or better or worse, we here at Stylus, in all of our autocratic consumer-crit greed, are slaves to timeliness. A record over six months old is often discarded, deemed too old for publication, a relic in the internet age. That's why each week at Stylus, one writer takes a look at an album with the benefit of time. Whether it has been unjustly ignored, unfairly lauded, or misunderstood in some fundamental way, we aim with On Second Thought to provide a fresh look at albums that need it.

Today I heard that a young woman in Pakistan was gang-raped as part of a court-ordered punishment; her brother (age 11) held hands with another girl. A crowd cheered the rapists (of whom there were six) on. The absolute last thing I want to do is exploit this nauseatingly horrible event, which I’m afraid happens far more often than any of us could wish for, in the interests of having a catchy opening for some sort of pseudo-academically kitschy, I’m-more-well-informed-than-I-actually-am record review of the sort I usually come up with, but when I hear about this sort of thing – or many other sorts of things which we can group along with it, under the vague genus of horror – it turns my thoughts to how we respond to tragedy. Sometimes I abandon the specifics I might use to construct righteously angry sentiments and end up thinking cliched thoughts, such as these are troubled times. Or: give me some clarity, give me something to believe in the existence of right. Naturally, I want to do something right – which should probably, as someone on the message board I read about this on suggested, begin with fighting rape on my home soil instead of beginning with efforts to understand thousands of years’ worth of traditions unfamiliar to me – something, if you will, revolutionary. Sure, why not? Some Situationist, interested in appearing much less educated than he actually was, once said that in order to be a revolutionary, one must not be sad, but I tend to think that confusion is in fact a prerequisite. Eugene McDaniels tends to agree with me.

So let’s talk about something else while our guts burn with bewildered sadness, at this or many other things. (That’s why we’re here, right?) Or, to rephrase, talk about something that may be relevant: what others have done with their sadness and, as the case often may be, anger. Fela Kuti liked to conjure up a huge, joyous chorus to taunt his adversaries, set to a propulsive, endless rhythm that celebrated passion, and maybe even excess, in the face of pain. He became less playful after his house was torched, he was beaten, and his mother was thrown from a window by those he opposed, but he soldiered on. Public Enemy brilliantly captured the tenor of their overheated, chaotic era of early-90s racial unrest with a wall of soundbites, taken from everything from political speeches to stand-up comedy to, of course, past musical inspirations, a seething and intentionally messy way of involving their listeners in their no less passionate fight. Sampling might be the ultimate you’re-either-on-the-bus-or-off-the-bus musical statement: those who decry your music and aesthetic for its allegedly violent undertones won’t get any softer when they’re assaulted with air-raid sirens and gunfire, among other things, on record (I heard “Rebel Without a Pause” the other day, in the car during a Philly rap station’s “Old School Lunch Hour,” between “Eric B is President” and a pitch-shifted Jackson Five track, and I’d forgotten just how startling it was).

Of course, to those cognoscenti sympathetic to your plight, sampling is a way of communicating information to them on a different level than mere lyrics and beat. Like a footnoted, well-chosen quotation from a well-known cultural theorist in an essay, a manic James Brown squeal, or ESG siren can lead those who’re listening to what you have to say to seek out the work of those who have preceded you. And so we come again to Eugene McDaniels, rediscovered by crate-diggers seeking out the grooves gently pilfered by the likes of A Tribe Called Quest, Beastie Boys, and Organized Konfusion. While this is indeed a dope record with an embarrassment of riches for sampling (this goes beyond some tight drum fills and instrumental flourishes), its message is something else entirely.

You may have heard the story of how this album was targeted by Spiro Agnew: its lyrical admonition that Jew and Arab, black and white, lefty and right-winger alike were mere pawns in a master game controlled by some formless incarnation of evil, among other things. Today this doesn’t sound all that subversive or startling in and of itself, but McDaniels (a songwriter for Roberta Flack responsible for, among other things, the classic the-end-is-nigh anthem “Compared to What”) manages to cram enough jaw-dropping, bizarrely subversive sentiments into this album to piss off more than a few types. Take the storming opener, “The Lord is Back,” a breakneck, occasionally off-key (like much of the record), and, well, apocalyptic plea of caution – and almost unholy intensity – to evildoers that a vengeful god may be ready to invoke the full extent of his destructive powers after all.

“Jagger the Dagger,” a distantly mocking, languid indictment of satanic rock-star excess in the era of Altamont, seems to set up McDaniels’ version of the adversary of the Lord himself. A mournful but soulful chorus and some bent-note guitar antics add to the spooky funk vibes. “Lovin’ Man” is a much less hard-edged paean to compassion in all its forms that dares to imagine a sensualist, latter-day savior as a “heavy humper,” among other things. (Its long and ecstatic coda is one of the album’s rhapsodic highlights.) The classic title track, which will doubtlessly be familiar to listeners of Check Your Head, is an almost loungy indictment of evil across all its boundaries. For articulate, catchy genius, however, it can’t approach the well-honed outrage of “Supermarket Blues,” a comic fable that condemns both racism and the grislier tendencies of capitalism. Purchasing a mislabeled can of peas at his local market, The Left Rev McD (as the album’s classic cover refers to him) sparks a riot, incurring the wrath of the elderly, the police, and other members of the establishment who label our morally confused protagonist a “communist jerk.” More seriously, the touching “Freedom Death Dance” – which looks at the shortcomings of well-intentioned activism – and the minor-key initial verses of “The Parasite” cover other aspects of the bewilderment and fear the world can cause whenever it brings us to our senses.

It’s “The Parasite”, at nearly ten minutes, that tells the slow-burn story of America’s elect-over-preterite beginnings. Of course it doesn’t need to go on as long as it does – we know the Indians were wiped out, we know of all the injustice – but I think its over-the-top qualities are refreshing in an era of amoral shock-for-its-own-sake apathy. Sometimes, as any Cassavetes fan (to add a second reference to Fugazi’s In on the Killtaker) could tell you, intense heavy-handedness feels good. Overenunciating and sustaining some startling notes that culminate in a free-jazz meltdown of shrieks and howls, McDaniels expresses his outrage as have few musical artists before or since. And if what’s going on in the world isn’t enough, it just might make you cry.