The blatantly simple riffs, the funky drum beat, the gruff neighborly vocals...the prevalence of SubPop sounds (and, to a lesser extent, the desire for what was perceived as SubPop success) had a massive impact on underground scenes in the early '90s. Some people surely saw it as little more than another progression, a new interpretation of loud music that was rooted in another old interpretation of heavy music...for others it was their initial gateway into something other than radio rock (ironic, since it's closer to radio rock than most other brands of "underground" music - probably why it so quickly became radio rock). I suppose I was somewhere in the middle, but my musings only relate to MARCUS NOISE anecdotally. So many moments on this 1992 demo are perfectly engineered for the time, straddling Northwest aggression and Midwest pre-emo DIY....it sounds dated the minute you press play, but I suggest working through that and getting to tracks like "Breakneck" (odd that my initial go-to is an instrumental, but it's the jammer here) and "Choke" and listen to why so much of the '90s nostalgia and rehash is, in fact, justified. But I contend that this stuff was so accidental that the rehashes are rarely more than a tiny notch above cringe worthy...I mean, I want to hear something as unexpected as the end of "If Glass Was Broken" today, I just don't want it to sound contrived.
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