Tantrum of the Muse: ModernMu$ick(2000)! (5/5)

Year: 2000
Label: Takehold
Genre: Experimental Post-Hardcore
TRT: 44:01

This album was one of my first tastes of truly chaotic music back in 2002, and eight years after it's release, ModernMu$ick(2000)! still holds it's own.

This sophmore (and ultimately, final) release from Stephen Mark Sarro's brainchild delves further into the realm of off-time dissonance than the 1998 debut The Heart is a Two-Headed Sperm, while simultaneously maturing and refining their signuature sound into a cohesive monstrosity.

Both albums deal with the darker side of humanity, but this album is far more subtle in it's attack. Once in an instant messenger conversation, Sarro expressed to me how he hardly refers to himself as a Christian anymore, because of the Church's misdirection and inconsistancy in our day and age. The reluctance of TotM to migrate to Tooth & Nail records once Takehold went under is surely a testament to that. Even if thay had though, I doubt T & N would have kept them for long, as the chorus for 10-10-99 / $Screw the Christian Industry$ would have probably struck a little too close to home:
"...Liars, whores, hypochrites, theives, all in the family of God.
Try and sell this...try and sell this...try and sell this"

01 Bowels of Elkton
02 Went to Hell
03 Chicks W/ Guns
04 Eunuch (The Sinai Orgies)
05 Happy As a Lark
06 Conestoga Cougars
07 10-10-99 / $Screw the Christian Industry$
08 Milk & Meat
09 Victoria Has a Secret
10 Caught With Your Halo Around Your Knees
11 I Bury the Living
12 Chiroptera Armada
13 Send Them the Cow

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