Primal Scream - Xtrmntr
Our Price: $51.98
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $0.49 (click here)
Category: Music CD
See more CD details
Buy this Music CD at online store in your country
Canadian Music Store
Canadian Music Store
CD Details
Artist: Primal ScreamEdition: Music CD
Audio: English (Unknown)
Published: 2000-05-02
CD Release Date: 2000-05-02
Music Label: Astralwerks
Soundtracks:
- Kill All Hippies
- Accelerator
- Exterminator
- Swastika Eyes
- Pills
- Blood Money
- Keep Your Dreams
- Insect Royalty
- MBV Arkestra (If They Move Kill 'Em)
- Swastika Eyes (Chemical Brother's Remix)
- Shoot Speed/Kill Light
Music reviews of Xtrmntr
Music Review: Dance music magpies strike gold a second time.
Rating: 4 Stars
Interestingly, XTRMNTR is similar in structure to Screamadelica. There are two versions of the big single, a dance version and a dub version ("Higher Than The Sun" on Screamadelica, "Swastika Eyes" here). There is also a version of a song from an earlier album ("Loaded" on Screamadelica, "MBV Arkestra" here), radically deconstructed and reworked to sound almost unrecognizable. There's a couple of long instrumentals, also.
However, XTRMNTR sounds much more purposeful. It appropriates the sound of late-nineties big-beat and sticks to that tone. Unlike Primal Scream's 1997 album Vanishing Point, which flirted with experimental dub, only to break up the momentum with a goofy hippie ballad and a Motorhead cover, XTRMNTR consistently maintains a dark electronic sound. There are slow songs ("Pills" and "Keep Your Dreams"), but even they have a hard electronic backbeat and distorted electronic effects (and what seems like synthesized chanting in "Pills"). The album never breaks character. The second song "Accelerator" is the closest it comes to Primal Scream's frequent Stones/Stooges imitations, but even then there's so much overbearing distortion on the guitars that there isn't too much resemblance (except for maybe "L.A. Blues").
The biggest revelation, though, comes from Kevin Shields. I'm not even a fan of My Bloody Valentine, but hanging out with a hipper, more modern band seems to have inspired Shields greatly. His "MBV Arkestra" version of Vanishing Point's "If They Move Kill 'Em" is funky, danceable, trippy, dark, and deafeningly loud. Toward the end of the song, the main synth line is reprised with an ultra-harsh, metallic production. It sounds apocalyptic. The song has all kinds of multi-layered dub effects, but unlike Shields' main band, you can actually hear them interacting in interesting ways. It's certainly vastly better than the original Vanishing Point version.
That's pretty much how the entire album sounds, with varying degrees of intensity. The other instrumental "Blood Money" incorporates horns, but they are a perfect match for the squealing synths, and the aggro factor is maintained by the break-beats and the techno-metal production. It doesn't sound like a typical arty rock band throwing in some horns and then not knowing what to do with them (for an example of that, see "Jets" on Blur's Think Tank). It sounds angry and vital. The closest reference might be the second side of Fun House.
In keeping with the dark, heavy techno sound, Bobby Gillespie toughens up his vocal style. Here, he sounds like an angry Bernard Sumner. (The real Bernard Sumner shows up on "Shoot Speed/Kill Light" to play pretty much the same guitar part as on New Order's "Rock The Shack," which had Gillespie on guest vocals.) Wisely, Gillespie doesn't write a lot of lyrics, and the focus isn't really on the words. Often, his voice is swamped by all the noise. But for what it's worth, XTRMNTR might be the last great sloganeering album. Gillespie's writing is very reminiscent of the Manic Street Preachers' debut, all semi-coherent righteousness and rage. "Gun metal skies / broken eyes / claustrophobic concrete English high-rise," that sort of thing. For Primal Scream, whose career consists of reinterpreting electronic flavours-of-the-month, this was pretty much just a fashion statement, but it suits the aggressive music, and the incoherent paranoia of XTRMNTR is prescient, in that it predicts some of the moody apocalyptic sounds of the 2000s, like Year Zero or Demon Days.
XTRMNTR really appeals to me personally because it strikes a perfect balance between the heavy, dark attack of the music and the danceable beats. It could almost be a metal album, if it wasn't so funky and full of break-beats. At the same time, the testosterone-charged noise gives the dance beats an especial kick that is often lacking in electronica (even "heavy" electronica). "Swastika Eyes" is a brilliant techno track, with a ridiculously catchy disco bass line, but it's produced with that delirious paranoid darkness. There's something inherently thrilling about the hyper-distortion on the keyboard line that forms the main riff of the first track "Kill All Hippies." It rather reminds me of KMFDM's dance days, except it has even more energy.
Basically, Primal Scream were able to replicate the huge success of Screamadelica ten years later with a very different sound. The only comparable case that I can think of is Massive Attack's Mezzanine, which was also that particular band's second genre-defining landmark, coming years after the first (Blue Lines), with a much more aggressive and dissonant style. In a sense, it's just as much of a genre cross-over as Radiohead's celebrated Kid A, which came out in the same year...except XTRMNTR is way better for getting down on the dancefloor.
Description of Xtrmntr
Limited Edition Japanese pressing of this album comes housed in a miniature LP sleeve. 2008Primal Scream's XTRMNTR is one of the most intense and innovative politically charged musical diatribes since the MC5's 1969 debut. Approaching electronic, funk, and alt-punk-based sounds with equal ferocity, this is arguably the band's finest record yet. The over-the-top brilliance of "MBV Arkestra" (a seven-minute, Kevin Shields-saturated noise fest) alone cannot be exaggerated. Really! --Mike McGonigal
Seldom is a band's sixth album their best, and Exterminator is nothing less than a radical new dawn. Only a few years before, Primal Scream seemed spent--a drug-addled joke, numbing the pain with the idle comfort of rock & roll cliché. Exterminator is their baptism by fire. An album with a righteous social conscience, it rages against apathy and injustice with all the funk-fueled indignation of Sly and the Family Stone's There's a Riot Goin' On. Musically, Exterminator is bound by a coherence that has eluded them since 1991. From the tense industrial trance of "Swastika Eyes" to the scurvy-thin hip-hop of "Pills" and the exultant krautrock of "Shoot Speed Kill Light," one minute the Scream are diseased and desperate, the next they're basking in glorious, righteous euphoria. Thank the guests, certainly--the Chemical Brothers, New Order's Bernard Sumner, My Bloody Valentine's Kevin Shields--but when you hear Bobby Gillespie screaming "from here to where" on the hyperdistorted pedal-to-the-metal drag race of "Accelerator," you'll know he's the one with the road map to a terrific rock & roll future. --Louis Pattison
Alternative Rock CDs
Music Genres
Bestsellers in Alternative Rock CDs
Bouncing Souls - Maniacal LaughterRelease date: 1996-01-26; Music CD
Best price: $30.00
Blondie - Parallel LinesRelease date: 1994-07-29; Music CD
Best price: $149.98
Doors - L.A. WomanRelease date: 1993-04-09; Music CD
Best price: $99.99
Amon Duul - Phallus DeiRelease date: 1997-04-08; Music CD
Price in other shops:
Tangerine Dream - MelroseRelease date: 1990-10-02; Music CD
Best price: $74.98
Tangerine Dream - Private Music of Tangerine DreamRelease date: 1992-11-10; Music CD
Best price: $5.00
Price in other shops:
![Ska Explosion [VHS] Image](/images/Ska-Explosion-VHS-6303381014-X.jpg){kind=small}
Ska Explosion [VHS]Cleopatra; Release date: 1995-02-28; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $14.99
Price in other shops:
![Little Earthquakes [VHS] Image](/images/Little-Earthquakes-VHS-6302488664-X.jpg){kind=small}
Little Earthquakes [VHS]Atlantic / Wea; Release date: 1992-11-10; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $12.50
Price in other shops:
Exileby Geoffrey Oryema
Music CD
Best price: $4.95
![Louder Than Live [VHS] Image](/images/Louder-Than-Live-VHS-6301627865-X.jpg){kind=small}
Soundgarden - Louder Than Live [VHS]A&M Video; Release date: 1991-07-01; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $183.90
Similar CDs
Kasabian - VelociraptorRelease date: 2011-09-27; Music CD
Best price: $8.30
Price in other shops:
Primal Scream - Riot City BluesRelease date: 2006-08-22; Music CD
Best price: $2.50
Price in other shops:
The War On Drugs - Slave AmbientRelease date: 2011-08-16; Music CD
Best price: $8.69
Price in other shops:
Massive Attack - Blue LinesMASSIVE ATTACK; Release date: 1992-06-29; Music CD
Best price: $4.61
Price in other shops:
Stone Roses - Second ComingRelease date: 1998-11-17; Music CD
Best price: $2.98
Price in other shops:
Primal Scream - Evil Heat (with Bonus DVD)Release date: 2002-11-26; Music CD
Best price: $3.90
Price in other shops:
Primal Scream - ScreamadelicaRelease date: 1991-10-08; Music CD
Best price: $6.67
Price in other shops:
Primal Scream - Give Out But Don't Give UpRelease date: 1994-04-12; Music CD
Best price: $2.99
Price in other shops:
Primal Scream - ScreamadelicaRelease date: 2011-03-29; Music CD
Best price: $13.31
Price in other shops:
Primal Scream - Vanishing PointRelease date: 1997-07-15; Music CD
Best price: $2.24
Price in other shops: