Why is Voodoo Glow Skulls’ Adicción, Tradición, Y Revolución on my best 1,000 albums ever list?
She don’t like The Toasters or The Skeletones, she’d rather pound some beers and listen to The Ramones.
Some stats & info about Voodoo Glow Skulls – Adicción, Tradición, Y Revolución
- What kind of musical stylings does this album represent? SoCal Bands, Ska Punk, Punk Rock, Third Wave Ska Revival
- Rolling Stone’s greatest 500 albums ranking – not ranked!
- All Music’s rating – 4 out of 5 stars
- When was Adicción, Tradición, Y Revolución released? 2004
- My ranking, the one you’re reading right now – #660 out of 1,000
Voodoo Glow Skulls’ Adicción, Tradición, Y Revolución 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.
What does Voodoo Glow Skulls’ Adicción, Tradición, Y Revolución mean to me? What does it make me feel? Why is it exciting or compelling?
While it nearly feels like a lifetime ago now, back in the early 2000s I was helping to run a blogging community called Blogcritics. Part of the deal with the website is that we helped distribute free review materials for pop culture bloggers to check out and subsequently write about. And as I was an avid blogger back then (and, one could argue, I still am to this day!), so it was that I got my hands on the latest CD by one of my favorite ska punk bands of all time.
My excitement to check out and review Adicción, Tradición, Y Revolución was only matched by (at the time) disappointment with the album. The review (thankfully) no longer exists on the Internet and (not as thankfully) I don’t have access to the hundreds of pieces I wrote for Blogcritics back in the day. My take at the time was that it had a stripped down, metal-y vibe that didn’t nearly reach the heights of earlier albums like Who Is? This Is? or The Band Geek Mafia.
Looking back, I don’t know what the heck I was thinking back then. It might not be my favorite VGS album (spoiler alert!), but sound-wise and musically its of a piece with the band’s typical output. Which means: super high energy, horn-driven ska punk from the veteran Inland Empire, California band.
These days, I absolutely love the stripped down, chugging “DD Don’t Like Ska,” which, really carries a melody that most punk bands could only dream of conjuring. It also has a nice tempo change when it hits the chorus that gives the song a really unique vibe.
Voodoo Glow Skulls continues a longstanding tradition of doing a ska inflected cover at the end of the album, in this case a super fun version of Guns ‘n Roses’ “Used to Love Her.” Talk about a band making a cover song their own – it’s great stuff.
“Cochino” hearkens back to the hyperspeed, hook driven ska punk mode that jams early albums Who Is? This Is! and Firme wall to wall. That is to say, it’s what I like of as perfectly controlled chaos. This is as good a time as any to compliment VGS’ drummer, Vince Sollecito, for holding down the rhythm section.
Pop culture stuff that has something to do with Voodoo Glow Skulls’ Adicción, Tradición, Y Revolución
See also: Voodoo Glow Skulls – Steady As She Goes: #711 of best 1,000 albums ever