Placebo - Without You I'm Nothing (1998)

And so we do another non-metal album. For those of you who haven't heard of Placebo, they are a 3 piece Alternative Rock band from London, England. They currently consist of Brian Molko (Vocals & Guitar), Stefan Olsdal (Guitar & Bass), and Steve Forrest (Drums). They are currently signed to PIAS and Vagrant Records, and formed in 1994. Stefan Olsdal is openly gay, and Brian Molko is openly bisexual and has a sort of androgynous image, but that shouldn't effect the music for you. Now for the review.

Without You I'm Nothing is Placebo's second album (the first being their 1996 self-titled debut album), had a slightly different line-up from their current one, in that Steven Hewitt was the drummer for this album. The album consists of 12 tracks which include "Pure Morning", "Brick Shithouse", "You Don't Care About Us", "Ask For Answers", "Without You I'm Nothing", "Allergic (To Thoughts of Mother Earth)", "The Crawl", "Every You Every Me", "My Sweet Prince", "Summer's Gone", "Scared of Girls", and "Burger Queen" (which contains the hidden track "Evil Dildo"). With this album, you can just put it on and relax. It's got a calm vibe to it, even though some of the songs have a bit more kick to them. It has a rock tone to most of the album with a couple of slow songs here and there. The album's longest song "Burger Queen" is 22:39 long and has almost 8 minutes of dead air in the song before the hidden track kicks in. They could have just saved the time and cut it into two tracks instead of having the listener wait all that time. Also with Burger Queen, it starts off really mellow and relaxing, and then when the hidden track starts, it's fast paced and hyper sounding, which kind of threw me off guard. I'm normally a fan of geting caught off guard with albums, but this wasn't one of those times, mainly because of the drawn out waiting. So in a sense, the only flaw to the album is the track Burger Queen, where the rest of the album is extremely well done. "Pure Morning" was the first single from the album, they made a video for it as well (depicting someone about to jump off a building while people gather around to see if they will jump). Also. if you've ever seen the movie "Cruel Intentions" then you'll know the track "Every You Every Me" as it was the opening track in the movie.

Overall, the album flowed very well, with the only hiccup being at the very end of it. You should get this album if you're into A Perfect Circle, Muse, Silversun Pickups, Blur, Radiohead, or Keane. The album was released on October 12, 1998 and is available on amazon and itunes.

Overall Rating: 4.7 out of 5

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Placebo's Website