JR notes: This piece is dedicated to Mark Evans, Warriors Soul's drummer on Drugs, God & the New Republic, Salutations from the Ghetto Nation, and Chill Pill, who was killed in London in January of 2005.

Warrior Soul was the best rock band of the '90s. No, they didn't have the best name, not even close - that honor goes to Alice in Chains or Jane's Addiction. You can't measure them on fame. And let's not be stupid: they were nowhere near as influential as the big Seattle bands. They weren't the longest lasting band of the '90s either. U2 and REM slogged through the decade; Warrior Soul only made it halfway. The only bands that might have been better disbanded before they could prove it.

Warrior Soul had a few things going for them: they had the baddest frontman (Kory Clarke), the best guitarist (Johnny Ricco), and the most attitude (Guns 'N Roses fans will take umbrage, but the Gunners didn't stick around long enough for our purposes here). Warrior Soul smashed at the metal establishment with political fury, but the '90s were about the death of hard rock, not its revival. Theirs was always a lost cause. Maybe Kory always knew that - maybe that's why he was so fucking pissed. Warrior Soul was angrier than Rage Against the Machine, but unlike Rage, Warrior Soul burned to be rock stars as well as revolutionaries. That massive contradiction eventually tore the band apart, but their ego-mad honesty made them a lot more endearing.

Rage Against the Machine had the good fortune to ride the rap-rock wave, but I always had more respect for Kory than Zack. Kory wanted to blast the corruption out of the White House, but he also intended to get drunk and get laid. He didn't want to kill rock stars. Or maybe he did, but not before he got to be one. Aiming to annihilate the very thing you seek puts you right there on the deck with Captain Ahab, but Captain Ahab is the stuff of great fucking literature. Zack had the political rap down, I'll give him that, but his lyrics never acknowledged the contrast between his revolutionary sentiments and his major label comfort zone and rock star perks. Kory was never afraid to express his highest (and lowest) desires.

Warrior Soul started on a major label too, but left scorched earth behind them. They gored the music biz from within before walking away, tearing David Geffen a new asshole on the way out. Eventually, they painstakingly re-recorded their best songs on an independent label in a mad effort to set them free. But was it all a noble cause, or did they just shoot themselves down in a haze of hard drugs and bad career decisions? Warrior Soul is the best band of the '90s because a great question is better than an easy answer.

In the end, Warrior Soul had everything but the thing they needed most: timing. Timing belonged to Kurt Cobain. Nirvana had an underlying rage also, but Kurt never incited anyone to do anything. Grunge implied that the best response to the state of the world was a heroin needle. Warrior Soul saw drugs as a way to fuel the resistance, not to self-destruct. They predicted the corporatization of rock 'n' roll with devastating accuracy. You can feel the greasy walls of commerce closing in as Kory rails against every treacherous sellout.

Warrior Soul is the soundtrack of the apocalypse, so the developments that followed their demise would come as no surprise to them. The rebel spark that gave birth to rock and roll now flickers in the breeze of marketing departments. Listening to Warrior Soul can't change any of that, of course, but their music - most of which I didn't discover until this decade - did change me. I can't help but feel there are others out there who need the strong tonic these fearless songs provide. Windows down, amps up, Kory yelling into the wind and Johnny soloing over him - in those times, I feel unstoppable. I can't change the world, but now more than ever, those moments mean everything to me.

I'm not sure if Kory saw the danger of burning both ends until the band imploded, but he left behind a fascinating body of work - seven albums of diverse material where poetry rubs against cliché, revolution clashes against desire, and political liberation flirts with personal destruction. It took two full CDs for me to compile the essential Warrior Soul tracks. I ended up saving a few of the best ones for the next (not yet published) compilation, so you will need to read about both to get my complete take on the "best of Warrior Soul." The good news is that all of this music is pretty easy to find if you know your way around eBay or Amazon.

Warrior Soul lived up to their audacious name with songs that had a warrior's heart. Musically, their legacy is seven strong records that stand tall against any body of work from the '90s. And within those records are several of the greatest hard rock songs ever made.

(1) "Rocket Engines" - One of the great album openers, "Rocket Engines" kicks off Warrior Soul's best (and most underrated) release, Space Age Playboys. "Rocket Engines" has that post-industrial be-bop Rob Zombie dished out so effectively in years since. Space Age Playboys was Warrior Soul's last real studio album. By the time it came out, Kory was morphing from rabble-rouser into psychotic cyberpunk. Space Age Playboys was drenched in sex and psychedelic wordplay, with a few bursts of political rage to stir the drink. "Rocket Engines" announces the soulful emptiness of the last gap of Warrior Soul: loudness and fury that now signified nothing. What better way to start than with a song about nothing that makes you think you can do anything?

(2) "We Are the Government" - The only cover song I know of on any Warrior Soul album, it's hard to imagine anyone else doing "We Are the Government" like Kory did. It's actually a wildly creative cover of Joy Division's "Interzone," with Kory's rabid "We Are the Government!" intro tacked onto the beginning. There are two versions of "We Are the Government" to consider: the original version from the second release, Drugs, God & the New Republic, and the re-recorded version on Classics. Consider what Warrior Soul did on the Classics album: they went back into the studio with the daunting goal of re-recording their original music and somehow making it better. To give a sense of how difficult this is, let's break it down: in the history of rock and roll, it's never been done. It must be so tempting, especially with hastily (or badly-recorded) tracks, but it never works. The carcasses are everywhere; I just mocked Alanis Morrisette for her futile attempt to redo Jagged Little Pill. Sure, you can do it on live albums. But the studio redo is a lot tougher. I'm not sure why; I think it has something to do with the bond between great rock and the spontaneity of certain moments in time. Imagine the Rolling Stones trying to redo Beggars Banquet or Exile on Main Street. All their skills, all their cash, and they'd have no shot. The Stones lack the fierceness to justify their own songs. I've said it before: desire always trumps wisdom when it comes to rock and roll. But when Warrior Soul tried to reclaim their songs on Classics, they had one more act of defiance in them. Classics is Warrior Soul on steroids. The sound is brutal: a chain saw guitar, a sonic bass that harasses the mix like a fire hose whipping in the wind, and Kory with a ripped-out voice giving what's left of his throat to every song. (Note for fans: the songs on Classics from Space Age Playboys were not re-recorded, but everything else was). There are a few big miscues on Classics: the guys trashed a couple of their moodier songs ("Song In Your Mind" and "The Losers") and bungled "Love Destruction," but by and large, all the rockers on Classics wind up as the definitive version. Such is the case for "We Are The Government," a two and a half minute burst of refined aggression. "We Are the Government" is the kind of song I wish Kory had written more of himself: lyrics that have teeth without falling into rhetoric, poetry married with power. Before you know it, you've hit the song's genius bridge, and Kory's "looking for a way to get ooooouuuutttt!!!!!!!"

(3) "Love Destruction" - The opening song on Salutations from the Ghetto Nation, "Love Destruction" has a special place in rock history because it heralded Warrior Soul's arrival. Most bands peak on their first album, then fade out, but a select few make The Leap (think U2 or Fleetwood Mac or even AC/DC). Warrior Soul made The Leap on album three. Their first two records were great in their own way, but Salutations was staggering. It wasn't necessarily that the songs were better, though a few of them were. It just has that feel. Salutations is the sound of a band on the brink of total stardom. Stardom never came, but that only makes the record more outrageous. It has a huge, confident sound, with a clearer punk/funk/metal identity than it predecessors. Salutations is what happens when a band finds itself on every level. Warrior Soul had discovered a way to be rock stars and revolutionaries at the same time - or so they must have thought. Warrior Soul would never sound this way again; Salutations was the mountaintop. "Love Destruction," was Salutations' monster opening track, and it was Warrior Soul at its unapologetic best, wearing their treason on their sleeves like true patriots, scorning the corporate handouts the meek accept as the price of their complicity. The line "Don't pledge allegiance to flags, I burn 'em!" still stuns. As far as I know, Kory never actually burned a flag, but if he ever did, it would be because of how much he loved America, not how much he hated it. Those who can't wrap their heads around that are not people I feel like dealing with, but maybe it's time to call them out. On "Love Destruction," Warrior Soul did just that, and they unleashed an ominous warning: if the system teaches us how to destroy, then maybe we'll just have to destroy you. How ironic then that this song vaults from great to classic through the machine-gun repetition of "Love! Love! Love! Love! Love!" "Love Destruction" stands as one of the greatest hard rock songs of all time; Warrior Soul had two more that were even better.

(4) "Let's Get Wasted" - "Let's Get Wasted" is the centerpiece of Space Age Playboys, Warrior Soul's last (and best) studio album. You can make the argument that Salutations is their finest album, and a worthy debate would ensue, but as far away as Space Age Playboys is from the other Warrior Soul albums, it's also one of the great "last gasp" records. Most bands go down in mediocrity; Warrior Soul went down in a post-industrial disco inferno, with Kory in a state of poorly-disguised agony over the failure of his previous albums to incite. I'm not sure if he sees it that way, but to me his "Space Age Playboy" cyberpunk persona was that of someone who now takes drugs because the stakes are too high. Sex and drugs can make you numb, and that's better than dying; it's better than facing that the road you travel is yours alone. Perhaps the absence of sidekick Johnny Ricco contributes to this sense that all ties are broken, that nothing is left but one last orgasm. If the world is going down in flames tomorrow, a lot of people are going to get wasted and have sex tonight. Space Age Playboys is the soundtrack for that last day, a party on the bodies of the damned. Some are deceived by the craven emptiness of its sound, but if you listen hard, there is something more. This album does have a soul, you just didn't recognize it because it's all twisted up in knots. If the album didn't peter off towards the end, I'd feel comfortable calling it perfect. You can listen to it as neo-punk road mix candy, or you can go deeper as Kory did, and taste your dream as it dies. In that broken moment, there is one obvious conclusion: "Let's get fucking wasted!" Which brings us to the record's finest song. "Let's Get Wasted" is deceptive; it's not immediately obvious that you're listening to one of the greatest hard rock songs of all time. You don't even hit the chorus till three minutes in. I timed it with a stopwatch: the song shifts from good to great after the two minute mark - that’s when Kory takes the song higher ("you're on fire..."), gathers up some intensity, and hurls himself into the chorus. We smack into that chorus at the three minute mark, and then at 3:20, Kory drops the line "you're a tragic hipaholic," and now we're into my favorite thirty seconds in all of rock and roll. Suddenly the wastoid veneer is scratched bare; Kory strikes blood with "You wanna die ya so what?/no one cares if you're a suicide," and it dawns on you: this is no ordinary party, but the tragic frenzy of a sweet (and futile) escape, a dance-to-the-death for those whose crime is not getting stoned because they care too little, but because they care too much, or once did, and now they can't face the stench of that disappointment without a fix. I don't listen to this song while I get wasted; I listen to it so I don't have to.

(5) "The Wasteland" - "The Wasteland" sports one nasty mother of a riff. The most important song on Drugs, God & the New Republic (Warrior Soul's second release), "The Wasteland" made it clear that the first record, Last Decade Dead Century, was no fluke. It's a tough pick between the original and the re-recorded version on Classics. The original is sleeker and faster, but the Classics version is a Mack truck. Almost ninety seconds longer, there's more time to ride the riff out, and you get a vastly superior bridge. On Classics, they pared the bridge down to the bass with Kory singing "I can't live unless I'm free" on top of it. You break away with Kory exhorting you to "find your freedom today!" and there you have an all-time Warrior Soul moment. When it's time for the guitar solo, Kory quips "Ricco" under his breath in honor of the great Johnny Ricco. Ricco wasn't a part of the Space Age Playboys record, and Kory was justifiably glad to have him back. As much as I love Space Age Playboys, Warrior Soul isn't the same without Ricco. "The Wasteland" is a study in lyrical contrasts, with some of Kory's best and worst lyrics mingling. "Donald Trump is just a money whore" stands as one of Kory's most jarring and ineffective lines. OK, dammit, I'm an "Apprentice" fan, but that's not the problem here: my beef is that Kory sometimes took the easy shot when he had so much poetry left in him. Kory was someone who used to bury his head in CIA exposes from the likes of Philip Agee, so he could see far beyond Donald Trump. You can hear clues of that elsewhere in the same song - even in the line "that damn AIDS test got me so uptight." That kind of detail brings a song to life (ever heard an AIDS test mentioned in a metal song before?). Kory could do that when he set his mind to it; some of the most vivid images from the American dark side came from his pen. But other times, he took an easier route. Why? I can only guess, but Kory wouldn't be the first rock star to do without an edit. Maybe he just wrote in streams and didn't go back with a critic's eye. I also wonder if he dumbed down his language in order to incite, to be a "man of the people" instead of a man of intellect. He was not a guy who talked down to his fans. But you can write about corruption without "fuck Donald Trump" clichés. You can raise your middle finger and still keep Jack Kerouac in your back pocket. Sometimes the Kerouac found its way into Kory's lyrics, sometimes it didn't. But even in his sillier moments, Kory was redeemed by audacity. He would have gladly put his fist in the president's face, if only we had marched behind him, and that too means something - especially when you look at all these people shopping in docility while their civil rights are truncated in the name of threats real and imagined. No, Warrior Soul isn't always as smart as they could have been, but they always brought the fire. "The Wasteland" gets a demerit for that lyrical let-down, but it's still one of the signature Warrior Soul tracks.

go to part two of "Warrior Soul Liner Notes"