Songs That Take Me Back 4

More Songs From The 2000s That Take Me Back

I feel like giving the early to mid 2000s another shake. Much like the 90s, I had a lot of fun during this time period. The party didn't end until just right past the middle of the decade. I wish it would last longer, but such is life. You know as they say "Don't be sad that it's over. Be glad that it happened at all." I'm glad I got to experience the 90s and early 2000s.

God Forbid - Precious Lie

I was super tempted to just simply select "Anti-Hero" because that's the first God Forbid song I've heard and definitely does take me back. However, I went with "Precious Lie" because it was my friend's favorite song from them. He was one of those guys that was perpetually lovesick. So, the chorus landed right on his heart. Eventually, him being constantly lovesick annoyed the rest of us and it bit him in the ass. He lost a full ride scholarship because of pussy. Not even good pussy, straight-up mediocre pussy. Eventually, he got his life back on track and now he's doing great. God, bless that man.

Mastodon - Crusher Destroyer

I'm pretty sure this was the first song I heard from the bad as I loved Tony Hawk's Underground. I went out to purchase Remission on CD and was blown away . I love the dinosaur roar at the beginning. And that insane drumming! I've never heard anything like that before. I used to be part of the academic decathlon back in high school and one of my speeches was about how awesome Mastodon was. Believe it or not, I did win a medal, just not with the Mastodon speech. My teacher would regularly bring up Mastodon forever after that. He was a funny guy. He retired before I graduated. I hope he's doing alright.

Disturbed - Down With The Sickness

Not only did this song pop up often on the radio, it was also featured in several Stickdeath videos. I remember the one where one of tha characters summoned a demon and this song played throughout. The early internet was a wild west of content. There was no restrictions, no censorship, no rules; just pure chaos. It was awesome. Nowadays, everyone uses the exact same sites and those sites are regulated to hell. You have to specifically hunt for obscure websites that still let you goof off. Man, I miss Stickdeath. It was awesome.

Blink 182 - Rock Show

This reminds me of a friend I had during the final years of elementary, middle, and early high school. He adored this band and played "Take Off Your Pants and Jacket" on constant rotation. He moved in right across the street before sixth grade, stayed there for a year or two, then constantly moved around the valley until we lost track of each other. He was never into the heavy stuff, but we share our enjoyment of bands like Incubus and Alien Ant Farm. We used to ride skateboards and watch edgy teen movies like "Van Wilder" and "Not Another Teen Movie" at the theater. Fun times.

Capharnaum - Fractured

Much like Arsis, Capharnaum where one of the bands that introduced me to death metal. In case you don't know, Matt Heafy of Trivium provides the vocals on this record and he deliveres phenomenal screams. When I was first getting into death metal, I found it difficult to get past the guttural vocals. Hell, I still find them rather comical at times and poke fun of them. However, Heafy's approach here is to utilize a more hardcore style shout instead of the usual deep gurgling style. It's more along the lines of something you would hear on a Hatebreed or Knocked Loose record. I actually wish more death metal bands would adopt this style of screaming. I forgot to mention what memories this song unlocked. Really, it just takes me right to that chair in front of the family computer in the living room surfing the web and exploring more metal. Capharnaum was a great find and I wish Matt Heafy would have stuck with this band instead of Trivium. Then again, I suspect there's no money in tech-death. So, maybe Heafy chose wisely after all.

Mnemic - Liquid

Mnemic was the perfect mixture of Fear Factory, Meshuggah, \& nu-metal. I bought this album at Tower Records. Tower Records doesn't exist anymore. I had their first album on constant rotation and I would listen to it on the school bus and in class on a CD player. CD players aren't popular anymore. Hell, they barely even exist. I remember jamming this in class with my headphones and some girl asked me "What are you listening to?". I just handed her my headphones so she can listen. We became good friends after that.

Ozzy Osbourne - Junkie

I purchased this record not long after I acquired the Randy Rhoads Tribute live album. My metal buddy and I would listen to this album constantly and my favorite was this song. I don't know what it means for a middle schooler to love listening to a song about a drug addict, but it was cool. During this time, we where into the Yu-Gi-Oh trading card game and cartoon. I distinctly remember our teacher asking "Why are you guys playing with those cards?". I replied "Because we're junkies!". My friend and I just laughed. Hahaha.

Nelly Furtado - Turn Off The Light

I actually don't even like this song and I think it's mostly because I don't appreciate Nelly's voice. However, this song does take me back to the time our entire middle class made an annual end of the school year trip to Big Surf, a water park. This song happened to be playing while we where splashing around. I don't why, but it was when this particular song was playing that I realized that middle school is over and we may never see each other again. For the most part, that became true. However, I still maintain strong friendships with buddies I met during this time. My time in middle school was one of the best times of my life.

Looking Back

The early 2000s for me occupied sixth grade, middle school, and my first two years of high school. By this time, I was already a full-fledged rocker. I was also transitioning from nu-metal and alternative rock to metalcore, and then the more extreme forms of the music like death and black metal. I was no longer listening to pop music unless it happened to pop up on a radio that someone else turned on. I was looking to buy CDs or find the music online or hear about it through friends.

Towards the middle of the decade, the internet had pretty much taken over. We observed the rise of social media sites like MySpace and Facebook. We saw the emergence of streaming sites like YouTube. A little later, we witnessed the birth of the Iphone. I believed it was these three events that killed whatever analog was left and moved us into the digital age. It's interesting how the event that soured the latter part of the decade almost coincided with this transition. The 2008 financial crisis made things even worse. The party was truly over.