Customer Reviews

Fuel for the Hate Game

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

a few months ago, for some zine, i made a list of the five most influential records in my life. here's what i came up with, in no particular order:

-hot water music "fuel for the hate game" -the suspects "voice of america" -avail "dixie" -the broadways "broken star" -fifteen "buzz"

"rock singer" is the greatest song ever written.

this is a band i hate to love. i've often encountered them as overly testosterone-driven and obnoxious. still, a live show and this album should be enough to overcome anyone's skepticism. as a whole HWM do their most beautiful things on this album. they dramatize tensions unexplored in any pop music heard today. that's hard to say for most punk and hardcore bands today. "fuel for the hate game" doesn't merely revisit moments in punk's past. nor does it follow ultimately formulaic inroads into "progressive" hardcore forged in DC or chicago. HWM chart their own path. they're not jawbreaker-plus. nor are they fugazi-minus. the gravelly voice, the off-time youth-crew yells, the pretty little bass-lines, the crunchy guitars. deconstruct them and you're sure you've heard them before. put them together, and it's a surprisingly original sound in the scene. their best overall album.

It's already known that Hot Water Music is the greatest band in the universe. This album fits somewhere in between the mellowed raw attitude of 'Flight and A Crash' and the raw mellowed attitude of 'Forever and Counting'. "Turnstile" is definitely one of those good ol' fasion punk anthems wheras "Rock Singer" is along the lines of a straight forward emo pop song the likes of which you would hear on an old Jimmy Eat World cd. Basically this is without a doubt the best i have heard from HWM.

ive been listening to hot water for 4 years now, and i own every song they have ever released, since push for coin. this cd is the most powerful, strong cd i have ever listened to, and listening to it has given me so much. i am not a musician, and i cant analyze this cd in that sense, but this music is so raw and amazing.. easily the best cd i have ever purchased.

I just Saw Hot Water Music 2/23/00 for the god knows how many times. This has to be one of Hot Water Musics Best albums, tied with No division. the music stylings of Hot Water Music change, yet they carry the same energy, and passion. this is the perfect album to relax to or Get psyched up with. It covers all the bases. If you are just looking at this I recomend buying this album, and all other hot water music albums. this album will make a believer out of you.

Ok, I'm biased. HWM are one of my favorite bands, have been for years. They put on some of the best, most impassioned, most frenetic shows I've ever seen.

This is technically their second CD, but it may as well be their first, as "Finding the Rhythms" is all but unlistenable. Thus, most fans start counting here, with FFTHG: It demonstrates the band really fleshing out their sound, testing their dynamic boundaries. The singers ably back each other- the call/response harmonic shouting/screaming/singing is alchemical in drawing the listener's emotions out. Some of their best stuff is on this CD: Turnstile, Trademark and Freightliner are wonderfully excellent. Having said that, there are some sleeper tunes on this, at least in my opinion. Some of the cuts later in the CD- I find myself skipping them repeatedly. The good ones more than take up the slack. If you're into kinetic, brutal yet melodic rock (I hate all the interminable emo subcategorizations that people forever dredge up- it's ROCK when it just plain rocks people), you could do far, far worse.

Recommended!

After hearing "Caution", "flight and a crash", and "freightliner" on tony hawk 4, i knew that i had to get this album. Some say hot water music is okay, but it's much more than that. Whether it's doing the alkaline trio song "radio" or doing what they've done before, it's redoing rock and putting into something that has a point and is great. Anybody that likes HWM has a musical ear for anything with talent.

This is still one of my favorite CDs to listen to 5 years after I first heard it. People will say that HWM has changed for the worse due to Epitaph Records but don't get sidetracked with all of that. The one amazing thing about HWM is that no two records are ever alike and each one has its own feel and flavor to it. However, Fuel for the Hate Game has to be one of their best releases ever. Between the driving gutar parts of songs like "Rock Singer", and the melodic dual-guitar riffs of "Blackjaw" and "Freightliner", this record will amaze everyone from the hardcore fan to the first-time listener.

I can't express fully in words how much i enjoy this cd. Every once in a while you will hear a cd that the first song on the cd grabs you and makes you want to listen to it over and over. That song is "220 years" and i still listen to it at least twice every time i listen to this cd.

I have only seen Hot Water Music live one time, but it was wonderful!! They were so tight and good live. And MAN!! their bass player is great!!!!!!!!!

if you like Hot Water Music.....Check out Small Brown Bike, I promise you won't be disapointed!!!!!!

All of Hot Water Musics albums stand alone. Each one rocks in a differnt way. No Fuel for the Hate Game is my favorite though. To me it is the most beautifully written. Although the classics like "Turnstile" and "BlackJaw" are amazing it is the songs "220 Years" and "The Sleeping Fan" that define the mood of this album. They seem to have an etherial quality absent from the other albums. If you don't have any Hot Water albums, buy this one. If you have other Hot Water albums, but not this one, buy this one.