Stupid People Shouldn't Breed

A strange album, this one — or maybe not so strange in light of the future, but still odd. Whatever bandleader Phil Owen was on at the time, it helped in creating an album that in its own way almost predicted nu metal, though without that particular compressed explosion Ross Robinson brought on the production front to Korn and Limp Bizkit. Instead, it's an uncredited Al Jourgensen effort that, with the occasional samples and general noise level, is pretty well in keeping with his contemporaneous Ministry and particularly Revolting Cocks work, though without the chaotic level of detail expected from those bands. Songs like the catchy enough riffing of "Chemical Imbalance" are more straight-ahead charges that aren't industrial rock, per se, and the trebly sound on "S**t Authority" suggest demos only slightly cleaned up. If anything, Stupid People Shouldn't Breed is a more hip-hop dabbling and less completely powerful romp through what Pantera was getting up to — and if more of the album sounded like that band's "F****n' Hostile" it might actually get somewhere. The B-boy posing is a bit silly, though that never stopped, say, Infectious Grooves, but nobody's ever going to mistake the MCing on "I Got It Made" or the ham-handed-and-a-half let's-all-stand-together "Fight da Suckas" for Ice Cube. There are some moments of murky metal drama that make welcome additions — the echoed, slightly doomy verses to "Stand Tall," for instance — while "Poundsauce" and "Loudspeaker" distill everything down to a good simple formula that works. However, more common is the intentionally ridiculous attitude and lyrics to a song like "Horny for Evil," which added to the utterly generic thrash metal breaks just provokes a shrug rather than entertainment value.