Random Thoughts: Remix Albums?

A few years back, remixes of major pop songs were everywhere. They often bore little to no resemblance to the original version. It was often a means for producers to fit as many hip hop and pop artists into a song as possible. Mariah Carey became infamous for remix videos in which she was nothing more than eye candy while a truckload of rappers performed during one of her so-called songs.

Metal was not immune to the remix phenomenon. It was particularly lead by industrial-minded metal groups such as White Zombie and Fear Factory. There have been other bands that jumped on the bandwagon, but these two were the leaders. So we can all blame them for one of the more regrettable trends in metal during the 1990's.

I somehow managed to acquire four of these atrocities, with varying levels of badness for one reason or another. At least metal remixes bear at least a slight resemblance to the original version.

WHITE ZOMBIE: SUPERSEXY SWINGIN' SOUNDS
This was the first remix album I owned. It's a remix of the Astro Creep: 2000 album. I think I wanted it because it had "I'm Your Boogie Man" on it, a song previously only available on some soundtrack or other. Of course I didn't realize that this would be a remix as well. I think I might listen to this album once a year or something.

FEAR FACTORY: REMANUFACTURE
This is a remix album of the Demanufacture album. I listen to this even less than the White Zombie remix album. I think I bought this because I thought it was a new album. How naive I was. They made the songs significantly longer and boring as hell. This is an excruciating listening experience at longer than an hour.

FIGHT: MUTATIONS
This is an EP that features two halves. The first half is live performances of songs from the Fight album War of Words, including one old Judas Priest song. The second half features remixes. This one isn't so bad, mostly because it's short and the songs are somewhat enjoyable.

FEAR FACTORY: FEAR IS THE MINDKILLER
This may have been the first remix album in metal, a remix of Fear Factory's Soul of a New Machine. I got this in a double CD set with the aforementioned album. There are only five tracks on it and they're reasonably short. That's the only thing making this okay.

So, yeah. I don't intentionally buy these anymore at all. Actually, I don't really remember any remix albums being released lately. No big loss there. I would have posted pictures of these things, but I don't want to encourage these types of releases.