Give a Monkey a Brain and He'll Swear He's the Center of the Universe

After The Reality of My Surroundings, which crammed in divergent ideas and articulated them with expertise and imagination, the only thing Fishbone could do to infuriate and confuse its adoring audience was to make heavy metal music. So that’s what it did. Just when the public had finally accepted all of Fishbone's wild contradictions, the band threw them something they wouldn’t be able to handle. At the time, many fans felt like the band had taken a wrong turn, but in retrospect Give a Monkey a Brain . . . has more to offer than originally thought. “Unyielding Conditioning” is one of Fishbone's most soulful and impassioned ska renditions, while “The Warmth of Your Breath” reconfirms its hardcore chops. There's even something enjoyable about the free jazz–metal–blues melding of “Drunk Skitzo,” as difficult as it seems. In the end, the album’s metal components were most prescient. “Swim” and “Servitude” predicted the metal revival of the late ‘90s in the same way In Your Face predicted the ska revival that would sweep the industry in the years following this release.