Review Summary: Great STP album, great debut album in general. If your a fan of grunge this is a must buy.
Core is Stone Temple Pilots' debut album, and one of my favorite debut albums. I had heard alot about STP from friends, and wanted to download it off limewire for quite sometime. I sort of shrugged off the idea time and time again until one sunday in August of 2006. I was on my way to my dads in his car, and he decided to tell me another story about a concert he went to when he was a teenager. He began with this "Had you ever heard of Stone Temple Pilots?". I took the oppourtunity to finally get my first listen of STP and was greatly rewarded. As the first song "Dead and Bloated" blared on the Phili Turnpike he told me how he had went to one of their first concerts and they played stuff from Core. He told me it was their best album, and to go out and get it. So I took his advice and went out to the mall with my friend kevin to go pick up CD's. I found myself in bolting into FYE and grabbing a copy of "Core". I settled in my room hours later and popped "Core" into my CD player. An hour or so later I was amazed, this was probably the best example of grunge I had heard in my life at the time and urged me to get into more grunge.
"Core" is an all around excellent album and is easily my favorite STP album. It's in your face, decently loud, hard rock. Just to name a few great tracks I'll start off with my favorite "Wicked Garden". An amazing riff is steady and is enjoyable throughout the whole song. It's high points are worth listening to over and over again. Vocals are not a weak point for STP and "Wicked Garden" is no exception. This song has managed to delight me time and time again, which most songs on this album do. Another great track is "Crackerman". It's a fast pace catchy song. Pretty heavy in comparison to "Wicked Garden", and is a good amount of material. One of those songs you find yourself singing with the windows down in your car making a fool of yourself but not caring (Me and my dad did that on the way back to my house). Finally another song your guarenteed to enjoy is "Piece of Pie". On second thought this might be my favorite song on this album, either way the three songs ive mentioned are almost equally great. With strange lyrics similair to other songs on this album "Peice of Pie" is steadily consistent in great guitar riffs and catchy vocals. This song continues to keep me interested, and another one of the best songs on this album.
One very bittersweet thing about this album is repetativness. For one is Scott Weiland's vocals. On the other STP albums his vocals will be compared to their greatness on "Core" . His vocals are repetatively great in each song, and are fun to sing back to. They stick in your head, and stand out as a good key component to STP's in your face, hard, fun, quick, steady sound. Weiland's vocals do sound somewhat repetative throughout the album not really drastically changing dynamic levels all that much. They never get that tiring or boring at all though, I almost like the fact they stay steadily good, not amazing, not terrible, but good and sometimes great. Another repetative thing is the guitar riffs. The riffs can be extremely enjoyable and stick around in your head for awhile, yet they sound similair in most songs. Similair to the vocals in the aspect of alot of good is better than little great, the riffs repetatively pound your headphones with a similair sound that doesn't get old easily. Another repetative thing that is only good is the high points that STP delivers more than UPS. In each song there is a few godd high points that you often find yourself fastforwarding to, or repeating it over again. For example in "Wicked Garden" when Weiland says "burn, burn burn" the sound picks up so much, and is so good that it is almost overpowering. STP even added rythem vocals to the mix and makes the song even better.
Well thats the album, here are some key things to consider before buying the album.
Good Tracks:
Dead & Bloated, Sex Type Thing, Crackerman, Sin, Creep, Peice of Pie, Plush, Wicked Garden, Where the River Goes
Top 5 Tracks: Wicked Garden, Crackerman, Piece of Pie, Sex Type Thing, Sin
Positives:
-Great steady vocals
-Good catchy guitar riffs
-Packed with great high points
-More good songs than bad
Negatives:
-Can get very repetative
