Troublegum: 1994 album from Irish group Therapy? One of the best aggro albums I've ever heard, a blend of pop-ish punk and very serious metal with some eery distortion effects. It's not too heavy, but great stuff to mosh to.

The songs on Troublegum seem to be largely about the thoughts of a psychopath in the making. As such, most of the lyrics are fairly dark and violent, but done with more intelligence than most similar albums.

This album was one of the first to really play with CD cover design. It's a clear jewel case, and the front cover shows a man in a disturbing flesh-toned bodysuit burrowing into a metal trash can. The CD itself looks like the lid of the same trash can, and the inset underneath it shows the inside of the can, which is almost full of ominous residue like syringes, condoms, crumpled pornography, a knife and a dead rat. I did mention "dark and violent", didn't I?

Tracklist (US version):

  1. Knives
  2. Screamager ("with a face like this I won't break any hearts, and thinking like that I won't make any friends...")
  3. Hellbelly
  4. Stop It You're Killing Me ("idiots authority promising equality - so where is the land of the free? stop it you're killing me...")
  5. Nowhere ("Heaven kicked you out, you wouldn't wear a tie...")
  6. Die Laughing
  7. Unbeliever
  8. Trigger Inside
  9. Lunacy Booth
  10. Isolation
  11. Turn ("Barging into the presence of God...")
  12. Femtex ("Masturbation saved my life, I was nervous as a child...")
  13. Unrequited
  14. Brainsaw
  15. The last song, a hidden track, is a recording of a scratched record playing "You are my Sunshine" in an endless loop. After about five minutes this becomes the most annoying thing on Earth. Rumour has it that the original end track was an even more annoying recording of pure noise.

A few of these songs are also available on the "Hats off to the Insane" EP.

For some reason, although "Troublegum" was one of Therapy?'s best selling albums worldwide, it is now incredibly hard to find in the US. If anybody knows the reason for this, please message me.

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