The era's most overlooked masterpiece, was ' breakthrough album, an incendiary and insidious set which bridges the gap between the noisy aggression of the band's early releases and the soulful swagger of their later work. Slipping with ominous ease into the sinister, self-obsessed Lothario guise which would serve him so well from here on out, announces his arrival as a truly magnetic presence -- by turns predator ( ) and prey ( ), he's the guy your parents always warned you about, delivering each syllable of his remarkable lyrics with equal measures of innuendo and venom. Equally startling is ' musical growth -- while still unmistakably a member of the stable, there's a greater maturity and depth to their sinewy sound, with a newfound grasp of mood and nuance on tracks like the opening and -- the wah-wah guitar which dominates meanwhile, offers the first taste of the ambitions to follow. It was hardly a surprise when jumped to soon after -- was clearly their ticket to the big leagues. ~ Jason Ankeny