Comments for Husker Du, Zen Arcade

Kick-ass American punk from the early/mid 80's. Green Day & others are just rip-offs.

****1/2 (5 star scale)-- Great double album that really just makes you want to get out your aggressions. --Jteel

*THE* best album you will ever hear in your life!

"Metal Circus" and "Everything Falls Apart" rival this 2-record set in sheer ferocity, but "Zen Arcade" covers a greater emotional spectrum, as well as containing (or trying to contain) some of the band's most potent melodies: "Chartered Trips," "Pink Turns To Blue," and the brilliant, 14-minute "Reoccurring Dreams" showcase the band's new direction.

Despite it's power-punk labeling, Zen Arcade is something more than that Quite possibly, the ballsiest record of all time. Zen Arcade is melodic,and uses pianos and other instruments that punk bands of the 1980's would not touch. While all the other bands were writing about "I hate the world, screw the government, I hate this and that", Husker Du made a double concept album. Oh yeah, they recorded it in 84 hours and the songs are first take. Some call Zen Arcade the punk version of the Beatles White album, I call the the White album the mainstream pop version of Zen Arcade.

In the spring of 1984 Hüsker Dü released the heralded 'Eight Miles High' single. Two months later came Zen Arcade, which takes its place in rock history as the most important album ever put out by an independent label. The depth and intricacy of this landmark double-LP are beyond elaboration, bridging the seemingly insurmountable gap between American-style hardcore punk and straight-ahead pop.

Pissed off at your boss? Your girlfriend? At life in general? Put on Zen Arcade, turn it up, and get ready to break shit! Even the slow stuff(never talking...) will get you going.

This is the most powerful album ever released. The pinnacle of Husker Du's career, and the greatest postpunk album of all. Hardcore punk abrasiveness and emotion, psychedelic violence and disorientation all jell amazingly. A sonic and emotional nuclear explosion that nobody has come close to. So dense and destructive that it will scare away most fans of both hardcore AND rock, which is a great achievement. You don't listen to this skipping down the sidewalk, you listen in a dark room by yourself all the way through and emerge shaking.

An exciting, if overlong double album.I love the psychedelic moments (Tooth fairy..) and Turn on the News is probably the best song they did.

An absolute monster of an album. This is the Huskers at their at their manic-creative peak. A band with too much to say and not enough time to say it all.