It’s an everyday dilemma: you have access to so many portals beyond our realm, but have no one to share it with. It’s a beautiful day to steal liquid LSD from your roommate while neglecting your own meds and basic needs. Let’s head on over to the library and whisper Björk lyrics to strangers! This is an ensured way to find a magical gate out of this reality’s dreadful timeline.
“Headphones”
You enter through the side entrance quickly, with headphones on. Being discreet is recommended since you’ve been kicked out of the library many times. Ignore any security guards as you skip along. No time to stop and hear them, you’re too busy listening to Björk!
“Fungal City”
Hiss a few of these lyrics as you walk past the information booth. Environmentalism has always been important to Björk, and it’s a significant cause for you as well. This is why you’ve left a trail of soil from the flowers in your hand, plucked from the planters out front.
“Human Behaviour”
You’re officially inside the library when you realize how strong this LSD is. Your hands. Your beautiful, detailed hands. Just look at them! Try to walk how a human walks. Stop giggling. You begin imitating other people that you see. Try to walk without drawing attention to yourself. Throwing books to the floor and giving strangers the middle finger won’t help.
“I See Who You Are”
Saying these lyrics to anyone in any circumstance is pretty creepy, let alone here in the Biography section on a sunny afternoon to a scared family. The confused mother edges away from you as you continue repeating “I see you who you are” into your sleeve. That’s where your secrets are kept!
“Alarm Call”
A push notification comes through on your phone. You missed another job interview. Don’t worry, you’ll figure it out eventually! Keep on borrowing from friends and family while you spend your time whispering Björk’s poetry to strangers in public spaces. That guy in the stairwell had no idea what you meant by “You can’t say no to hope, can’t say no to happiness,” but just keep dancing along and ignore anyone staring!
“Crystalline”
It’s all completely clear now: the way to access a reality beyond our own is in the library janitor’s closet. How obvious. You just need to find an accomplice on this mission! You head to the computer station to find an unwilling partner. It’s best to walk around with sunglasses on and a hooded sweatshirt pulled up, just so people know you’re sent undercover from cosmic powers beyond our understanding.
“Sorrowful Soil”
Go up to the first person you vibe with at the computer station, sit next to them, and offer them the soil you’ve been hiding in your pockets. They’ll love your kind offer. This is actually the best way to open up the magical realm to an Icelandic wonderland. Remember that the magic only works with tears, so tell sad stories from childhood and cry into your dirty fists. You’ll have a new lifelong friend in no time.
“Sun in My Mouth”
At this point, you should be opening your mouth and staring at everyone in the computer station. Let them see how much of the sun you can fit inside! Growl, if you have to. This is a long-standing Icelandic tradition, you tell yourself. Maybe you invented this tactic at home. It doesn’t matter, you’re already here so might as well commit.
“It’s Oh So Quiet”
You are promptly shushed by all around you. Of course, this is a library after all. Sullen, you sink into a computer chair and try an expired library card to log on. You turn to the person next to you, an elderly man trying to access his insurance info since they’ve gone paperless, but all you do is sing “It’s Oh So Quiet” to him in a harsh raspy voice. He quickly leaves, imagining this is some sort of solicitation.
“All Is Full of Love”
Remember that music video with the robots making love? You try to create that with the computer in front of you. An alarmed member of the library staff pulls you off the machine, while also recognizing that you’re not allowed here. You’ve been banned from this library computer station before for inappropriate searches, but you run away in a sloppy, frenetic escape.
“The Gate”
You are the only one who knows the grand secret of the library: those isolated study rooms are gates to other dimensions, ruled by Icelandic mythology where you are no longer severely in debt and actually have sustainable friendships. You quickly usher out the college students studying inside, then quickly hide beneath a desk and gaze at a spider as library staff runs around searching for you.
“History of Touches”
This is a familiar space. You feel safe here. You’ve taken plenty of books, both officially loaned from the library but also stolen in your overcoat. Feel free to get very close to strangers, perhaps whispering directly in their ears, “I wake you up in the middle of the night to express my love for you.” Then run away and hide as books fall out of your clothes.
“I’ve Seen It All”
Run to the second story windows and press your naked body against the glass. Feel the sunlight. If anyone questions you, speak aloud these lyrics from the ‘Dancer in the Dark’ soundtrack. Point them to the library DVD rental section before inviting them on an enchanted journey through a magical distant world. And don’t forget: always smile!
“Earth Intruders”
You look around you, realizing that time is running short for you to enter the portal to magical netherworlds. The spaceship Earth is moving too fast. Of course: everyone around you is an alien. You try to imagine this world as a Martian, hearing alien tongues clack at you as you twist on the carpeted floor. This security guard calling the cops is definitely some kind of alien. Assure the guard, “I have guided my bones through some voltage and love them still.” He’ll know what you mean.
“It’s Not Up To You”
Security begins ushering you out, as you continue to screech Björk lyrics to anyone within earshot. You cling onto one of those tiny sorting carts with wheels, completely useless as you are dragged to the front lobby. If you sneeze in the security guard’s face, that should be enough distraction for you to make a getaway into the study area. Hurry! Time is running out to leave this Earthly dimension!
“Hyperballad”
Now you’re running though the halls, librarians and security on your heels. Share your love of the 1995 album ‘Post’ by muttering these lyrics to everyone in the Young Adult section. Gen X parents will appreciate you exposing their kids to such a cultural experience as you hide in the aisles. Children love these lyrics, especially when you quietly sing to them through the shelves, “I imagine what my body would sound like slamming against those rocks.”
“Where Is The Line”
You wonder to yourself “Where is the line?” as you jet over library shelves, considering hiding in air ducts. You scurry to the romance section, everyone there completely disinterested in assisting you on your quest for a magical realm of Icelandic beauty, a portal surely hiding in the bricks of this library. If there is a “line,” you’ve crossed it and it’s too far to turn back now. Commit to the bit.
“Birthday”
Sure, it’s technically Björk’s old band The Sugarcubes, but you use these lyrics to remind everyone that it’s actually your birthday. All the more reason for everyone to help you! Ignore the police entering the building as you stack wooden chairs and bean bags. Sing to the responding officers, you’re certain they’re fans of the 1980s Reykjavík alt-rock scene.
“Stonemilker”
As police tackle you to the ground, you begin to sing this song to all around you. Ask the officers, “Who is open-chested and who is coagulated?” When they ask for your name, occupation or address, solemnly reply “Stonemilker” to every question. You left your ID at home but don’t worry: there is a centipede in your shirt pocket that will vouch for you.
“Hunter”
They can throw you out today, but you’ll be back. Even though the LSD is wearing off, you know with dead certainty that there’s a magical gate inside of that library. You quietly make your weekend plans to mumble at people in the library parking lot, spreading the good word of Björk. One day, the world will understand.
We begin with Volta’s 2022 comeback album, and the first to feature lyrics that wouldn’t trigger a wellness check if you posted them on Facebook. Gone are the novel-length tracks and disturbing, atonal melodies. The band settles gracefully into middle age here, embracing mellow psychedelia and song structures that a person not currently having a mental health crisis might enjoy. That makes it the perfect album to wash down with everyone’s favorite ecstasy analog, 2CB. Some light visuals and a tingly, yet slippery, sense of well-being should be all you need here.
This album is an oft-overlooked gem that mostly appeals to people who enjoy portmanteaus and the amplified screams of a rabbit caught in a snare. Omar’s guitar is strangely absent here, ceding the spotlight to an array of squelching, buzzing synthesizers that might pierce the ear if certain measures aren’t taken. And when we say “certain measures” we of course mean a handful of gel capsules containing the research chemical 2C-T-7, or “Blue Mystic,” according to the forty-seven-year-old Dutch cyber-goth man you’ll have to buy it from. Cedric’s caterwauling over waves of noise will keep you grounded when the walls begin to breathe and the weeping face of the kid you bullied in high school starts appearing every time you close your eyes.
Let’s just get this out of the way now; “Octahedron” isn’t anyone’s favorite. Long-simmering tensions within the ranks resulted in an album that felt noodly and directionless; a simulacra of the fierce creativity that had been on display up until this point. To slog through this one we’re going to have to turn to acid’s shady cousin who hasn’t shown up to Thanksgiving in years. Much like Octahedron, 251-NBOMe is a pale imitation of a transcendent experience that only exists because crucial ingredients were in short supply. On the off chance you experience brain swelling or seizures, you won’t be missing much anyway.
We now enter the run of albums that cemented the band’s legend status among people who enjoy audio-induced panic attacks. On Bedlam we find an unhinged Volta, grabbing you by the throat and refusing to let go until you admit that in all the days of your life, ever since you’ve been born, you’ve never heard a band play like this one before. Fortunately, someone had the foresight to synthesize 5-MeO-MiPT before this album came out, so there’s no need to let it raw dog your pineal gland. The come-up will have you power-walking through the mall during the record’s explosive first half, attracting the attention of numerous security guards who will be too freaked out to actually approach you. The mania will fade into an ego-dissolving glow just in time for Bedlam’s sinister, slow burn of a finish. We recommend riding the last few tracks out in the back of an Uber, letting the driver’s panicked questions slowly become one with Cedric’s voice.
Without the proper precautions, this album will chew your brain like gum and stick it to the bottom of God’s desk. You need something to put you in a state where you can hear lyrics like “The kiosk in my temporal lobe is shaped like Rosalyn Carter,” and just say hell yeah dude. Something to shield you from the psychic damage that songs like “Tetragrammaton” and “Viscera Eyes” can deal out. The free trial of psychosis that bath salts offer is the only companion that you can trust to guide you through these eight labyrinthine tracks, and to help you defeat the swat team that is currently breaching your apartment door.
Here we find what many consider to be The Mars Volta’s highest high, but also their most challenging ascent. Frances is supposedly a concept album, but every time someone tries to explain the story to me I get a really bad migraine and then suddenly wake up behind the wheel of a car approaching the US-Mexico border. The epic arrangements and experimental ambient passages are likely to overwhelm listeners who haven’t already taped black trash bags over all of the windows in their homes. K2 pairs with Francis for this exact reason; becoming a prisoner in your own body gives you no choice but to stay laser-focused on the music. You may be tempted to check Instagram during Omar’s four-minute solo in the iconic opening track, but this isn’t an option when blinking too fast makes your heart rate skyrocket. Spice from your local smoke or vape shop will suffice, but we recommend an early 2000s midwestern gas station vintage if at all possible. (
Deloused is arguably the best debut album in the prog, marred only by an unconscionable amount of Red Hot Chili Peppers cameos. If you can only make it through one Volta album it should probably be this one, and you should probably do it with a head full of dirty stimulants. Wait for the tremors and cold sweats to set in before pressing play. The sirens of the ambulance a loved one has likely already called for you will sync up with the opening guitar line of Son et Lumiere. Just show the paramedics your Spotify listening history and they will know exactly what to do.
Chicago’s Allister was one of the first bands to sign with DTR, and the band released their first three LPs there. The debut cult hit “Dead Ends and Girlfriends,” their sophomore lack of a slump saleswise “Last Stop Suburbia,” and the subject here, the four-piece’s third studio album “Before the Blackout.” While there is a plethora of lust online for the first two, we almost never read about “Before the Blackout” in any publication large or canceled, and that’s a low down dirty shame reminiscent of Keenan Ivory Wayans’ 1994 classic of the same name. Also, “Waiting” is a perfect opening track, and said song and more from this LP show that Allister is so much more than “Somewhere On Fullerton”. Sadly, the band split up three years after this record came out, but happily, they returned just three years later; three is a magic number.
Wisconsin should be less known for Midwestern creep, Steven “I Graphically Harmed Cedric Bixler-Zavala’s Wife And Should Rot In The SHU” Hyde, and more known for possibly the most underrated band here, The Benjamins. Drive-Thru Records snagged The Benjamins after their debut EP and released the band’s first LP “The Art Of Disappointment” to more of a whimper than a bang. The proof is in the lack of pudding here, as streams for this one are still astronomically low on Spotify, and your little tin hearts will shine in a wonderful manner if you spin this record now. 2001 was a great year for rock with non-Drive Thru Records releases such as Fugazi’s “The Argument,” Andrew W.K.’s “I Get Wet,” Jimmy Eat World’s “Bleed American,” and Bow Wow’s “Doggy Bag,” and The Benjamins should’ve been on more year-end lists as well.
A shift from mall punk to ‘80s metal showcases the ever-present nightmare that we live in a strange, strange, strange world, but Thousand Oaks, California’s Halifax wouldn’t have it any other way. The wackadoodle globalists also promised us tragedy by noticing said shift, and this LP, which is the band’s lone Drive-Thru Records full-length studio album known as “The Inevitability of a Strange World” landed at 130 on the Billboard 200, and at #1 on Billboard’s Top Heatseekers, surprising most people outside of Nova Scotia. Their/our revolution was literally televised, as the band was featured just one year before on MTV’s “The Real World: Austin” along with aforementioned labelmates Hellogoodbye, making 2006 a total “I Told You So” year for the band. Sadly Halifax wasn’t able to capture said momentum for eternity, as the band parted ways just four years later.
Hidden in Plain View released their debut album “Life In Dreaming” to a sea of underground praise but not mainstream acclaim. Pity, as this is one of the better post-hardcore releases from the aughts and we are not taking any questions on the matter. If you’re here, you likely heard this album’s opening track “Bleed For You,” which truly cuts like a band-aid, just one year prior to the release of “Life In Dreaming” on 2004’s also underrated compilation “Punk The Clock” featuring, wait for it, wait for it, various great bands to WATCH that sadly also didn’t explode outside of the punk rock world like Acceptance, Letter Kills, My American Heart, and Ritchie Valens.
Whether you spell the band name as one word or two, Orange County’s Home Grown has a legacy that should last until much later than tomorrow, and we won’t forever and ever X infinity give up our love for this underrated by definition effort. Clearly, we’re not alone, as “Kings of Pop,” Home Grown’s third and only full-length album for Drive-Thru Records has many hardcore but not that many easycore fans. The band became a power trio for this one, which provided a solid blueprint for early-aughts pop-punk, and tightened their already stacked AF sound like a long, long rope that pulls tasty, tasty treats to all with tree fiddy, regardless of whether said eaters will kiss you, diss you, never fall in love with you, or eventually leave you like everyone else always does. However, the band split just two years later, with zero signs of a comeback.
Vinnie Caruana is a smart and prolific man always and forever. After the fall of the also underappreciated and yet-to-be-listed Long Island rock act The Movielife, Caruana capitalized on his former band’s rising yet stifled momentum, formed the punk rock I Am the Avalanche, and released their self-titled debut album in the fall of 2005. Vinnie wins the badass award for this ranking article, as his murderous green eyes front two symphonic bands listed here, and fans dead and gone happily took a beating in the name of this album’s twelve tracks. Honestly, their follow-up effort, “Avalanche United” is peak IATA, but it was released via a different label so forget we mentioned it.
Midtown was poised to climb to the heights of punk or “punk” if you’re feeling nasty like Janet Jackson but not J Lo peers like Good Charlotte, Simple Plan, Something Corporate, and Parliament with “Living Well Is The Best Revenge,” the band’s sophomore studio album. Despite its sonic and songwriting superiority to every track on their debut LP “Save the World, Lose the Girl” except “Just Rock and Roll,” the best revenge was that the band didn’t live THAT well despite their GQ clothes. Still, this eleven track banger of a record, which also features vocals from demigod Vinnie Caruana, has zero filler, many vegan seitan grillers, no tunes from Attila, or meh sequels featuring your friend and ours, Ben(jamin) Edward Meara Stiller. The band left DTR for Columbia Records for this album’s follow-up, “Forget What You Know,” but disbanded just one year later.
Fans of index finger-pointing aggressive crowdsurfing pop punk likely have lyrics from this album tattooed on their lower backs, but it’s actually a solid effort for non-elitists as well. Still, the band came to an abrupt end shortly after this one hit stores, in fact in that very year, and Movielife fans had to wait fourteen years for a follow-up via Rise Records, home to non-similar genre and non-peers in any creative way that doubles as metalcore STAHS Crown The Empire, Memphis May Fire, Kublai Khan, and Johnny Lawrence called “Cities In Search Of A Heart,” which might be the most “emo” album title of 2017 not called “Fall You Again”; moon blood can’t swim in a clogged heart or any of the great lakes except for Lake Superior… We’re still laughing ourselves to death from that dad joke.
For some odd reason, Orange County’s Rx Bandits’ various follow-ups to “Progress” get way more public and private accolades than this one, even though we firmly believe that “The Resignation” and beyond wouldn’t have been possible had the band not bridged the gap between “Halfway Between Here and There” and endearingly weird yet extremely musical. “Progress” came out in 2001, not too long after the third wave/ska-punk world was lambasted, feared, critiqued, and put out to pasture, and the polarizing in the best way Rx Bandits brought a depth to said universe that was unheard, unseen, unfiltered, and unkempt prior. Anyone but you knows the truth about these fifteen tracks that frenetically challenge each listener to question the answers, turn the radio off, say hello to rockview, and in utero till the cows come home… And now the band is hipster-approved!
Let’s end this piece with a firecracker take: Before Taylor Swift, fun., Bleachers, and see-saws covered in Hubba Bubba Original Bubble Tape and pre-cum, Sports & Arts Center at Island Lake alumnus Jack “I Had A Heavy Hand In All Recorded Music” Antonoff fronted a band called Steel Train that put the “busk” in busking, and “trust” in trust fund. While the band went out with a bang via their non-DTR self-titled LP, 2007’s “Trampoline” is without question their most superior album, and easily a top ten Drive-Thru Records release. If you disagree, ask the nepo baby cast of “Girls,” but not their unlikable and deplorable characters like Hannah Horvath; these jerks are not women that we belong to. Also, “Trampoline” is the least Mark Trombino of all Trombino productions, and the previously mentioned Finch fools and TSL loons will agree at any hour, unless it is 2:00.