Used CD

Debut from The Used who have performed on the Warped and Ozzfest Tours. Special Enhanced CD featuring a video of 'A Box Full Of Sharp Objects' plus 12 tracks. Features the single 'The Taste Of Ink'. 2002.



This is an Enhanced CD, which contains both regular audio tracks and multimedia computer files.
The Used: Quinn Allman (vocals, guitar); Jeph Howard (vocals, bass); Branden Steineckert (vocals, drums); Bert McCracken (vocals).
Additional personnel: Carmen Daye (background vocals).
Recorded at Foxy Studios, Marina Del Rey, California and Olympic Studios, London, England.
This is an Enhanced CD, which contains both regular audio tracks and multimedia computer files.
Utah's the Used sound like a lot of different bands on their self-titled debut album. The sequencing of the disc seems intended to give the early impression that they are a metal band, but as the album goes on the music softens to hard rock and even ballads backed by strings. Similarly, lead singer Bert McCracken starts out howling, but by the third track, "Bulimic," he is affecting a Perry Farrell-like hoarse delivery, and later on he even sings in a nearly normal voice. (Sometimes, as in the seventh track, "A Box Full of Sharp Objects," he alternates approaches between verses and chorus.) The musical development mirrors the lyrics, in which McCracken begins with typical expressions of youthful frustration, culminating in the fifth track, "Poetic Tragedy," written in the third person, which depicts a suicide, but then begins to find satisfaction in romantic attachment to the point on the album's final credited track, "Pieces Mended" (there is also a hidden track long after the end), that he is proposing marriage. (Along the way, he drops the "F" word casually numerous times, but the album does not contain a parental advisory sticker.) So, The Used has a definite progression, musically and lyrically. But it is also all over the map in terms of musical approach. Some of it could be played on MTV beside Creed and Vertical Horizon, some of it recalls the rage of Fuel, and some goes even further into forbidding metal. That range should give Reprise Records, the band's label, plenty to work with, but it may confuse potential fans. ~ William Ruhlmann
Although much is made of this Utah foursome's rebellious background (singer Bert McCracken's former drug addiction and the band's pre-record deal pan-handling street-kid lifestyle), all that's really required to ascertain the level of the band's commitment is a close listen to their self-titled debut release. They leap into each song as though their lives depended upon it (maybe they're not so anxious to go back to spare-changing). While they are initially presented as another entrant in the aggro-rock sweepstakes, there's a bit more than that to the Used. Sure, McCracken can let out blood-curdling screams of angst with the best of them, and there's no shortage of blazing guitars and pounding drums, but the Used seem to have spent at least as much time listening to Jane's Addiction as they have to the Deftones. The band's range is made most clear by the acoustic-guitar-and-strings ballad "On My Own" and the melodic piano motif at the end of the closing song "Pieces Mended."Q (1/03, p.124) - 4 stars out of 5 - "...McCracken's strangulated wail kicks off a series of surprisingly subtle songs that come charging in like screaming thrash metal....A crafted, full-throttle debut..."
CMJ (7/15/02, p.16) - "...This band's passionate performances will likely be too alluring for even the most stringent metal and hardcore fans to ignore....McCracken seesaws between throat-searing shrieks and high notes that are as smooth as a baby's fat chushy ass..."