Stain

Living Colour’s third album came with a membership change — bassist Muzz Skillings was out, replaced by Doug Wimbish of Tackhead and a thousand other projects — and a new, harder sound, only partly attributable to new producer Ron St. Germain. Vocalist Corey Glover sounds choked with rage and scorn on songs like “Go Away,” “Leave It Alone” and “Mind Your Own Business.” (Sense a theme?) The chorus of “Never Satisfied” goes, “I will never be satisfied/Until it ends in tears.” The riffs, meanwhile, are the heaviest the band ever wrote, creating a kind of crawling doom-funk somewhere between Black Sabbath and Helmet, with occasional Bad Brains-esque sprints and left turns into industrial noise (“Auslander”). This is not a fun album, but it’s cohesive and cathartic and depending on your mood, it could become your favorite piece from their catalog. There are definitely days where it’s mine.