STANK II

For anyone who didn't get the drill from the first entry of these beautifully-titled series – songs that many of us danced to back in the day* that don't get much dancefloor play nowadays, because nostalgia.

On with the show.

If there is one thing modern music needs more of, it is gruff men shouting KILL EAT EXPLOIT THE WEAK along to bouncy industrial metal. Enter Pitchshifter, stage right.

For me, the first Rival Schools album has that perfect nostalgic blend of rose-tinted glasses, youth, a thematic link between sound, time and place, and a gutwrenching level of self-loathing. Woo!

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds have never really specialised in pumpin’ dancefloor-fillers, but it is possible to creep around looking like a suitably sleazy maniac to a few of their tunes. My overriding memory of this particular track is repeatedly bashing my head against a low, sloping ceiling while grinding my hips sexily along to it in the old venue for a night of ill repute named The Wendy House. The swearword-laced barks this provoked only helped to sell the song to anyone watching.

People tend to view the ‘90s as a time of unlimited optimism and positivity these days, but it’s important to remember that we had to deal with tragedy as well. Such as liking nu-metal acts with awful hair and beards against our will. Coal Chamber: the 9/11 of the ‘90s.

Addendum: for some reason everyone at the metal club I grew up at danced to Coal Chamber while staring at the ceiling. Like, with their eyes looking up but not their faces. It was only Coal Chamber they did this to. Weird. Some kind of doomsday virus at work.

Given the current trends within the games industry, I’m surprised no one has yet adapted this song by The Cranberries into a multiplayer survival-FPS. If they really wanted to be edgy they could incorporate elements of what the song is actually about, too. Pro-tip for this song: try singing along to it without an Irish accent. It sounds so fucking wrong.

Sometimes, when no-one is listening, I make the weird AUUUUW noise from this song. I’m not sure what purpose that serves. It just happens, like gravity and love and magnets. I have to include the unedited non-official video here, because the song is approximately 2,000,037 times better with it.

Before they split into two bands, each approximately half as good as old Sepultura, the original Sepultura were the fucking tits. Example? Example.

I’m not even sure why this ended up on the vaguely alt.ish dancefloors of sweaty York rock clubs. It’s a good tune, but not an obvious rhythmic hipswinger and even back then hardly anyone knew who VAST were. Still, this list is what it is and now we just have to buckle up and deal with it one snarky entry at a time.

I miss this Sisters track getting significant dancefloor airplay, partly because it’s a great track but mostly because it isn’t over an hour long with three-quarters of the entire length spent repeating the same chorus line over and over again. HEY NOW HEY NOW NOW PLEASE STOP.

People who don’t like the final song for this edition of STANK should be rounded up and dropped onto a tropical island with some basic supplies and rusty weapons to eke out a harsh survivalist lifestyle, carving out territory in a lawless land where warlords can live as tyrannical god-kings.

A loudspeaker system would be set up so that this song is broadcast island-wide on repeat, interspersed only with wild, shrieking abuse from the condemneds’ loved ones – denouncing them for having let them down and betrayed them on every conceivable level.

And the whole thing should be filmed and broadcast on television 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with commentary delivered from a team of existential philosophers and nihilists under a banner partly comprised of Ant & Dec’s swollen bloody corpses.

You know it’s the right thing to do. The campaign starts here.

See you next time for more of the same. Just the same idea repeated, over and over again. Until we're all gone.

* "back in the day" to be defined as whenever the hell I say it was.