Truth and Soul album cover
Truth and Soul

Fishbone

1988
Columbia

Fishbone’s second full-length album was their first to show their full genre-hopping potential and foreground their social consciousness; straight out of the gate, they turned Curtis Mayfield’s antidrug “Freddie’s Dead” into a crunching metal anthem, following that with “Ma and Pa,” a jumping, shouting ska workout with introspective lyrics about frontman Angela Moore’s parents’ divorce and its effect on his younger sister. Then there are the two Bad Brains-ish hardcore blasts, “Deep Inside” and “Subliminal Fascism”; the AOR soul-rock of “Mighty Long Way”; the “Ghost Riders In The Sky”-bending “Slow Bus Movin’ (Howard Beach Party)”; and the impossibly funky “Bonin’ In The Boneyard,” featuring the fiercest slap bass of the ’80s from the band’s incredible anchor, Norwood Fisher. They seemed determined to prove that they could do literally anything, and convey a strong-willed, even militant political message in the process.

Phil Freeman

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