Why is Tenacious D’s Rize of the Fenix on my best 1,000 albums ever list?
To be the best we got to pass the test we gotta make it all the way to the top of the mountain.
What does Tenacious D’s Rize of the Fenix mean to me? What does it make me feel? Why is it exciting or compelling?
Let’s get something straight right up front: I’m an enormous Tenacious D fan.
At their best – which they often are – it’s hilarious, rocking, and primo music all at once. And that’s a tasty gumbo, as my man Jables A.K.A. Jack Black might say.
I also recognize that you have to be a fairly hardcore fan of the duo (don’t forget our guy Kyle Gass A.K.A. KG A.K.A. Rage Kage as the other half of the Tenacious D) to be aware of Rize of the Fenix.
The backdrop is that both the album and the movie titled The Pick of Destiny from 2006 didn’t do particularly well. I find this to be an astonishing and sorry state of affairs, but there it is.
Six years later, we get Rize of the Fenix, a return to greatness even though WE ALL KNOW that they were ALREADY GREAT and therefore the “rize” was in effect continuous and or perpetual.
To be somewhat more serious (but let’s be clear: I’m deadly serious about all of this – after all, this is part of a best 1,000 albums ever project): Rize of the Fenix doesn’t quite capture the manic, insane greatness of Tenacious D at their absolute pinnacle, and therefore lands at still pretty [REDACTED] great, if you can dig.
Anything that smacks of “parody of a vintage 1980s training sequence” has my full attention, and “To Be the Best” delivers its best in one minute flat. It works so well because it’s both earnest homage and hilarious because it’s so earnest homage. And it’s Tenacious D, and it rocks.
See also: “Montage” from Team America: World Police.
“The Ballad of Hollywood Jack and the Rage Kage” is an ambitious, acoustic rock narrative piece that comedically walks through Jack Black’s rise to superstardom and… well, and there’s poor KG holding it down “in the valley below.”
“Low Hangin’ Fruit” shows off the duo’s fantastic vocal harmonizing.
“Senorita” might be the catchiest song on the album (well, beyond “To Be the Best”), and tells tale of a Jables adventure south of the border, shall we say.
Some stats & info about Tenacious D – Rize of the Fenix
- What kind of musical stylings does this album represent? SoCal Bands, Rock Music, Comedy Rock, Hard Rock, Heavy Metal
- Rolling Stone’s greatest 500 albums ranking – not ranked!
- All Music’s rating – 4 out of 5 stars
- When was Rize of the Fenix released? 2012
- My ranking, the one you’re reading right now – #687 out of 1,000
Tenacious D’s Rize of the Fenix on Spotify
What does the “best 1,000 albums ever” mean and why are you doing this?
Yeah, I know it’s audacious, a little crazy (okay, maybe a lot cray cray), bordering on criminal nerdery.
But here’s what it’s NOT: a definitive list of the Greatest Albums of All-Time. This is 100% my own personal super biased, incredibly subjective review of what my top 1,000 albums are, ranked in painstaking order over the course of doing research for nearly a year, Rob from High Fidelity style. Find out more about why I embarked on a best 1,000 albums ever project.