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Prong > Rude Awakening > Reviews > Madman
Prong - Rude Awakening

Nobody Does This as Well as Prong - 70%

Madman, December 4th, 2002

Prong, now not a lot of people have actually heard of them but they have been fairly revolutionary...doing some of the things a lot of the more popular metal bands have done but a few years before it really becomes "cool".

Prong's Rude Awakening is a decent example of mixing a fair amount of funkish type groove drumming, Pantera styled groove riffs, some odd guitar noises as well as some techno influences. Overall it's a good album but I think some of the greatness of this album has been lost with time as many bands have since gone this root thus hurting the album's originality although the other bands have never done it as well.

I would say that the first three songs "The Controller", "Caprice", and "Rude Awakening" have a bit more of a melodic edge than the rest of the album and don't base themselves almost exclusively on heavy grooves...thus making this a great start to the album as it creates a bit of variation, although not enough to make it a truly great disc. The rest of the album though prides itself almost exclusively on heavy groove riffs (although there are some hints of melody from the first three songs scattered through a couple songs).

There two things that hurt this disc: 1. The aforementioned problem of many bands having this sound...especially nowadays which really doesn't make this album stand out today and 2. Not enough variety or atleast not enough defining pieces in each song. After enough listens the album will start to run together a bit although it doesn't suffer too much from this like say most AC/DC albums but it is a noticeable problem.

I would certainly say that if you like bands like Pantera and White Zombie/Rob Zombie you will atleast like this disc, otherwise don't bother.