“The End Of All Things To Come” is hands down their best record – actually, the two tracks “Silenced” and “Skrying” alone will always set Mudvayne a cut or two above the rest of the nu-metal bands that are all rightfully vanished into obscurity, these days.

LD 50 was pretty cool at times, but it had a lot of filler junk to sift through. You can grab “Nothing To Gein” and “Prod” and a few others, and basically delete the rest of that album.

Lost and Found was garbage, pure and simple. A few sort-of-catchy melodies thrown in with a lot more contrived ones, thrown over mediocre, half-assed radio metal.

The New Game was a bit more tolerable… actually, the title track is pretty okay. Not very high on my list this year, though.

I enjoyed LD50 when i was into nu-metal in high school. since then I don’t listen to any mudvayne except “the end of all things to come” their song writing capabilities were phenomenal on that record. for those comparing to tool, it was their “lateralus” – especially thematically. While parts of it are nu-metal, they also blend genuine metal chugging and odd timing into it. they stretched out in more directions (though they dropped the funky parts from LD50, which i did like). I agree that lost and found was not nearly as good, and i haven’t heard the new game, but end of all things to come was a definite cut above the rest of the nu metal out there.

I will agree with those above that the bass is the best part of the band, and the guitar is the worst. but on that one record they got it just right (you have to skip the first song though, that one sucks ;) )

Have you ever seen one of their live shows? Do you own any of their albums? The sheer level of intensity, creativity, and uniqueness they exhibit in every facet of their performances and recordings is unmatched by most modern day bands. Now, I must admit, I’m not fortunate enough to have ever seen Zeppelin in concert so I’m not qualified to make an adequate comparison between the two bands’ live shows, but insofar as the recordings go, Tool’s best work, at least in my opinion, matches that of Zeppelin’s.

Also, Tool did cover “No Quarter” as I’m sure you’re aware; the lyrics were changed and the song was extended in length so the two are difficult to compare, though Tool did a phenomenal job on it. Their videos and albums are ART, in the truest sense of the word; the band does not showcase themselves playing instruments in their videos; rather, they tell stories.

I’m an obvious fanboy of the band so my opinion is biased, but if you pay attention to their work more closely, I don’t think you would consider it blasphemy to make a comparison to Zeppelin.

1) “Maynard’s Dick” is meant to be a joke, as in ‘ha ha’ funny. I happen to think it’s kind of stupid (though I still love the song itself, sans the attempt at humor in the lyrics)

2) It was one of the first songs the band ever wrote, back in ’90 or ’91, it far precedes the band’s fame and success, so regardless of what you may think of him (and I happen to agree that Maynard is one pretentious asshole), those particular lyrics were written before he was full of himself.

Although I did kinda like their last album… it wasn’t great, but there were some good tunes (I liked ‘Dull Boy’… kinda reminded me of their old stuff).