The Best Band You’ve Never Heard: A strange signal from outer space, Failure
What do Hayley Williams, Jason Schwartzman, and Maynard James Keenan have in common? Failure. Not in the literal sense—they’ve all achieved great success in their respective artistic fields. I’m talking about the band. Comprised of Ken Andrews, Greg Edwards, Kellii Scott, and, for a time, Queens of the Stone Age guitarist Troy Van Leeuwen, Failure has always forged their own path. Their potent and utterly cinematic fusion of metal, alternative rock, shoegaze, and experimental sounds has set them apart as a uniquely influential act.
With prominent fans ranging from Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee to legendary producer Butch Vig, Los Angeles’ Failure stands as a singular power trio, often vying for the title of the ultimate cult band alongside Illinois legends and fellow sonic pioneers, Hum. Their unique essence is perfectly captured in the documentary about the band, where Silversun Pickups frontman Brian Aubert remarks, “Failure is a band you find. And those bands that you find are the ones you tend to love the most.”
Elsewhere, Nevermind producer Vig states that 1996’s chemically-induced, sensory-stirring masterpiece, the aptly named Fantastic Planet – following the 1973 science fiction classic – is in his top 25 albums of all time. While there are many records from the decade he never wants to listen to again, he loves that record completely. It’s a “great unsung classic,” he says.
Failure are a fascinating group, perfectly embodying the status of “your favourite artist’s favourite artist”. Yet, they’ve never quite received the full recognition they deserve. This is partly due to their unique, often heavy sound being wrongly pigeonholed as grunge after the release of their raw 1992 debut album, Comfort. Even then, Failure displayed far greater creative and thematic depth than that genre allowed. Their singular sound defied easy categorisation, but instead of celebrating this, many lazily grouped them with the prevailing trends of the time.
It wasn’t just this misunderstanding and laziness, though. The band imploded in 1997 due to drug addictions, following their creative instincts to the exhausting brink, personal differences, and the stresses caused by their distribution deal expiring, all adding to an impasse that saw them call it a day. They would not play their first reunion gig until February 2014.
Failure would pick up from where they left off with 2015’s The Heart Is a Monster. It was a marvellous return, wherein the members had long since bolstered their craft thanks to Edwards’ stint in another widely influential cult act, Autolux, and Andrews working as an acclaimed producer, which they have since followed up with other excellent albums in 2018’s In the Future Your Body Will Be the Furthest Thing from Your Mind and 2021’s Wild Type Droid. However, the band’s second and third efforts, Magnified and Fantastic Planet were incredible for their era and arguably their finest.
Although the engulfing odyssey that is Fantastic Planet is often described as their chef-d’oeuvre, thanks to the intergalactic chimes of the minor hit ‘Stuck on You’, a haymaker of emotion, ‘Saturday Saviour’, and the towering obelisk that is ‘Heliotropic’ – with the latter a perfect combination of heavy musicianship, and atmospheric synths – Magnified is a record that is worth your attention.
It is something of an oddity of a record in that it sits at the nexus of various different influences, with grunge-adjacent flecks, space metal and experimentalism at its core, the imaginative song structures, restrained use of purely melodic moments and their adroit juxtaposition with unsettling dissonance, make it stand out as one of the most accomplished rock records of its era. While ‘Undone’ might well be the most satisfying number on the album due to the catchy chorus and perfectly layered climax, other tracks like the swollen metallic chugs of ‘Wet Gravity’, the off-kilter infectiousness of ‘Bernie’, and the slow, crawling atmosphere of closing number ‘Small Crimes’, are far more expansive than most other guitar records the decade produced. Just like its successor, which it laid the foundations for, it’s a real trek into the darkest corners of the soul, with many twists and turns in store.
Even though Comfort hinted that the band’s scope was far broader than that of their contemporaries, Magnified delivered on this promise. Its raw energy and refined execution served as a perfect counterbalance to the sprawling, narcotic brilliance of Fantastic Planet.
As one might expect from a band like Failure, their work is best experienced from the very beginning. Starting with Comfort and culminating in Wild Type Droid, their artistic arc is nothing short of remarkable—a journey every rock fan should undertake. Failure’s music has the power to transport listeners to worlds they never knew existed, often leaving them wondering, “How did they even do that?” It’s fitting that one of their songs is titled ‘Solaris’; much like Andrei Tarkovsky’s psychological sci-fi masterpiece, their sound offers a captivating, prismatic experience unlike anything else.
