Bring down the IQ!? Steve was smarter than all three of you!! yikes.

huge loss to the music biz. wherever you went, steve, take no shit.

Easily one of the top five noise rock tracks, from back in the days when noise rock was something other than just metal derivative bands...Killdozer, Scratch Acid, Laughing Hyenas, Tar, etc. wipe the floor with 99% of modern attempts.

Nice deep dive from some synth guys. This song is heavier and biting than any song has a right to be. Can’t believe he’s gone. R.I.P. Albini.

RIP Steve Albini

Atomizer. One of the greatest albums. Vale Steve Albini

RIP Steve Albini

Big Black were the band of the 80's for me and Kerosene is an absolute classic song. Still knocks me on my arse after all these years, epic stuff.

Your reaction/discussion and Sara's insight/breakdown of Kings of the Wild Frontier was something else. I LOVED IT! Hey, I still get GOOSEBUMPS listening to this song too! BTW....Went to see Adam Ant here in NJ last month. The show RAWKED! I hope you all get together again to react to more Adam Ant stuff. Also, would love to hear your thoughts/reaction on some of Devo's music.

To be a twat about it, it goes on for a bit too long BUT the sound is incredible, love the ideas, the drums, the bass is absolutely glorious and one of the best things I've ever heard.

We just saw Adam Ant the other night 4/24/24 in Albuquerque and he was incredible. They opened with Ant Music and had two full drum kits and drummers and Two upright bass drummers with big drum sticks and it was thunderous. The thing I love about his songs are those melodies which take on an almost sinister or ominous tone of Western and Spy music.

Why do you keep talking through the song?? Shut up!!!!’

I'll never forget the first time I heard Big Black. I'd listened to all kinds of metal and punk, but never heard music that I once described as "an army of angry insects that wants to get out of the speakers and harm you"

Apparently, Mark Ronson plays Dog Eat Dog before every session. So there must be something in what they did back in 1980

One of their finest songs, and one of the bravest bands of that era. I can't wait to see Adam in concert soon. 🥳🥁🪘🛢️

Atomizer is a classic.

Guys have a lot of research to do

VERY UNDERATED BAND love LOS RANCHEROS

I am surprised that this never made it on a movie soundtrack...

I really wish Sara would contact Adam an re-produce his album " Adam Ant Is the Blueblack Hussar in Marrying the Gunner's Daughter". It has a lot of potential and needs some oversight. I really think with the right producers and support, he could re-release that one and it could be very interesting. She really gets the old great work he did, he needs an ally.

I would suggest that he check out *Starship Trooper* & *Yours Is No Disgrace* before *Roundabout* & *South Side Of The Sky.* Think about it...

Before Godflesh there was Big Black. Godflesh was basically Big Black + Swans + Black Sabbath

Cables is my fav Big Black track however

This is the path I took to electronic music as well. Kerosene and Big Black albums across the board led me to Godflesh, and then Skinny Puppy and Ministry, I continued collecting punk and math rock and progressive strange music as well as electronic, but I don’t know where I would be without Albini.

Awesome song from a awesome timeless band! About Chris Squire bass tones, he used to put the treble knob up and do a picking technique using both pick and thumb to get some harmonic enhancing. Oh, and some distortion as well, also tremolo sometimes, etc. A genius. Rock in Peace. Kudos to both!

An absolute classic,still sounds amazing all these years later!

I suspect that the BOC-ish song on Atomizer that Nathan was trying to think of was "Bad Houses."

I saw him a few years back do this complete album when he toured with it. Amazing

Kings is that perfect Album both UK and US track listing.

Post comment: Look at the 35 th anniversary dvd videos, Songs from Tsongas. Some of the best live Yes, ever recorded.

Gentleman, it is wonderful of you to be critiquing Yes music, but to chop up the song, you disrupted the songs continuity, the musical timing flow of this great band. You do yourself a great disservice and your listeners. Is it youtube or did you edit for time compression based on your critique. I see the URL to listen fully, but I would prefer a live critique versus post. Great song selection guys!

Legend :)

I met Steve when he was running sound at a Jesus Lizard show in Tampa around 1990-ish with Helmet head lining. I was a huge fan of BB and had just learned to play guitar. I asked the worst question, "How do get that guitar sound?". He looked past me as if he had heard this a million times and said, "I build my own amps". Throwing the glove down at my feet to be a better artist.

Contrary to popular belief, the drum machine on this song isn't a TR606, it's an E-Mu Drumulator. The 606 was only used for the first handful of EP's.

Best Song From The 80´s..... I Think

Someone put Kerosene on a mixtape for me in the mid 90's that also included some Dead Kennedys, Alice Donut and Crucifucks. What a cool gift that was, really broadened my palate. Loved how heavy and bleak Kerosene was.

Loved all this... But a couple of details: This track predates the Harmonic Percolator. The guitar pick-ups Albini is using are wired out of phase which produces that microphonic, metallic sound, then that was accentuated by going into cheap solid state amps and PA speakers with horns and using metal pics with slices cut into it so that the pic "brushed" against the string rather then plucked it.I suspect he also used Stainless Steel strings.

There's a couple of bands that attempted to cover this and they come nowhere near the level of brutality required. Don't cover Big Black. You will not win :)

Great vid. I've seen them perform this many times. Every time it was a mind-blowing show of just astonishing musicianship. I would urge you guys to listen to the live Yessongs version. Thank you for covering this piece. Its one of my favorites:)

Beautiful

What the.. where's the verse.. many things missing.. lol o'well...

Anything from The Yes Album all the way through Going For the One. Really pretty much anything '71 to '77. As far as how we consumed this, it was exclusively by the album start to finish. And live. And yes they were amazing live. Close to the Edge is an absolute masterpiece, and my all time favorite song, anybody, any time, any genre, is Awaken, the last track on Going For the One.

Why was the song skipping through and leaving out parts of the song? Copyright issues or editing for time? You truly messed this up badly!

Yes Sascha plays the bass on this

This is an epic song!!!!! I lived in a boring small Illinois town during my teen years (in the '80s), with long, dark, bitterly cold winters, and this song perfectly nails my emotions during that interminable epoch. Thank you, Big Black! And thanks to Initial Replays, too. BTW, does anyone know the backstory to Big Black's song "Bazooka Joe," if there is one??

Rick tells a funny story about this. They worked on this during his audition (and something else, IIR). Rick didn't drive, so Steve gave him a ride home and said, "pick you up tomorrow?" "OK." Cool job offer. Yes are prog even among prog bands. IMO, it's rock music composed with classical (and other) styles and idea. Songs have multiple sections, with many moods, variations on themes, recapitulation. While they are virtuosos, it is their compositional ability that put them on the top. I think a lot of it may be due to Jon Anderson not being a trained musician, so he didn't know what he should *not* be doing. There are cover & tribute bands that recreate their songs note for note. But none of them can put the notes in the perfect places like they do. ~Music lives in the spaces between the notes~ -- Debussy (paraphrased) "The time between the notes relates the color to the scene." -- Jon Anderson.

Love that you guys covered this band and song!

I'm wearing an Atomizer tshirt right now!

Most of the album is a load of old pump!

Dirk needs an upgrade and a re release.