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I want to talk about an album from the early/mid-90's that flew under everyone's radar. Sometime in 1994 I saw a video on Headbanger's Ball for a song called "Sold My Fortune" by a band called Sugartooth. This was the era of massive popularity for Nirvana, Pearl Jam and grunge music in general and bands like Soundgarden and Alice In Chains who were lumped in with the grunge sound, but made no attempts to hide their metal influences in their sound were able to appeal to both mainstream audiences and metalheads alike. [Not that hard rock/metal bands reaching wide audiences hadn't happened before and doesn't happen all the time still. I could name a million examples, but Black Sabbath, Kiss, Metallica, Motley Crue, Guns N Roses, Stone Temple Pilots, Godsmack, Slipknot and Tool all illustrate the point. For purposes of this blog though, Soundgarden and AIC are perfect representations of what kind of sound the major labels thought was "in" at the time.] Because of this major labels began signing every band that fell under the hard rock-metal-grunge umbrella...and with mixed results. Certainly some great bands were discovered, but a lot of them seemed to present marketing dilemmas. Does this video belong on Headbanger's Ball or 120 Minutes? Specialty metal shows or mainstream rock radio? Do we try to get them on tour with Slayer or Sponge? And thus, a lot of great bands fell through the cracks and went unnoticed by the public at large (which is of course simply the reality of the music business). Sugartooth was one of them.
Sugartooth's self-titled release doesn't redefine music or even the hard rock genre, but it is a really great record that begs repeated listens and has aged nicely in the 15 years since its release. If you like bands that walk the line between hard rock and metal, then this release is for you. Certainly if you are a fan of Soundgarden, Alice In Chains, Stone Temple Pilots, Tad, Danzig and Kyuss (coincidentally, the drummer served a stint in Danzig and is now a member of Queens of the Stone Age), then this is worth hunting down. The albums is long out of print, but I can't imagine it wouldn't be available somewhere out there on file sharing sites. [Fun fact: The singer/guitarist and bassist contributed the music to Howard Stern's "Tortured Man" that was put together by the Dust Brothers for the Private Parts soundtrack and is still featured in the outro to Howard's show everyday.]
"Sold My Fortune"
"Sheffield Milestone"
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