Strictly Diesel

I am a big Spineshank fan but this album is not that good at all, it was made too early in their career and it shows. The Height of Callousness is a miles ahead of this album, so I'd buy that instead. This is only for the hardcore Spineshank fan, but if your just looking for a good Nu-Metal album, look elsewhere.

arriving on the scene with the stamp of approval from fear factory hopes were high for spineshank.
they would deliver on those high hopes,but it wasn`t until their second album "the height of callousness" and its follow up.
unfortunately this is the predesessor to those albums and its more than a little disappointing.
its stuck very firmly in the nu-metal mould and as such time has not been kind to it,there is the odd flash of greatness here and there,grey and 40 grit are great tunes but there is alot of filler and a hell of alot of bland obvious nu-metal that it all blends into one large blob of whiny vocals mixed with needless shouting.
add into the mix the token band nu-metal cover,this lot felt the urge to wreck while my guitar gently weeps,and it is truly a horrible version of the song,and you have a cliched and generally uninspired mix of songs.
if you are a completist then you will buy this anyway,but if you only have a passing interest in spineshank then i would suggest starting at album 2 and not looking back

I just bought this and listened to it without skipping a track, and I felt great. I agree wholeheartedly with the other reviewers that the second album Height of Callousness is the one to buy, if you were going to buy just one. However I believe it is worth emphasising that this band are actually very good, and had a significant nu metal achievement with 3 albums. That is because this band should have sold a lot more albums than they actually have so far, and for some reason people of doubtful musical ability have decided that Spineshank are a lesser nu metal band. I read the comments by kids on youtube eg. 'are you serious spineshank?'. Well I believe that hordes of nu metal fans could easily overlook a band creating good nu metal music, and I think that is what happened in this case.

I think the album deserves 4/5.
I like it because:

1. The title 'Strictly diesel' amuses me.
2. 'While my guitar gently weeps' is a reasonable choice of a song to cover. It reveals the sinister part of Harrison's song, that is camoflaged on the original, which is the lyric 'I look at you all'.
3. It doesn't have predictable choruses, and predictable and overly memorable choruses quickly bore people of high musical ability like me. That is probably why the nu metal bands I like are spineshank and korn.
4. There is a great sense of flow, after departing from one lyrical riff, although there is sometimes 4x repetition of a phrase, which is almost too much imo, it flows onwards to a fills and riff fragments that might not be expected which renders the 4x repetition compositionally justifiable. They have made the deliberately unsophisticated but trendy idea bearable on numerous occasions.
5. Excellent musicians.
6. Polyphony without the hype. Most nu metal bands have these rather obvious bits of polyphony typically at the end of the song, they've got the big mechanical riff going and now there is going to be a backing vocalist going oooooohhhhh----oohhh---ohhh (repeat), and you're NOT going to miss it, because its the unmissable attempt at creating a sophisticated moment. I'm glad to say that Spineshank include polyphonic backing vocals quite a lot and this does not appear only when you are sick of the song and metaphorically expecting no light at the end of the tunnel, it appears at variable stages of song development and it is not always incredibly loud in the mix or after a moment that is lacking something.
7. The vocal delivery is distinctive and unlike other nu metal vocalists, I really like the voice and its detectable that Santos is energetic.
8. Its noticable that Spineshank have different influences / tendencies to other nu metal bands. I really like sample heavy rhythmic electronica albums including DJ shadow's Entroducing and Amon Tobin's Supermodified. These are rather high brow pursuits by nu metal standards, however it seems to me that Spineshank push many similar buttons by having excellent percussion on record.
9. The song structures are great, and sophisticated enough to avoid predictability.
10. They create a big sound whilst all members play similarly complex material.

I've probably missed a few explanations as to why Spineshank are great and musically better than the majority of nu metal bands, but hopefully that'll do for now.

I say to Spineshank fans, lets stop unconfidently mumbling about this album. Its a good debut by a band who did what was required for the genre of nu metal incredibly well. The problem is the low album sales, and trendy disregard for spineshank by nu metal kids near the start of the nu metal genre, not the music on Spineshank's albums, which is what matters.