Review Summary: Although this isn't a great album and it keeps getting held back by its same sounding songs and lack of a decent production, it's still a solid album that longtime fans of the band will wanna hear.
Way back in 2002, before Make Believe, Red Album or even Raditude, Weezer released Maladrioit, to mixed success. On one hand its a cool, raw, unrefined pop punk classic but on the other its maybe a little TOO raw and unrefined for my tastes. It certainly starts out pretty cool with the song American Gigolo (perhaps cashing in on the Rob Schneider bomb), likely a little nod to the band's name. Its a very fun guitar intro; who knew that the guys could play so well way back then? But unfortunately that is not long lived as it quickly transitions into HDope Nose. That leads me to my first problem, which is the titles. The songs are too damn short. Hardly a major concern though, the song itself is pretty good. Its got a catchy dissonant riff and some cool vocals.
Vocals are interesting on this album; Rivers's voice hadn't really developed and flourished into what it is today, so the vocals on this album seem very raw. Sometimes they actually work in the songs favor like here and Keep Fishing, and Slob, but they seem to get a little more worn as the album goes on. Maybe they recorded it all at once, I don't know. What I do know is that the vocals for the first few songs are great, but you can't really say the same thing about the silly lyrics. If you couldn't guess Dope Nose was about drugs then just close your browser and go to bed. The lyrics are very silly and fun-esque, and though they aren't technically bad, it just feels really over the top. Having said all that the song itself is very good.
And like so many other albums, after the first few tracks, it kind of starts repeating itself. Burndt Jamb is another great song and has a really cool riff and Possibilities is a weird but sort of cool heavy punk song. But after that the songs start to kind of sound the same with maybe the acception of Slave, which is a very unusually cheery upbeat song at least musically. The only downside is that it's too much like Green Album and definitely wears out it's welcome before too long. And by the end you're kind of bored and just want to go back and listen to the beginning again, but overall it's definitely not a bad album. I think Weezer learned from their mistakes and made a slightly more polished album with Make Believe before settling on their newest masterpiece Hurley. But its definitely an interesting ride to take to go back and see what they used to sound like.
