Hey friends,
This is a text I have written for a small fanzine / blog, about the band "Therapy?".
Wanted to share it here, too, maybe someone is interested in it :-)
Note: No AI was used in writing this text.
And here it goes:
Do you remember the very heavy 90s rock band "Therapy?"
To answer the question in the title right away: I guess most people in the world of today will not remember or know the band. But, on the other hand, they are still very active, touring, releasing albums, and still got plenty of their old fans or even new ones. So, even if the "mainstream" of society did - time itself did not forget the band.
Now that we answered the title question pre-maturely, we could end the text right away... but I won't. Also I don't want to just talk about their best songs, hit songs, or how much I loved the band as a teen.
I want to peek a bit deeper, and look at the "logic" behind the band, the sound... and how they somehow connected a plentitude of genres in the 90s... and then slipped right through the net.
As you know, the 90s were the decade where "commercially cheesy" music was at an all-time high. Boybands, Girlbands, Eurodance, happy elated pop and pop-dance songs everywhere.
"Credibility" was no longer seen as a viable concept. By no-one.
Right at the start of the decade, it still shocked the audience when Milli Vanilli got exposed - no, not in a NSFW moment. It turned out they merely lip synced to their "songs".
People objected to that! Can you imagine that?
Because as the 90s went on, nobody could have cared less if the various members of all the boy- and girl-bands did sing, could sing, wanted to sing, or if their music just came out of the can and by studio session vocalists.
(Not to slag off these bands - just want to show how quickly "values" can change).
But as a reaction to this, the 90s also had an underground. Or a massive range of underground subcultures, to be more specific.
Industrial Rock, Industrial Metal, Black Metal, Death Metal, Grunge, Psychobilly, Trip Hop, Jungle, Rave, Gabba, Speedcore...
And this was the complete opposite of the happy 90s mainstream! Super twisted, super dark music. Usually by people who lived very troubled lives themselves...
Therapy? originated from Northern Ireland, and started as an "alt rock" band with serious metal and industrial influences.
A lot of the early songs were "brilliant noise", there were no hooks, no sing a longs, there were vocal samples about psychiatric conditions, true crime killers... sincere disturbia. Often sampled out of transgressive movies and other discarded media.
So far, so good... or "so far, so dark".
But then something changed, the members alluded to this in interviews etc, but it's hard to pinpoint why that happened.
They decided to make more "simple" rock songs too. With hooks. With verse / chorus structure. With "catchy" melodies. For example, about their song "Lonely, Cryin, Only", the band stated that it was an attempt to "write in the style of Ramones meets Roy Orbison".
And this is when things went really off the hook.
When listening to the band back then, I did not realise how "deranged", but how "brilliant" this concept is, at the same time.
There were suddenly albums like "Troublegum" or "Infernal Love". And I would describe the sound as Industrial Metal soundscapes, with heavy metal riffs, "alternative rock" style drums (i.e. swinging percussion, not that simple stuff of more traditional metal groups) - and extremely good melodies, sing-a-long "hooks"...
Therapy? had some of the most saccharine, melancholic, soothing, beautiful melodies and harmonies of the 90s... no, of all eras of music.
And yes, at the same time, their guitars were ultra hard, ultra distorted.
(The "industrial" part is less visible on Troublegum btw - maybe that one is more traditional)
Pop / fun metal was a thing in the 90s already. But Therapy? did not feel as a parody. They managed to blend these two very different ideas of "music" very well.
Hell no, not just two ideas. It's like a patchwork of 90s music (they even got some MTV rotation for jungle remixes of their songs).
The major labels and the MTV loved this, the band became big because of these... they alienated their "underground" fans with this more approachable sound, then they got tired of it, and alienated their new "overground" fans by making more "strange" albums again... and then they struggled to survive, but somehow, they managed.
On a side note, I read an interview somewhere where the singer expressed "guilt" for maybe starting the "nu metal" sound of the later 90s and the early millennium... huh?
But regardless of that, rest assured, Therapy? were more influential than you think.
This was my short retrospective for a band that got forgotten by the rest of the world, even though their sound might be bigger than ever. Maybe you enjoy their songs, too!
My top 5 Therapy? favorite songs:
1. Lonely Cryin' Only
2. Ghost Train
3. Loose
4. Teethgrinder
5. Stories