Original guitarist Kendall Jones left the band after his deep devotion to a cult religion being influenced by his father. Chris Dowd also said good-bye to the band. CDs not sold well, SONY music fired the band...there happened really hard things to the band. After that, they created this album with Dallas Austin as a producer, who known by his works with BOYS II MEN, TLC.. .and released this one from Austin's own label,"Rowdy Records."

Basically, you can hear rather hard sounds which succeeded from their works which already released, in this album. Yes, this is Fishbone's music world with no doubt. But, i feel something unsatisfied somehow. There's no vivid impressions i admited in the former works and they seem to be rather lack of sense of humor, their way of expression tend to be "direct" too much, i feel. But there must be nothing for them considering their circumstances at that time.

You can admit the influence from Angelo's poetry reading solo-project..."Dr.MaddVibe" which started from 1995 here, as "Interlude 1" and "Interlude 2" are just like the works of Angelo's poetry reading works.

Fishbone had been doing meaningful works and they were truly innovative as a black band who had been doing an unique music style such as the mixture of rock, ska, punk, funk...not a black band who plays typical Hip-Hop, R&B and so on. They've been doing very great thangs. But, as a result, the market ain't accept them. They ignored this band. Fishbone had never met their break in terms of a record sales. Why? One of the most reasons is a racism. In "Rock Star" of this album, Angelo says like this...

Only just a little... Black rock star
Only for a token... Black rock star
Sing no controversy... Black rock star

We, listeners...of course Japanese listeners also are doing this kind of discrimination unconsciously. The bands in the top of the hit chart are mostly white people's band. And the prejudice like "rock for white, Hip Hip and R&B for black people" exists among the people who sell records, and the people who receive music, too. Of course there's some exception. But, looking around the music industry, we obviously notice this situation. Why don't black rock bands' records sell?

The title of Japanese edition of this album is "Fishbone no gyakushu" which means "Fishbone's revenge." But unfortunately they can't take their revenge on the market. This is their defeat, but this is the defeat of us, the listeners of rock music.(mine-D)