City is the second studio album by Canadian extreme metal band Strapping Young Lad, released on February 11, 1997. Frontman Devin Townsend assembled a permanent lineup of Strapping Young Lad to record the album, including prolific drummer Gene Hoglan, and Townsend's former bandmates Jed Simon on guitar and Byron Stroud on bass. The album was critically acclaimed, with Revolver naming it one of "the greatest metal albums of all time",[2] and it is widely considered Strapping Young Lad's best work. The album was re-released in 2007 with several bonus tracks and altered cover art.
Background
After releasing the first Strapping Young Lad album, Heavy as a Really Heavy Thing, as a solo album, Townsend recruited a permanent line-up for the second album: Jed Simon on guitar, Byron Stroud on bass and Gene Hoglan on drums.
Devin moved to the UK to work with the Wildhearts, before moving back to Vancouver to work at a restaurant. He then decided to move to Los Angeles and "move in with some mutual friends and (I) slept on their couch and wrote Ocean Machine and City."[3] The album was written about the city of Los Angeles,[3] as well as being majorly influenced by the 1980s Japanese television anime series Dirty Pair as well as Yukito Kishiro's 1990s manga series Battle Angel Alita[4]
City was remastered and re-released in 2007, and included several unreleased tracks, as well as a Japanese bonus track and the video for "Detox".[5] The album was re-released in 2012, and includes a CD version of For Those Aboot to Rock: Live at the Commodore as a bonus disc. Teddy Möller (credited as "Septic Ted") from Loch Vostok appears as a guest saxophonist on the joke-track "Headrhoid".[6]
Bonus track "Centipede" is featured on all versions of No Sleep 'till Bedtime, and samples a percussion loop from "Happiness in Slavery" by Nine Inch Nails.
City received highly positive reviews. Kerrang! praised the album for its heaviness, claiming it sounded like "sticking your head into the jet nozzle of a Stealth Bomber",[12] while Metal Hammer ranked it No. 13 on its "Top 20 Albums of 1997" list[13] and also included it in another list released in 2020 and containing what they considered to be the top 10 albums of that year.[14] The album gained a cult following and a loyal fan base for the band.[15]City is considered to be the band's best effort by a large number of fans[16] and critics alike.[17][18]
In 2000, Terrorizer listed the album as one of the "100 Most Important Albums of the Nineties"; the magazine's readers' poll also ranked it at number 30 on the 100 best albums of the decade.[19] In 2002, the album was No. 45 on Revolver magazine's "69 Greatest Metal Albums of All Time" list,[2] and was on their "Must Have Metal Albums" list in 2005.[15] Townsend himself stated City "is the real Strapping record. That's the ultimate one out of all of them".[20]City had sold over 9,000 copies in the United States by 2002.[21] The song "Oh My Fucking God" was later covered by fellow Canadian extreme metal band Cryptopsy, for a compilation album by Century Media.[22]
Track listing
All tracks are written by Devin Townsend, except where noted
^Schwarz, Paul (February 2000). "The 100 Most Important Albums of the Nineties". Terrorizer. No. 75. Scantec Publishing Ltd. pp. 39, 51. ISSN1350-6978.
