Mudhoney

Under a Billion Suns

(Sub Pop)

Record Review by Alexis Roberts

They’ve done it again!  After nine albums and almost 20 years, Mudhoney are still going strong.  All of their previous releases have been off the charts but this one just smashed the charts to bits, proving that these old dudes can still rock harder than 95 percent of the bands out there today. 

If you haven’t been listening to Mudhoney prior to this album, it’s alright, because this is the perfect album to get you caught up on who they are and what they’re about.  On Under a Billion Suns they’ve managed to put all of the best aspects from their past albums into these 11 songs:  Hendrix-like guitar solos, a horn section, constant energy and intensity throughout every song, and deep, bulky vocals.  Mudhoney even get political on this disc; in “Hard-On for War,” singer Mark Arm wails out “I’m just a dirty old man / with a hard-on for war” (which is typically out of character for these kicked-back gentlemen from Seattle).  Although that song is enticing, it’s not the most defining; it shouldn’t come as a shock that the cardinal track is none other than the title track.

Sub Pop should be very proud of themselves for signing Mudhoney in 1988, because they have remained one of the label’s most noteworthy bands.  They outlived the rise and fall of “grunge” and stuck to the sound that they play well, rather than trying to keep up with the latest trends in music.  There are a lot of bands that need to take lessons from Mudhoney on how to be successful as musicians.  These men have mastered the formula of Longevity + Persistence + sticking to your roots = Greatness.  Hell, they created the formula.