Bob Vila's Hammer's Journal: Nirvana

This album is what you get when you put a tortured poet who worships the true history of rock together with THE great rock drummer of our age, and a bass guitar purist who loves all instruments into the end of a hysterical decade. A triad that supplanted the might of The Beatles in our modern, numb, and overexposed reality. Their focused efficiency at playing together united the forces of a pure truth in a balance of emotions - pain, rage, and only a dimly reflecting hope. It was as if on this album the only way they had to go was into each other and you can hear it in these songs. The demanding and evolutionary themes in "Smells Like Teen Spirit", the pride and honesty present in "Come As You Are", to the needy revenge in "Drain You." But the escaping virtue that is "On a Plain" and the tired dying eye that is "Something in the Way" speak of the true nature of Nirvana's humanity. This invincible track listing only highlights the reflexive art in this band at this time. With a sound that brings to mind the grating churn of some ammorally designed machine recycling the history and future of our eternal, musical oblivion - of which Novoselic is the deepening thrum, Grohl is the engineered gear, and the delicate dearness of sinister Cobain's forebodingly depressive balladry, the screeching of the unkept joints. But searching for meaning in this terrific expression does not complete its purpose - you need only speak one word when attempting to fully understand the importance: "Nevermind."