Well I managed to resurrect Mix Tape Monday already, so why not work on bringing back our Throwback Thursdays? It is ambitious sure, since a Thursday is substantially more in the middle of a week than a Monday is, but I got a good feeling about this, but I also make no promises. Anyway, this week I will be taking a look back at one of the most ridiculous releases in music history that is also incredibly awesome, the soundtrack to the Emilio Estevez star vehicle, “Judgment Night“.

Now it has been a long damn time since I have actually seen this movie, so I won’t pretend to remember it very well, but that really doesn’t matter for our purposes. It was a simpler time back then. As I mentioned, Emilio Estevez still had a career as the legend of Gordon Bombay had dazzled audiences just a year prior. The likes of Pearl Jam and Mudhoney and Teenage Fanclub were alternative rocking their way into the mainstream, and rappers like Ice-T and House of Pain were also garnering mainstream fame. I’m not really sure where rap-metal/rock first hit, but the first time I really remember hearing it in full force, and also seeing its popularity, was on the Anthrax remix/collaboration on the classic Public Enemy track “Bring Tha Noize”. That song kicked all kinds of ass, so then you started to see this bubble up and sprout up all around. You had Rage Against the Machine drop their debut the next year with their own brand of rap/rock, as well as bands like Faith No More and Living Colour. Anyway, the stuff was getting popular is all I’m saying, and so in 1993 this nuclear bomb of rap/rock collaborations drops on us in the form of the Judgment Night soundtrack. The most beautiful thing about this album is that rap-metal was in its infancy (not fully developed with crap like Limp Bizkit and shit now) so everyone has their own take on what to do with it. First of all let me lay out for you the track list and artist combos contained herein before I speak on this:

1. Just Another Victim – Helmet/House Of Pain
2. Fallin’ – Teenage Fanclub/De La Soul
3. Me, Myself & My Microphone – Living Colour/Run-DMC
4. Judgment Night – Biohazard/Onyx
5. Disorder – Slayer/Ice-T
6. Another Body Murdered – Faith No More/Boo-Yaa T.R.I.B.E.
7. I Love You Mary Jane – Sonic Youth/Cypress Hill
8. Freak Momma – Mudhoney/Sir Mix-A-Lot
9. Missing Link – Dinosaur Jr./Del Tha Funkee Homosapien
10. Come and Die – Therapy?/Fatal
11. Real Thing – Pearl Jam/Cypress Hill

Yep, wrap your head around that right there and try to imagine what this thing sounds like. Anyway, there are some pretty amazing tracks on this album, some that border on insanity and some that are 100% WTF. First of all, my favorite is definitely “Missing Link” mainly because I love the shit out of Dinosaur Jr. and this is such a fucking smooth ass track. He truly is the king of chops and hearing him back up Del on that track is just amazing. Not that anyone doubts J Mascis, but his work here is greatness (all the way down to the droning backing vocals on the chorus).

Another great track here is the Teenage Fanclub/De La Soul track “Fallin”, which is incredibly chill, falling very much into De La Soul’s wheelhouse and playing in that jazz/funk/rap kind of stuff that was starting to get popular around then (ie. Fugees and stuff). It also has a pretty sweet Tom Petty “Free Fallin’” sample in there, making it a song that 100% could not be made again today most likely. The Living Colour/Run DMC song is really good and they work really well together. The other seemingly perfect match on here is Faith No More and Boo-Ya T.R.I.B.E. on “Another Body Murdered”, as the song just works perfectly with a nice Mike Patton ghoulish goth choral vocal backing on the chorus. Pearl Jam and Cypress Hill is pretty good as well, and sounds very un-Pearl Jam-y. Of course Cypress Hill gets TWO songs on this bitch, the second of which is a song with Sonic Youth (!?) about smoking weed (of course). Yes the song is called “I Love You Mary Jane”.

“Judgment Night” is the title track from Biohazard and Onyx (yes, you do remember them, they did that song “Slam”, yea you got it now). It is an ok song, but not the strongest on here, and it is probably the “hardest” of the songs on here, but it is not the most “hardcore” I would say. That honor would have to go to the Slayer and Ice-T collaboration entitled “Disorder”.

The song starts with a rebel scream of “WAAAAARRRRRR” and then “our government is fucked, sure to bring us down”, something about the media, blah blah etc. A LOT of shouting of “WWWWAAARRRRR!!!!!” over steady Slayer shred riffs. This song is absolutely ridiculous and I am kind of in love with it. On a lot of these songs you can tell that the rapper took over the song and that is the general theme on the album, but here you can tell Slayer told Ice-T “listen dude, stand in the corner and when we point at you you read off this sheet and yell war, we will shred from over here”. About halfway Slayer says a big fuck you to Ice-T and basically cuts him out entirely and just starts going fucking crazy the last half of the song. The most absurd song on the record by a long shot, and this is why this album is awesome, because it is retarded but totally awesome at the same time.

The other incredibly out there song on here is the Mudhoney and Sir-Mix-A-Lot collaboration (did I just type that? man how did this record ever get made?). Mudhoney gives a pretty good backing track on this number but it is jarring when Mix jumps in and starts rapping about booty, thick lips, sex. Also the most meta/inside line of the whole thing, “I wanna put ya in the Mud, Honey”. For shame, Mix. The song is also called “Freak Momma”. Insanity.

Anyway, this album is not only ridiculous, it is awesome and has some really awesome tracks on it. Pretty much every single track is incredibly solid despite my joking on some of these above. These are the kinds of collaborations that are very much of that early 90s era because of who is involved, but it is also awesome to see so many really good artists collaborating and essentially jumping off into a genre that didn’t really exist at that time. It is pretty awesome and fascinating to see what they came up with, and it still stands up great today.

Dinosaur Jr. and Del Tha Funkee Homosapien – Missing Link – From Judgment Night
Teenage Fanclub and De La Soul – Fallin’ – From Judgment Night
Slayer and Ice-T – Disorder – From Judgment Night