Category: news

Posted on October 6th 2026, 3:00pm

(Our writer DGR has been playing catch-up on records released earlier this year when other distractions interfered with writing about them. Beginning in mid-July he has delivered four Issues (which you can find here, here, here, and here), and now we have Issue Five bringing together extensive reviews of four more records released in preceding […]

The post CLEARING THE SLATE ISSUE FIVE appeared first on NO CLEAN SINGING.

Mudvayne albums ranked is a short list with a long argument in it. Five studio albums in nine years, three of them platinum, a number two debut, a Grammy nomination, and then nothing: a hiatus that started in 2010 and lasted until the band walked back on stage in 2021. In 2025 they released their first new songs in sixteen years, and in 2026 they came off the road again while Chad Gray tours a solo set. So this is a catalogue with a hard stop and a question mark, and it’s the right moment to rank it. The order is ours. The fight over the top two is yours.

How We Ranked Them

Three questions. Does the album still get played front to back, twenty years on, by people who weren’t fifteen when it came out? Did it change what Mudvayne were, or what nu metal was allowed to sound like? And does it hold up against the band’s own best, not against the year it was released? Chart positions and plaques are in here because they tell you what happened, not because they decide anything. Lost And Found outsold everything and it isn’t number one.

A word on the band, because the lineup never changed and that matters. Chad Gray, Greg Tribbett, Ryan Martinie and Matthew McDonough made all five albums. No drummer eras, no replacement singer, no lineup to blame. What changed was the paint, the producer and how much of the weirdness they let through. Those three things are most of this list.

5. Mudvayne (2009)

The blacklight album. The packaging was printed entirely in UV-reactive ink, so the sleeve looked like blank white paper until you held it under the lamp some editions shipped with. Tattoo artist Paul Booth drew the art. It is the most interesting thing about the record, and the band seemed to know it.

The songs were cut in the same 2008 sessions as The New Game, with Dave Fortman and Jeremy Parker producing, and it shows: this is the second half of a double album released a year late. ‘Beautiful And Strange’ and ‘Scream With Me’ are fine. Nothing here would make a Mudvayne set list over anything from the first three records.

Epic released it the week before Christmas 2009 with almost no promotion and no tour behind it. It sold about 34,000 copies in its first week, landed in the low fifties on the Billboard 200, and the band went on hiatus within months. For eleven years this was the last word, and it never deserved to be.

4. The New Game (2008)

The Hellyeah album, in the sense that it exists because of Hellyeah. Gray and Tribbett had spent 2006 and 2007 in the supergroup with Vinnie Paul, and The New Game was written when they got back, with Fortman producing in Louisiana. He called the sound ‘a little more earthy’ and ‘a little warmer’, which is producer language for more rock, less math.

It worked commercially. The album debuted at number 15 with 48,000 first-week copies, and ‘Do What You Do’ went to number two on the Mainstream Rock chart, the band’s second-biggest single ever. ‘Scarlet Letters’ followed it to number seven. If you only know Mudvayne from rock radio in 2008, this is the album you know.

It sits at four because it’s the first Mudvayne record that sounds like other bands. The time signatures are gone, Martinie is mixed like a bass player instead of a lead instrument, and the Pantera groove that Hellyeah ran on is all over it. Good songs. Not a Mudvayne album in the way the first three are.

3. Lost And Found (2005)

The hit. Lost And Found debuted at number two on the Billboard 200 with about 100,000 copies in its first week, went platinum, and ‘Happy?’ became the band’s only number one on the Mainstream Rock chart. ‘Determined’ got a Grammy nomination for Best Metal Performance, where it lost to Slipknot’s ‘Before I Forget’. By every commercial measure this is the biggest Mudvayne album.

It’s also the one where the makeup came off. After two albums of alien masks and stage names, the band appeared on the cover as four men in a field, and the music followed: Fortman’s first Mudvayne production is rawer and more direct, with Gray singing more and screaming less. ‘Forget To Remember’ and ‘Fall Into Sleep’ are the best clean-vocal songs he ever wrote.

So why three? Because the trade was real. The complexity that made the first two records strange is thinned out here, and the back half of the album drifts. Lost And Found is the Mudvayne album most people own and the one hardest-core fans play least. Both of those things are true, and that’s a three.

2. L.D. 50 (2000)

The debut, and for most of the fan base the number one, so let’s deal with that. L.D. 50 is the album that made Mudvayne a different proposition from every other band in the nu metal wave. Slipknot’s Shawn Crahan executive-produced it, Garth Richardson co-produced with the band, and the whole thing is built around Terence McKenna samples, McDonough’s interludes and a title that means median lethal dose.

‘Dig’ is the song, and the MTV2 award it won in 2001 was the moment: a band in paint doing something with rhythm that Korn and Limp Bizkit could not. Martinie’s bass is the lead instrument. ‘Death Blooms’, ‘Nothing To Gein’ and ‘Internal Primates Forever’ are still the heaviest things the band ever recorded. It peaked at number 85, went to number one on Heatseekers, and eventually went platinum on word of mouth alone.

It’s at two, not one, because it’s the sound of a band discovering what they can do rather than knowing it. The interludes break the run, the production is thin next to what came after, and the second half repeats the first. It’s the most important Mudvayne album. The best one came two years later.

1. The End Of All Things To Come (2002)

Everything L.D. 50 reached for, done on purpose. David Bottrill, who had just made Lateralus with Tool, produced it at Pachyderm in Minnesota, and the band spent four months writing and four months recording. McDonough said the songs were ‘even weirder’ than the debut, and he meant it: ‘Trapped In The Wake Of A Dream’ moves through 17/8 and 11/8 without ever sounding like a maths exercise.

It also has the two biggest songs the band ever wrote that weren’t a radio hit. ‘Not Falling’ and ‘World So Cold’ are Mudvayne at full strength, heavy and melodic at the same time, Gray switching between a scream and a croon in one line, Martinie doing things on a bass nobody else in the genre was attempting. The alien makeup and the pseudonyms peaked here too, and then they were gone.

The record debuted at number 17, went gold within a year and is now platinum. Rolling Stone and Spin hated it, which in 2002 was a compliment. It’s number one because it’s the only Mudvayne album with no weak stretch, the only one where the ambition and the execution match, and the one that still sounds like no other band. L.D. 50 announced them. This is what they were announcing.

The EP, The Compilation And The Sixth Album

For the record, because the comments will ask: Kill, I Oughtta (1997) is an independent EP, reissued in 2001 as The Beginning Of All Things To End, and it isn’t a studio album. By The People, For The People (2007) is a fan-selected compilation of demos, live cuts and alternate versions. Neither is ranked here.

The sixth album is the open question. Mudvayne signed with Alchemy Recordings in May 2025 and released ‘Hurt People Hurt People’ in August, their first new song in sixteen years, then ‘Sticks And Stones’ three weeks later, both produced by Nick Raskulinecz. Gray has since described the Alchemy agreement as a four-song deal rather than an album contract, and in March 2026 the band confirmed they’d be off the road for the whole year while he tours his 30 Years Of Madness solo show. There is no album title and no date. When there is, this list gets a sixth entry.

Where Mudvayne Sit In Nu Metal

Mudvayne were the band that proved the genre could be technical. Korn had the tuning and the trauma, Slipknot had the numbers and the chaos, Deftones had the atmosphere, and Mudvayne had a bass player who’d studied jazz and a drummer who wrote interludes. That’s why their first two records have aged better than most of the class of 2000: there’s more in them to find.

It’s also why the later albums land where they do on this list. Every step towards rock radio was a step away from the thing only Mudvayne could do, and the band seems to know it. The reunion sets lean on L.D. 50 and The End Of All Things To Come, and so does Gray’s solo show. If you want to understand what Chad Gray’s voice has been through across thirty years, start with those two records and work forward.

Full Ranking: Mudvayne Albums From Worst To Best

5. Mudvayne (2009)
4. The New Game (2008)
3. Lost And Found (2005)
2. L.D. 50 (2000)
1. The End Of All Things To Come (2002)

TL;DR

• Mudvayne made five studio albums between 2000 and 2009 with the same four members on all of them, then went silent for eleven years.
• Lost And Found is the commercial peak: a number two debut, platinum, and ‘Happy?’ at number one on rock radio. It ranks third here.
• L.D. 50 is the fan favourite and the most important record; The End Of All Things To Come is the best one, and that’s the argument.
• Two new songs arrived in 2025 under a four-song deal with Alchemy Recordings. No sixth album has been announced, and the band is off the road for 2026.

FAQ

Where does L.D. 50 sit on your list, and did we get the top two the wrong way round? Tell us in the comments and defend it. Follow Loaded Radio for every Mudvayne update as the sixth album takes shape.

The post Mudvayne Albums Ranked: All 5 Studio Albums From Worst To Best appeared first on Loaded Radio.

Drake has no love for the Grammys. He may not have peed on one of his trophies like Kanye West, but Aubrey Graham has been steering clear of the Recording Academy for years now, and it sounds like that pattern will continue in 2027.

The post Drake Is Boycotting The Grammys Again appeared first on Stereogum.

Former Creedence Clearwater Revival frontman recently earned the highest honor given by the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Continue reading…

Hayley Williams is finally busting out her non-Paramore hits at her solo shows. Right now, she’s on the tour dubbed the Hayley Williams Show. At a New York show last month, she sang her smash 2010 B.o.B. collab “Airplanes” for the first time since the song was new, with tourmate Rico Nasty doing B.o.B.’s parts. On Monday night in Los Angeles, Williams brought back another oldie: “Stay The Night,” her 2012 track with German EDM hitmaker Zedd. She also brought out Zedd himself.

The post Hayley Williams Brought Out Zedd For Her First Live Performance Of “Stay The Night” In 12 Years appeared first on Stereogum.

UK progressive sludge metal outfit Boss Keloid have unveiled a second single, “Pedestal”, from their upcoming sixth studio album, Float & Aperture. The album is set for release on October 23rd via Church Road Records.
Read more…

Flint, Michigan–born singer-songwriter Miko Marks takes us inside Redtone Records, the red-walled basement studio where she rehearses, in a house tied to the founding of East Palo Alto. She also recalls her first gig, a second-grade show with a $25 fee she never saw, and talks about the day job she still holds as social director at a tennis club.

I’m really excited to show everyone this song today. There’s a few styles of death metal that seem to endlessly endure over time, having been long-established as pillars of the sound’s brutal legacy. This includes the especially bestial variant on display with Invulation‘s new song, “Third Degree Warfare.” It’s a style that packs all the power of Immolation and Formulas-era Morbid Angel but is delivered with the blasphemous, iconoclastic attitude of bands like Angelcorpse, Archgoat and Blaspherian. There’s probably a bit of Hate Eternal and Dead Congregation in there as well.

But aside from these comparisons, here’s what you need to know: the song is a thrilling, well-composed composition of volcanic death metal. If you want to hear something that embodies sheer ferocity and power, it’s hard to beat a sound like this. Nothing needs to be innovated, reimagined, or reinvented here. All you need is dedication, good writing, and the right guitar tones.

Here’s what the project’s mastermind, Andrew Lampe, tells us about the song:

“Fire has always been a tool for inflicting maximum destruction and pain upon the enemy. Only the most diabolical will praise the inhumanity of war and the use of incendiary and chemical weapons on an entire population.”

Regarding the upcoming album, he sums it up with the cheerful thought that “”Humanity has brought its destruction upon itself through its endless desire for conquest and masochism — the culmination of our terminal illness bringing about a cleansing fire. The inferno now descends to burn away the mistakes of a people gone mad.”

Listen to “Third Degree Warfare” below (that song title goes hard, damn). And keep your ears set for October 30 when Inferno Descends will unleash its full destructive fire upon us all.

The post Track Premiere: Invulation – “Third Degree Warfare” appeared first on Decibel Magazine.

Posted on October 6th 2026, 2:30pm