CKY: VOLUME ONE

CKY's debut album 'Volume 1' is a wonderful time capsule of the 90s-2000s skate scene the band was so affiliated with. The oftentimes brash and unapologetically gritty sound of songs like '96 Quite Bitter Beings' and 'Disengage the Simulator' drive the album into underground greatness.

SCORE: 98/100

It keeps it's boldness and moves from subgenre to subgenre, from Marilyn Manson-esque one minute to nearly undefinable and certainly not up for comparison tracks the next, 'Volume 1' showcases the individual skillsets of the members of the band while staying true and masterfully capturing how well the members worked together on one of their earliest projects that would become a good chunk of the soundtrack to the CKY films and related culture that came with them.

Deron Miller and Jess Margera both bring the album to their highest points with the masterclass help of Chad I Ginsburg - a band this early into their career and so relatively unknown hypothetically shouldn't work as well as they do; but they manage to make an album better than some of the most mainstream and acclaimed rock albums you can find on the market. It isn't quite an oddity - but it doesn't have a huge reputation outside of a niche group of people, one of the things that makes the album so deeply enticing and wondrously enjoyable at every unexpected and strikingly executed turn.

The deeper cuts of the album manage to be just as good as the far and few "big" songs, with the opening track being the only song to really hit it big while the rest of the album was left somewhat in the shadows. The album is deeply consistent in its compositions and it stays true to the stylistic elements of the band and their affiliates while making an album where almost every song is the same level of amazing.

The runtime of the album manages to fly by faster than one might expect it to - and this is an album I'm glad I stopped putting off. It's a stunning showcase of artistic talent and it managed to help guide an entire subculture while the band still remained somewhat underground at its roots. Both the faster and slow songs work well, but it's clear that the band works better with fast-paced material than the slower, more grungy songs that come near the end of the album with 'Sara's Mask' in particular feeling a bit lacking when compared to the previous material.

It's a near-ten, but some moments near the end lead the album to drop slightly in quality, making it close - but not quite on the mark. 'Volume 1' is deeply impressive at its core and it manages to be enjoyable almost all the way through - with only the back ends of the album feeling weaker than the start and middle of the project. Despite the moments that don't hit quite as hard, the album is deeply cohesive and coherent in sound while keeping a grounded and enjoyable stylized sound for the band.

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