Zen Arcade (studio album) by Hüsker Dü
Condition: Used
Hüsker Dü bestography
Zen Arcade is ranked as the best album by Hüsker Dü.
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Zen Arcade track list
The tracks on this album have an average rating of 81 out of 100 (all tracks have been rated).
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Zen Arcade ratings

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Rating | Date updated | Member | Album ratings | Avg. album rating |
---|---|---|---|---|
95/100 ![]() | 3 days ago | ![]() | ![]() | 82/100 |
70/100 ![]() | 4 days ago | Exist-en-ciel | ![]() | 76/100 |
80/100 ![]() | 07/22/2022 08:35 | notsosure | ![]() | 84/100 |
90/100 ![]() | 07/18/2022 05:21 | leniad | ![]() | 92/100 |
75/100 ![]() | 07/16/2022 18:48 | Sforge | ![]() | 77/100 |
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This album is rated in the top 2% of all albums on BestEverAlbums.com. This album has a Bayesian average rating of 79.2/100, a mean average of 78.3/100, and a trimmed mean (excluding outliers) of 79.3/100. The standard deviation for this album is 17.0.
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Pilar do rock alternativo.

Highlights:
- Something I Learned Today
- Broken Home, Broken Heart
- Hare Krsna
- Pride
- I'll Never Forget You
- The Biggest Lie
- Masochism World
- One Step at a Time
- Newest Industry
- The Tooth Fairy and the Princess
- Turn On the News
- Reoccurring Dreams

Album of the day, and it`s one of the greatest albums of the decade. The turning point for punk

Two albums came out in 1984 that really helped to make progress in the hardcore punk genre; Double Nickels on the Dime and Zen Arcade. Hüsker Dü's effort is the more aggressive and straightforward of the two and is the one I prefer.
Really good album.
Favorites: Indecision Time; Beyond The Threshold; I'll Never Forget You; Turn On The News.
Its flawed, slightly too long and the audio fidelity is scratchy and staticky, but its those flaws that give it the greater impact. Its a dark brooding masterpiece of existential angst the best ever put to music, its grunge before grunge became a book of clichés. The styles are diverse and varied, which individually don't work in isolation, but when you add it all up create a sonic kaleidoscope that varies in texture and colour. Its cerebral with jagged hooks, its Rage to last a lifetime.
Top 5 tracks
Never Talking to you again
Standing By The Sea
Pink Turns To Blue
Whatever
Turn On The News

The seminal and almost legendary 'Zen Arcade' appears to have taken on a life of its own over the years but its not the panacea many claim it is
For starters its too long coming in at 70 minutes , the middle portion particularly becomes a slog as quite a few tracks being blurring into one
Secondly as a concept album it actually doesn't work . Supposedly telling the tale of a boy who leaves a broken home only to find the outside world is no better , this narrative thread is impossible to follow bar a few slices here and there
Thirdly the track listing has too many ho hum moments with tracks such as "Chartered Trips" , "Dreams Reoccurring" later repeated plus 13 minutes , "Indecision Time" , "Pride" and "Somewhere" as examples
Yet there are some gems to be mined within Zen , I can recommend Harts "Never Talking To You Again" , the weird but good "Hare Krsna" instrumental , the powerful "Standing By The Sea" , the 'Candy Apple Grey' - ish "Pink Turns To Blue" and twin closer's the excellent "Turn On The News" with cool monkey sounds and the full 14 minute "Reoccurring Dream "
Overall I find 'Zen Arcade' better than good but far from great
60/100

R.I.P. Grant Hart. Thank you for this masterpiece that made my youth better.

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Zen Arcade brings together two voices--a screaming voice in Bob Mould and a a warmer, more yearning one in Grant Hart--to tell vignettes of twentysomething white Minnesotan masculinity, doing so mostly in a loud three-piece rock format. There's a fourteen-minute instrumental, a short piano instrumental, a song with percussion swirls and general noise underscoring a reference to Hare Krishna's chanting practices, a frenetic acoustic number, and other points of variation. But mostly it's that three-piece arrangement, with Mould's guitar often a sheet of blazing noise that feels like a corrugated aluminum wall shattering in your face, other times a queasy backward masked swirl; Norton's bass skipping along and digging deep, standing out just enough to matter; and Hart galloping and crashing behind his drum kit. This is a band still chasing the land speed record that was the title of their first release, but with the added maturity shown in a greater sense of melody and purpose. A great rock band finding its authentic voice.
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