Album Review: Nirvana, "In Utero"

To their credit, Nirvana haven't bothered trying to create Nevermind II. Although, to be blunt, In Utero lacks the sheer explosive, pop-angst of its predecessor.

Kurt Cobain's lyrics are even more impenetrable than ever, albeit shot through with the odd flash of insight and barbed observation. Some of the songs are reminiscient of the harsher sounds of Bleach, like Scentless Apprentice and Rape Me. But quite frankly, the ridiculously tortured vocal screams of these songs are an ordeal in themselves. More encouraging are tunes like Heart-Shaped Box, Dumb, and All Apologies, which grow in stature with repeated listens.

Mark Liddell
Riff Raff
December, 1993

Revenge...?

Riff Raff was a legendary rock magazine based in London in the late 1980s and 1990s. Edited by the ultimate music biz insider, Mark Crampton, and employing such talents as Mark Blake, Jerry Ewing, Mike Harris, Paul Smith, Chris Collingwood, Alan McCrorie, Simon Robinson, Lyn Guy, Anna Marx, Nick Douglas, Marion Garden, Peter "Grunty" Grant, Joe "The Crow" Mackett, Billy "The Kluck" Kulke, and, lastest and mostest, the incredible Liddell Brothers, Mark (a.k.a. "El Perro") and Colin (a.k.a. "Der Fly"). Unfortunately, Riff Raff was just too R n' R for its own good. A genuine working class rock mag, written, edited, and translated into 16 European languages in a drug-N-Jack-D-fuelled haze, often on the back of motorbikes, with spell checking by our staff of attentive rock bimbos (chosen purely for their blondeness and big knockers), it soon fell behind more trainspotterly, nerdish, and politically correct publications like Q, Kerrang, Mojo, Metal Hammer, and Horse & Hound. This website is an archive and kind of shrine dedicated to the writing of its greatest writers, some of whom, luckily for the Rock Kosmos, still continue to write about music. This is the REVENGE of Riff Raff...Rock on!