What a gift we have for you on our 50th episode extravaganza. We're talking about Taproot's, Gift.

To celebrate the label turning 25, Roadrunner Records got a bunch of the musicians from their roster and said 'make us an album that is way too long' and the musicians said, 'yeah, awesome. Can we add some unnecessary guitar solos?' and the label was like, 'oh big time'. Luckily there were four heads steering the ship. Joey Jordison, Robb Flynn, Matt Heafy and Dino Cazares. Who would win? Music would win. And Roadrunner Records. They won a lot around this time and Nickelback helped them win but they weren't on this album. Why? We're not sure.

A heavy album by a heavy band, but is it really heavy? Like, you know, heavy heavy? We try and figure out why we had a bit of a hard time connecting with an album that ushered in a new wave of metalcore and pushed nu-metal bands to the back of Roadrunner Records' minds. Those metalcore kids seemed to have more money for merch and a bigger budget for expensive jeans.

We’re kicking off our much anticipated second season with an amazing episode on our soon to be award winning podcast. Perhaps the most romantic album we’ve discussed, A Perfect Circle’s, Mer De Noms is an album I’ve loved since it first came out and all these years later, I’m still getting rollgasms listening to it.

Welcome to our Christmas extravaganza! We’re doing what most families do around the Christmas dinner and discussing Rammstein’s, Mutter. The almighty third album. The album that saw them stinking up water tanks, being birthed onto stages and singing about things that Hideo Kojima would later turn into video games.

The line that seems to follow Will Haven is that they are ‘your favourite band’s favourite band’. Does this mean that they didn’t get the commercial success they deserved? It seems like those who are into WIll Haven, are really into Will Haven and for a lot of those people, Carpe Diem was the album they first heard. But we’ll talk about how touring with Slipknot influenced the song writing on this record as well as the importance of clubs such as Sacramento’s, Cattle Club that treated bands well, gave them a space to play and helped form a scene that fostered bands like Deftones, Far and of course, WIll Haven.

Shout out to all of those unsung heroes in our lives!

Sometimes on these write ups, I am deliberately vague as to my feelings on the album. It’s an unproven tactic to lure in listeners and continue our rise to the world’s most successful podcast.

A party album to put Andrew W.K to shame, (hed) p.e seemed to be at the forefront of combining hip hop with rock, vinyl samples with screaming and later in the band’s career, going on deep conspiracy filled rants well before Q began posting cryptic messages online.

Salli Anttonen dives way deeper than we ever could about the negative feedback Nickelback have received in a paper titled, 'Hypocritical bullshit performed through gritted teeth': Authenticity discourses in Nickelback's album reviews in Finnish media but we'll look at if that negative feedback is truly warranted or is it just dog pile bullying from an industry full of people who were dog pile bullied in high school.

This podcast is dedicated to Ben Stiller.