Customer Reviews

Life on Display

5 star:		(59)
4 star:		(24)
3 star:		(16)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(41)

 

 

This album is not a bad listen. 'Life On Display' reminds me of Staind's album '14 Shades Of Gray'. But then where Fred Durst is concerned, what would one expect? This album is great for it opens its 13 track listing with a gem of a song called 'Away From Me', that easily became a hit. Three other songs for me set this album apart from the nu-rock scene and the offering of albums daily and they were 'Change My Mind', 'Spin You Around' and 'Freak Of The World'.

I cannot for the life of me figure out why this particular album recieved so many bad reviews. Puddle Of Mudd is a highly inventive band that does not sound the same or mundane. And each song has its own particular sound and theme. The lyrics to 12 of the 13 songs, anyone listening can at least find some common ground with the lead singer.

Give Puddle Of Mudd a try....you won't be disappointed.

This is a great album to own if you enjoy mainstream rock!! You will be listening to every single song over and over until you're spinning around, and going heel over head, lol!!

I can't stand all the Nirvana fans who blast this band. It saddens me that you cannot get over the loss of your favorite artists (which was like what.. 10-15 years ago) and begin to re-recognize great new music when you hear it. Just because it may sound similar to another band, doesn't mean you should hate it. I don't hate Pepsi for tasting similar to Coke.

"Away From Me" (5/5): The lead single is a really great song.
"Heel Over Head" (4/5): Another solid P.O.M. tune that could have been heard on Come Clean.
"Nothing Left To Lose" (2/5): This song does nothing for me, at all.
"Change My Mind" (3/5): This slow paced song is ok, but nothing more.
"Spin You Around" (3/5): Another average, at best, song.
"Already Gone" (3/5): The trend of decent, but not memorable songs continue here.
"Think" (2/5): THINK again if you play this one, skip to the next song.
"Cloud 9" (5/5): Finally! Wes and company hit us with an awesome song, the best song since the opener.
"Bottom" (3/5): Wes' whining in this song gets pretty tiresome, but the music's good.
"Freak Of The World" (4/5): This track will keep you singing along.
"Sydney" (3/5): Not a bad song, kind of reminds me of "Drift And Die" off of the last record.
"Time Flies" (3/5): Though the song is not a thrilling conclusion, it's not a horrible one.

Puddle Of Mudd's sophmore effort, in my opinion, doesn't quite live up to the last album. Some albums are different because the music's different, but here the music sounds the same as the last album and still doesn't manage a great response.

Rating: Three stars

A brief lesson on recycled grunge. First you had the Brilliance of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Alice in Chains. Then came STP and Candlebox who were slightly derivative but great nonetheless. Starting to get ugly, bands like 7 Mary 3 and Creed were to follow and finally you have utter waste like Nickelback ("I like your pants around your feet..." nuff said) and Puddle of Mudd. The faux-grunge is recycled every few years and with each new band it becomes more and more watered down. Not buying it? Look at lyrics alone. Read the lyrics of Nirvana (sheer poetry), Pearl Jam or even Candlebox. Now read the lyrics of ANY Puddle of Mudd album and compare. At least the first album had a couple of somewhat catchy tunes. What does Life on Display bring to the table? Nothing. I think it actually leaves a vaccume. Sorry guys you're a day late and a dollar short.

In this day and age, we don't expect rock and roll bands to reinvent the wheel. As long as they're competent musicians and songwriters and have maybe a trace of originality, I'm content with that. Which brings me to Puddle Of Mudd.

You want to talk about getting a lucky break? Frontman Wes Scantlin approached music industry impresario / reviled Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst with his demo tape, and evidently Durst liked what he heard enough to sign Puddle Of Mudd to his Flawless label. Come Clean came out in 2001, and let's put it this way - if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then these guys are clearly enamored with Nirvana and Alice In Chains. Musically they pretty much paid homage to these bands throughout the whole album, and went multi-platinum with their derivative sound.

Now comes their follow-up effort, Life On Display. Sophomore jinx? If you liked Come Clean, absolutely not - this much is true: They aren't fixing what isn't broken, hoping that they'll hit paydirt once again. I suppose you could call them consistent, and that's true to a degree.

But in all of their mimicry of the Seattle-area rockers, they forgot one important element that was great about those bands - the conviction and depth of the songs themselves. Say what you will about those bands, but they addressed song topics that were seldom covered before - they were a breath of fresh air when radio stations were mostly playing hair-metal bands and their songs boasting about partying and their prowess with the ladies.

Puddle Of Mudd's biggest flaw comes to light when you listen to the lyrics - with only a few exceptions ("Spin You Around", "Sydney"), they're all one-dimensional rants about ex-girlfriends that did them wrong., and they're all written in the banal prose of a high school dropout. The best lyrics can be a window to the writer's soul, and to that end we are to believe that Scantlin is "drowning in a pool of misery", that he is "the freak of the world", and that he's "gonna sink in the ocean". Sure Wes, but obviously that's nothing that wads of cash and an actress girlfriend can't fix, right? And we haven't even covered vacuous songs like "Think", "Spin You Around" (with the irritating chorus "If I saw you dancing / I would spin you around" repeated incessantly), or "Cloud 9" ("Trash, bash, kill myself, eat a bunch of trash / Trash, bash, get some cash and spend it on some drugs" - yeah, Wes, we can really feel your pain now). Scantlin tries to convince us that he's a tormented individual, but the lyrics are more likely to induce laughter than sympathy.

In summary: An unoriginal band that compounds it with ridiculous lyrics, Puddle Of Mudd are a band that borders on self-parody. They would be tolerable if they spent more time on their songs, but they sold so many albums before using the same lazy approach to songwriting, so why change now? You can do worse than this album, but you can also do far better.

Lots of you seem to think that if a band gets on TRL or MTV that it is a good band. Well, that's just not the case. TRL is top 40. Who the F*** cares about TRL. It is designed for POPULAR music. Teeny boppers and preps are the only ones who get into this imitation music. If you pay attention to your music like I do, you'd notice that 1) Wes can't sing worth anything, and 2) POM is just a bad ripoff of all the great grunge bands of the late 80's and early 90's. True grunge bands have talent all around so that all instruments can get involved and contribute to the music. The great bands write music so that the bass can carry the melody at times and the drums do more than just keep the beat. Oh, and stop comparing POM to Led Zeppelin, Nirvana, and Pink Floyd . Unlike POM, these bands have left a legacy, and have contributed to the industry, for years to come. So, my point is, don't worry about what critics say, listen to it, pay attention to it, but don't listen to what other people say. Make your decisions based on the qualiy of the music and stay away from Puddle of Mudd because they just aren't quality

this record is terrible. nothing like come clean. away from me is ok, but the rest is laughable.

This album was definetly better the first time I heard it back in the 90's, by a band called Alice in Chains. I cannot believe that a group of supposedly talented musicians could come up with a CD full of such garbage. On this album absolutely 0% originality is achieved. Basically it sounds like a mix tape of really good 90s rock music. Of course, to the ear it sounds ok, but when you realize that every sound and every sentence of lyrics you hear are things you've heard before, put into a blender- it's pretty bad. This CD is for sure going to start the bands downfall (if they were ever actually high enough to fall). They should be embarrased with this release. Don't waste your money on this. If you must hear it download it. Support good music, not this crap.

Ok I know they had strong links to Fred Durst and the fast dying genre that is nu-metal but I never expected this. Whilst some of the material on Come Clean was poor, there were obvious standout tracks such as Blurry and P*** it All Away plus more that were very listenable to.

There is not a single track on this album that I enjoy listening to. It's all the same, the same whiny 'I hate my girlfriend' theme all the way. It's absolutely abysmal unlistenable to bilge.

What were they thinking when they recorded it who on earth could enjoy this. Listening to it makes me feel ill and confirms my suspicions that Puddle of Mudd could well be one of the worst bands on the entire earth. The only reason I haven't given it no stars is because I can't.

Avoid this like the plague.

I'm aware they have their critics - some of them really quite vicious - but I actually like Puddle of Mudd. Sure, they are clearly inspired and influenced by Nirvana but so what? Come Clean was one of my top ten buys of 2001, with songs like "control", "drift and die", "she hates me", "p*** it all away" and my all-time favourite tune, "blurry".

So I was really looking forward to this release in 2003 and I bought it as soon as it came out. It isn't as good as "come clean", there's no running away from that fact, but it's still a pretty good selection of songs and I thoroughly enjoy playing it. "Away From Me", "Change My Mind", "Think", "Sydney" and "Time Flies" are my favourite songs on the album though. (I just love the instrumental break ending to "Time Flies"). At least they write and play their own songs (very capably, I might add) and the fact that they manage to carry it off (sounding reminiscent of Nirvana, that is), is worthy of admiration in my mind. True, Kurt Cobain and his cohorts were phenomenally talented and successful but that doesn't make them sacrosanct. As far as I'm concerned, it's no different to Frank McComb sounding awfully like Donnie Hathaway. If Wesley Reid Scantlin and his bunch of dudes can continue as they started, I say more power to them.

A new album, Famous, is due out soon. Personally, I can't wait.