy metal, funk, arena rock, sci-fi, and camp in their subsequent two albums is miles ahead of their debut nu metal album. Their follow-up album, Tonight the Stars Revolt!, is full of epic songs (only Nine Inch Nails made better industrial songs in the 90s) with almost no misses. The choruses are electrifying, intoxicating, and catchy, the riffs are blasting with flavour, and it has a super original sound. The record is weird, surreal, silly, and a wild rocking time from start to finish. Similar things can be said about Anyone for Doomsday?, though to a lesser degree. When they start to incorporate some more punk elements into their sound in their album Transform, it does go a bit down in quality (still way better than Mega!! Kung Fu Radio), but the majority of tracks are amazing, especially “Free”, which is the band’s best song to date.

Mega!! Kung Fu Radio has a few worthwhile tracks, but as a whole, the record will not blow you away.

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