Mindless Self Indulgence – ‘Tighter’ Album Review

When MSI first crossed my radar a few years back I didn’t want to like them. They seemed so cockily self-aware and over the top that I figured that they just couldn’t be any good. It was snobbery on my point, musical elitism that made no sense given that I had gotten a damn good kick out of the Bloodhound Gang, and my mind was well and truly changed when I read a Metal Hammer feature in which the band were subjected to a variety of questions submitted by the general public (the Spanish Inquisition feature). Despite the questions ranging from the offensive to the pointless, MSI gave such an account of themselves that I had to check them out only discover that my puritanical streak had kept me from a band who deliver highly charged, genre-bending punk/pop/rock/metal/industrial with the emphasis firmly on FUN and while they may very well be the sort of band that you have to be in the right mood for they are far better and far more intelligent than their detractors claim.

Released on July 19^th 2011, ‘Tighter’ is not new MSI product, rather it is a re-release (with a suitably generous selection of extras) of the band’s 1999 debut album ’tight’ now expanded to a mind-altering 27 tracks and boasting a DVD to boot. Given that original copies of ‘Tight’ can set you back as much as $300, this may well be the holy grail for MSI fans and it also offers an attractive introduction to the band if you have so far missed out on what all the fuss is about.

Let’s get this out of the way from the start – MSI are not tremendously original. Nor are they overly complex. However, lurking under the oft-superficial façade of the band are clever twists on Marilyn Manson’s oh-so-serious schtick, ferociously tight mash ups of metal, industrial and dance music which simultaneously encourage heads to bang and fits of uncontrollable laughter and dance-floor swamping tunes of enviable magnitude. In short, MSI had their fingers on the pulse of contemporary rock music even back on their debut and it’s taken the rest of us just a little while to catch up… and did I mention it was fun?

Yeah so the album kicks off with the brief rap metal of ‘grab the mic’ which manages to out-rock most of the nu-metal that was clawing its way up the charts back in ’99, the Marilyn Manson blast of ‘bring the pain’, the pointless ‘mindless self indulgence’ which rapidly gives way to ‘tight’ another track which takes on Manson’s sub-goth violence before mashing it up with amphetamines and Fantomas and spinning off in a variety of strangely multi-coloured directions. Listening to the album is rather like being trapped in a heavy metal fun-house (imagine the interior of Rob Zombie’s mind and you’re probably not far off) and while not every track is 100% successful, the band never over-milk their tricks usually blasting your senses into overload before vanishing into the ether leaving you wondering whether you’ve been rocked or violated but convinced that whichever it was it was kinda cool. ‘Molly’ may be a highlight, although I’m not sure because my mind has changed every time I’ve played the promo through while ‘Tornado’ seems to take its cue from Korn, that is if Korn played dance remixes of swamp metal… I think… actually it’s rather hard to tell, and if you think this review is hard to follow you should try the album. Or not.  It’s hard to imagine MSI care either way as long as their name is on your lips and hips and that’s really the point. MSI have taken the same steps that good old Marilyn took to make sure that they push all the right outrage buttons, and matched it to the music that he used to be able to write alongside a few favourites of their own to create something that screams ‘look at me’ over and over again until you turn in that direction and find yourself dazzled by the light. Subtle it ain’t, but then subtlety really isn’t the name of the game and anyway it’s fun… I haven’t said that already have I?

OK it’s not all brilliant – 27 tracks is a lot of material and after a while it does get a bit like being stuck in a room with several young children all with ADHD and a loud-ass mobile phone blasting their music of choice, but then that’s merely the result of the band trying to load out this new edition with bonus material so taking a break after the initial fifteen tracks gives you a chance to recharge before going at it all over again. And you really can’t go wrong with the punk-psychosis of ‘pussy all night’ which takes on rave culture and wins or the Gary Numan vexing ‘dickface’ so if it all gets a bit overwhelming take a breath and hit the rest of the album up later. Still some of the extra tracks do push endurance to its limits (‘tight 8-bit’, ‘dickface demo’ etc all take the joke a step too far) but then that’s what the skip button was invented for and they’re kinda funny the first time they ravish your speakers.

There’s also a DVD, if you’re feeling brave enough to go for it, which features over an hour of orchestrated lunacy nicely organised into song groups by show and date and while the quality is not always great it’s a welcome opportunity to see the band back at the beginning of their career already demonstrating the insanity that subsequently made them an international force.  That said how often you’ll dip into the DVD is questionable and it very much represents an extra rather than a reason to shell out for the product if you already have the original.

So ‘Tighter’. Well it’s FUN in a way that so few bands are. It’s irreverent, scattershot and nuts yet musically proficient and the sort of music that can send a party or a night on the town into overdrive. Sure they do little that the Bloodhound gang haven’t already done, but their focus is wider and the band have a genuine charisma which shines through and while this re-release is unlikely to win the band a multitude of new fans it’s certainly cool for people such as myself who weren’t there at the beginning. Buy it, enjoy it and blast your friends ears with it – that’s what it’s for!