Nirvana
Incesticide

THE REVIEW

It's time to pay homage to Nirvana, one of my very first great musical loves, and to do so, I will review this 1992 collection of rarities, to which I have always been very attached. The sound is a mix of punk, grunge, and the claustrophobic tones of the first album "Bleach".

"Incesticide" contains most of my favorite tracks by Cobain and company: Dive is an almost metal track with a very hammering pace supported by an excellent vocal performance and a great guitar riff by Kurt Cobain (anyone who says he wasn't a great musician doesn't know what the hell they're talking about) Sliver, the celebrated grunge nursery rhyme that erupts into a punk fury (one of the Nirvana classics and grunge in general). The covers of the Vaselines Molly's Lips and especially Son Of A Gun are truly wonderful and hilariously fun, I've listened to them to death without ever tiring. However, the true gems of the album are Big Long Now and Aneurysm: the first starts slow and hypnotic with Kurt Cobain almost whispering, then explodes into a gloomy and desperate chorus: an authentic black pearl that doesn't resemble any other song by the band (I'm pretty sure Alice In Chains were inspired by this song to compose Frogs, compare the choruses and you'll notice the similarity). Aneurysm instead is a great live battle horse: that intro with Cobain's riff that almost sounds like a siren and Krist Novoselic's great bass line is wonderful (another great musician unfairly underrated).

All this would be enough to make "Incesticide" a great album, but even the rest is far from being discarded: from the catchiness of Stain, Been A Son, and Downer to the dazed mood of Turnaround and Mexican Seafood, passing through the punk of New Wave Polly (much better than the slow version in Nevermind), the heaviness of Beeswax and Hairspray Queen, not to forget Aero Zeppelin, which could easily serve as the soundtrack for any thriller or horror film.

"Incesticide" is a great album that represents Nirvana in all its facets.