To this day, the grunge scene is celebrated by music fans and journalists almost as if it were a monolithic entity. This isn't true of course, Nirvana took their cue from The Pixies among others, Pearl Jam built their sound around recycled 70s hard rock, and Soundgarden's sound was a mixture of heavy metal and trippy psychedelic stuff with a few power-ballads thrown in. While they all had something in common; an anti-authority attitude, a predilection for massive riffs and an end to the tinny synth and cheesy hair-metal that came before them, they were quite a diverse group. This also applied to Mudhoney, who more or less stayed an underground cult band while all of their grunge peers hit the big time and disintegrated. This lack of mainstream acceptance was certainly not related to a lack of talent or ability, but it could be put down to the fact that their music was devoid of the fragments of pop-rock accessibility that the other great grunge bands had.

How interesting then that now, fifteen years after the grunge explosion in Seattle, Mudhoney are one of the few old-school grunge bands that are still left around. Having released a string of good albums over the past few years (that have gone largely, criminally unnoticed), they're also one of the few bands that have not only stayed true to their roots for so long, but got better and better as they've gone on. "Under A Billion Suns" follows up from their strong efforts "Tomorrow Hit Today" and "Since We've Become Translucent", and it continues the trend of providing angry, fiery, and definitely loud music with some massive riffs within.

If anything, "Under A Billion Suns" is probably the angriest Mudhoney album yet, filled with rage and venom towards, well, pretty much the entire state of the world right now. The bluntly titled Hard-On For War, for instance, is a delightfully unsubtle jab at the President of a certain North American country, while Where Is The Future asks some short questions about just how far our society has advanced over the past half-century or so. The band has always been angry and aggressive, but this time that anger is a lot more focused and targeted.

But if this is the most political Mudhoney album yet, does that mean that the music has suffered in quality? Well, no, not really, not if you liked their previous work. They still copy extensively from the book of Black Sabbath, but with bigger, sloppier, sludgier riffs than pretty much anyone else in the grunge fraternity. Occasional surprises (such as brass instruments) pop up now and then, but none of them is as disquieting and effective as the xylophone on Endless Yesterday, which gives the track a creeping sense of paranoia and claustrophobia. Good stuff.

From time to time, the album does misfire, but for a band this legendarily erratic, that's not entirely unexpected. With the exception of some of the filler in the second half of the album, this is another solid effort from Mudhoney that is just as good as anything they've done previously. Sure, it might not make waves outside of the band's already loyal fanbase, but somehow I think that Mark Arm is fine with that.