Crazy Town are absolutely hated in the metal community, and in many ways you can see why. The
two frontmen, Seth “Shifty” Binzer and Brett “Epic” Mazur, were the epitome of
turn-of-the-century frat-rock posturing and their first album, The Gift of Game, displayed everything
wrong with the rap-rock/nu metal boom of the late 90s. However, this led to
many preconceptions towards their follow-up effort, 2002’s Darkhorse, which contrary to public perception, showed a
considerable amount of musical growth and a huge change in direction for Crazy
Town that deserves much more credit than they’re given.
After label pressure to produce another megahit like “Butterfly”,
Crazy Town seemed to have gotten fed up with being told what to do and instead
opted to go for a considerably heavier route on Darkhorse. Straight from opener “Decorated”, you see the more
guitar oriented direction they’ve gone in. Things slowly gather in pace before
kicking into a catchy singalong chorus and the album kicks on from there.
Overall, the first 5 tracks of the album show what Crazy Town were capable of
when they actually tried to take themselves seriously as a nu metal band.
However, after that things started to fall apart.
From “Waste of My Time” you see that the band were still
very limited in terms of ideas. They started to try to copy the sound they laid
out on The Gift of Game with bland, directionless
guitars and trying to play the emotional jock character, with absolutely woeful
lyrics topping it off. From here the rest of the album is almost entirely
forgettable, save for late highlights “Battle Cry” and “Take It to the Bridge”,
which actually carries an important message of not trying to idolise and
blindly follow celebrities (‘Would you
jump off a bridge if I told you to, would you change the way you live if I told
you to?’). If the second half of the album is where this album was to be
judged, then yeah, this would have earned its criticisms.
But the thing is, that is only half of the album. If Crazy
Town had released only the first 5 tracks (perhaps swapping out “Decorated” or “Change”
with either “Battle Cry” or “Take It to the Bridge”), then they would have had
a very competent nu metal EP, and they may have regained some credibility.
Alas, paired with the rest of the tracks along with a perfect storm of public
mishaps, record label pressure, drug problems and the overall decline of nu
metal in the mainstream, you could say that this album was doomed from the
start due to Crazy Town’s already poor reputation. Other nu metal bands may
have kept the flame alive for a little longer (including Linkin Park’s Meteora, Evanescence’s Fallen and Korn’s consistent chart
appearances, despite a decline in quality) but ultimately this was their
twilight period. Darkhorse will
forever be cast into the footnotes of music history as a result, but it’s not
really a deserved fate for the album.