Benter’s 2002 Mixtape
Benter’s 2002 Mixtape
By Rory Bentley
Alright you naughty chickens, it’s my turn to throw my mixtape into the ring. I’ve focused on the most important year of my formative days as a music nerd – 2002. I was a wee 16-year-old doing my A Levels, and Rock and Metal had got their claws into me around the turn of the millennium, as classic Metal and the arse-end of Nu Metal dominated my world. Like many millennial Metalheads, I was raised by Kerrang, Scuzz, and MTV2, as music channels opened up my malleable little brain to all kinds of wonderful sounds both old and new, but 2002 was the first time I was able to start forming my own opinions and exploring things for myself. It also happened to be a banner year for Rock and Metal, and represented a real sea change that can still be felt in alternative music today. Whilst cassettes weren’t a thing by the time I was a teenager (in your face Beth and Dark Juan!) (Dark Juan here – With age comes experience and with experience comes treachery, young man. Never forget that! Wink wink…) I definitely ripped a bunch of CDs and loaded up a few MP3 players so I’m familiar with the mix tape game. Let’s go back to when I had hair and my knees didn’t click!
SIDE A
Idlewild- A Modern Way of Letting Go
“The Remote Part”, the third album by the Scottish Indie Rock legends, is in the conversation for my favourite album ever. The tartan REM should by rights be one of the biggest bands this side of Coldplay, and for a moment it looked like they were on their way there – they definitely had the tunes for it. Whilst ‘You Held The World In Your Arms’ and ‘American English’ might have been the obvious choices for the tape, I’m trying to keep things Ever-Metal-friendly, and this song is riff city.
Idlewild – A Modern Way Of Letting Go (Official Video) HD
Korn- Here To Stay
If you don’t know this one I’m not sure why you’re reading a Metal site. “Untouchables” was the first Korn album that came out after I’d discovered them. I remember waiting for the ‘Here To Stay’ video to drop on MTV and being blown away by how massive the guitars sounded. Knowing what I know now about how astronomically expensive the album was to make, the riffs sounding big would be the least you’d expect. To this day, it remains an all-time banger, and “Untouchables” might be my favourite Korn album.
Korn – Here to Stay (Official HD Video)
Glassjaw- Cosmopolitan Blood Loss
Here’s the first Hardcore entry and it’s a cracker. “Worship and Tribute” took a while for me to get into, mainly because Daryl Palumbo’s vocals were much more eccentric than I was used to, but once it clicked, I was exposed to one of the most brilliant, creative, and thrilling bands of the late nineties/early noughties. Justin Beck’s crazy squalling guitars are wrangled into the structure of a catchy tune on this lead single, and offered an easier way in for my teenage ears than their more abrasive debut album.
Glassjaw – Cosmopolitan Blood Loss (Video)
Queens of the Stone Age- Hanging Tree
I remember buying “Songs for the Deaf” at my local independent record store the week it came out and basically living in the album for months. It had everything I wanted from a Rock band at the time – huge riffs, powerful drums, and hooks for days, and it introduced me to the great Mark Lanegan, whose whiskey-soaked croon adds an almost otherworldly quality to the band every time he steps to the mic. This one has special significance to me as I bore witness to a Turkish Jazz Fusion band laying waste to the most incredible version of this song in a tiny club in Istanbul last year, and it felt like a real full-circle moment for me.
Nightwish- Dead To The World
If you didn’t know the ‘Wish was coming, you obviously don’t know your boi. It was actually my youngest sister who got me into what would go on to be my favourite band, and “Century Child” would be my favourite album of theirs for a long time. The album is perhaps the first time the full grandeur of the Nightwish sound is realised, though the budget isn’t yet there for hiring the London Studio Orchestra. As a result, it bridges the gap between the old Power Metal adjacent sound and the Symphonic bluster that became their signature. I selected ‘Dead to the World’ because it’s a total banger and showcases every band member from Tarja and Marco’s foghorn operatics to Tuomas’s flamboyant keys and Emppu’s chunky riffs. Not enough of the Symphonic Metal lot can throw down and take your head off when required, but NW always know how to go hard.
Audioslave- Gasoline
That first Audioslave album totally blew my mind when it dropped. I was familiar with Soundgarden from the big singles on MTV2, but ‘Blackhole Sun’ doesn’t really showcase the raw, terrifying power of Chris Cornell’s voice. This album laid all of that bare, and the throat-shredding Greek God performance on Gasoline still hits me in the gut to this day. I still try and sing along, but even after taking extensive vocal lessons I sound like a cat shitting out a hedgehog. The riff here is an absolute monster as well and represents a time where Tom Morello wasn’t cringe as fuck.
Mastodon- Mother Puncher
Although it was 2004’s “Leviathan” that would make a full convert out of me to the power of the ‘Don – to the point where I have the artwork tattooed on my forearm – “Remission” was one of my gateways to more extreme genres, particularly Sludge. I didn’t think there was a band on God’s green earth that could stack up to Metallica for iconic riffs at the time, but the Atlanta beasts were one of the first bands to dispel this notion, and ‘Mother Puncher’ conjures up a violence in me that only watching Leicester City can match.
Weezer- Dope Nose
I don’t think I fully grasped how wildly inconsistent and infuriating Weezer could be back in 2002. Prior to this release, they had 2 perfect albums and one excellent one, and I’d argue that “Maladroit” is at least as good as “The Green Album”, with some stunning highs. ‘Dope Nose’ is a total riff storm with a ripping solo and a chorus to die for, an example of exquisite Pop songwriting that made me see the value of tight composition and the sheer level of skill that goes into writing ‘commercial’ music that often goes unappreciated by a lot of Metal fans. The next 20 or so years would be a real mixed bag, but the promise of songs like this is the reason us Weezer faithful will weather the storms of the likes of “Raditude” and that terrible “Seasons” thing from the other year. Rivers continues to strengthen the trauma bond over me in a way that Billy Joe Armstrong has long since failed to do.
Weezer – Dope Nose (Official Music Video)
SIDE B
Hatebreed- Perseverance
I’m a heavy set bloke with a skinhead who works out five times a week and reviews nearly all the Hardcore on this website. You think that happened by accident?
Hatebreed – Perseverance [Official Video]
Killswitch Engage- Self Revolution
Not only was “Alive or Just Breathing” a revelatory moment in my music journey that would send me in so many different wonderful directions, but ‘Self Revolution’ was the first song I ever performed live on stage. I’d stumbled across the ability to scream during this formative period, and it resulted in me and few mates busting it out at the college rock concert. Was I any good? Almost certainly not, but I got the live music bug that day, and I continue to sing Rock and Metal at the finest dive bars in the East Midlands to this very day! So blame Killswitch.
In Flames- System
My first taste of pure Melodeath was on a free Kerrang CD in the form of this spectacular cut from the stunning “Reroute to Remain”, which was one of the last times In Flames felt at the cutting edge of Metal. The riffing was on another level of intensity than what I was into at the time, and the climactic build to the final chorus and the adrenaline rush I felt still sticks with me to this day. Some people may sneer at me holding this less ‘credible’ period of In Flames up with such reverence, but some people are sad neckbeard virgins with an aversion to soap.
The Distillers- Sing Sing Death House
I remember my sister playing the living shit out of this album and basically wanting to be Brody Dalle for like a year – and with good reason. It’s rare that such a raw, hostile and downright nasty Punk band are able to capture unquestionable mainstream success without making some concession or other, but The Distillers sounded a million miles from the Pop Punk and the sunny SoCal vibes of the time, yet this album was an instant smash. They would shift to a more Alt Rock sound on the follow-up, but this pipe bomb of jagged, raucous hatred was the exact antidote required to a sanitised mainstream Punk landscape.
Bad Religion- Broken
Older, more palatable, but no less Punk; California legends Bad Religion dropped their stunning “The Process of Belief” record at a time when it felt they were starting to tread water and get left behind by the bands that they had influenced. Although there’s harder, faster stuff on the record, ‘Broken’ was one of the first BR songs I was exposed to, and its wistful, folky tone was an accessible way in to delve back to classics like “Suffer”. Plus, nobody does soaring harmonies like these guys.
Shadows Fall- Thoughts Without Words
Killswitch quite rightly get all the plaudits, but “The Art of Balance” is a classic album in its own right and has a quintessential noughties American Metalcore feel about it. The Shads also have a groove and swagger to them that is often lacking in this earnest and intense style, with Jason Bittner driving things from behind the kit with a slick swing amongst the aggression. The chorus on this one is also a huge earworm without going all histrionic and emo.
SHADOWS FALL – Thoughts Without Words (OFFICIAL VIDEO)
Rival Schools- Good Things
Closing things out with a couple of Emo/Post-Hardcore classics beginning with the utter masterpiece from the mind of Walter Schreifals, it’s time to get emosh! “United By Fate” is as good as Melodic Rock gets, and I was mad into it from the moment I heard it. Heck, I didn’t even know about Quicksand and Gorilla Biscuits at the time, which would lead me to become a Walter Worshipper. I would tea bag a crocodile to get another album from this project, though Quicksand reforming has definitely taken the edge off.
Hundred Reasons- If I Could
There was a time when British Rock music could not get arrested. After the 90s boom of Therapy?, Skunk Anansie, The Wildhearts et al, things had simmered down to stagnant levels for UK bands that fell outside of the Indie bracket. All that changed when a Welsh band that I won’t name for obvious broke through with their debut in 2001, and suddenly we had amazing, credible bands packing out venues and bothering the charts again. “Ideas Above Our Station” is as perfect a debut album as you’ll hear – crammed with lung-busting hits played with unbridled passion and without an ounce of fat or filler to be heard. This song in particular makes me misty-eyed and nostalgic in a way that few things that aren’t the last half hour of Return of The King can.
So that’s it- my (Rock) music taste in a nutshell, all in the space of one incredible year for the music we love. I’m often mistrustful of nostalgia because I always like to believe the best is yet to come and the ‘good old days’ are right fucking now, but rather than making me feel all of my 39 years, this exercise has made me feel like a wee lad again. A bald wee lad with a grey beard and love handles, but it still counts! Anyway, has anyone seen my mini-disc player?
Here’s a Spotify playlist of my mix tape:
Disclaimer: This article is solely the property of Rory Bentley and Ever Metal. It is strictly forbidden to copy any part of this article, unless you have the strict permission of both parties. Failure to adhere to this will be treated as plagiarism and will be reported to the relevant authorities.
