I love Tenacious D and their debut album. In their own words, "it  f u c k i n g  Rocks Hard"! Now, I am a bit biased when it comes to this album and the band itself being such a huge fan of their ill-fated series that crashed and burned on HBO. It lasted all of 3 episodes. But from this they have manage to create a cult following that has sustained them their entire career and spawned a movie The Pick Of Destiny. A lot of the material on the album is based off the series, but is not the actual recording as they made a full blown production here.

So. what exactly is this album? Is it a comedy album or a Rock album? It's actually both. But just because it has skits in between the songs, it doesn't diminish the fact that as a musical duo, both Jack Black and Kyle Gass do indeed rock and write great songs and Jack himself can banshee howl with the best rock singers out their in Metal-land. Personally, I enjoy the skits because some of the stuff is just downright gut busting funny. But I do think the album itself has a certain niche and will be better received by those that are fans of the show.

There's too many songs to break down here along with the skits as well, so I will just head into listing my...

Fave Songs: Kielbasa, Tribute, Wonderboy, F u c k  Her Gently, Explosivo, Dio, Lee, Friendship and Rock Your Socks.

Fave Skits: All of 'em. But there are definite stand outs like One Note Song, One  C o c k  Push Ups and Friendship Test.

Would I have preferred to have the original songs? Yes and no. I like the full production that we get on the debut. If they had released just what was on the show, the album would probably clock in around 20 minutes since all the songs were much shorter. But I do get what you saying in that some of the remakes from the original did tend to lose something in the translation. But I've had this album for so long that its kind of replaced what was on the show because I don't get around to watching it as much as I'd like to. I've played this one a million times. It's ingrained in my brain now.  I'm sure there is a bootleg of all the best bits from the show floating around in Cyberland.

Yeah, I remember you saying that you had a copy. It was about 15 years ago if not longer when you mentioned it. I will give you just 2 more weeks to find it or else!!

Rockin' Friendship right now. It's awesome. The melody kicks ass. Why this song wasn't a bigger hit is mind boggling. It's really a great song.

"Long as there's a record deal we'll always be friends"

Awesome!!

Tenacious D's Pick Of Destiny is the soundtrack to the movie of the same name. Although the movie had more misses than actual hits as a film, surprisingly the album isn't much better here. The one good thing about the album is that most of the songs in the movie are cut, edited or altered in some way. But here, we obviously get the whole thing, which is a plus in my eyes...and ears.

If you've seen the movie, you know exactly what you're getting here, so there are no surprises here. Along with the songs comes soundbites from the movie itself, much like they did with their first album using original skits. The standout song here is Master Exploder which is just awesome in every way imaginable. You can't help but sing along to it. Toe-tapping metal at its finest. But not to be outdone is David Grohl lending his vocal chops to Beelzeboss (The Final Showdown), which is the best scene in the entire movie and sounds just as cool without the visuals of the movie.

Fave Songs: Master Exploder, Beelzeboss (The Final Showdown) and POD (Pick Of Destiny)