Failure is an Alternative Rock/grunge band from Los Angeles, founded in 1990 by Ken Andrews and Greg Edwards. While they never got much media attention, Failure earned praise from both critics and peers for their unique, deeply introspective take on grunge music. Because of how many musicians spoke highly of them (including A Perfect Circle's Billy Howerdel, Faith No More's Billy Gould and Dean DeLeo of Stone Temple Pilots), Failure are also known as "your favorite band's favorite band".
Failure's sound is often compared to that of Nirvana, however, it's more melodic and elaborate compared to the latter's raw approach, leaning more into alternative rock or even Space Rock territory. A lot of songs feature distortion-heavy guitar hooks backed by thick, overdriven basslines: Andrews and Edwards are both skilled at bass and guitar, so in the studio they switch roles on different songs. The lyrics, mostly written by Ken Andrews, are characterized by use of unusual metaphors and recurring themes of isolation, dreams and drug use.
The band's two core members, Andrews and Edwards, started out as a duo playing L.A. clubs until they got a record deal with Slash Records, added drummer Robert Gauss to the lineup and began recording their debut album, Comfort. Though the record was engineered by none other than Steve Albini, the band were not satisfied with the final mix, their ideas clashing with Albini's minimal production. For the recording of the next album, Andrews requested more control over production, and the drums were now manned by Kellii Scott, who remained a permanent member of the band. The result of this was 1994's Magnified - the record which helped establish Failure's signature style for years to come, as well as the one that got them widespread recognition among fellow musicians, including tool, with members of whom Ken and Greg would work on a one-off cover project Replicants in 1995. The band's third release, 1996's Fantastic Planet, a concept album of sorts that dealt with heroin abuse and had a more "spacey" sound, with feedback manipulation and a bit of keyboards, only solidified Failure's place in the history of 90's music and became their most popular record.
After playing Lollapalooza 1997, Failure disbanded the same year due to personal differences. Ken Andrews started working solo under the moniker ON, also continuing his work as a professional sound engineer, while Edwards formed the shoegazing band Autolux. However, in 2013 Failure announced their reunion with the original Andrews-Edwards-Scott lineup and went back into the studio to record a comeback album. The Heart Is A Monster, which came out in 2015, was praised by fans and critics for retaining the trademark sound, while adding new elements to the formula. From then on, Failure have been steadily producing new music.
Members:
- Ken Andrews - Lead vocals, guitar, bass (1990-1997, 2013-now)
- Greg Edwards - Guitar, bass, keyboards, backing vocals (1990-1997, 2013-now)
- Kellii Scott - Drums, percussion (1993-1997, 2013-now)
Discography:
- Comfort (1992)
- Magnified (1994)
- Fantastic Planet (1996)
- Golden note (2004)
- Essentials note (2006)
- Tree Of Stars note (2014)
- The Heart Is A Monster (2015)
- In The Future Your Body Will Be The Furthest Thing From Your Mind (2018)
- Wild Type Droid (2021)
- Location Lost (2026)
Rip out that helio-trope-ic rose:
- Album Title Drop: The Heart is a Monster appears as a lyric in "Come Crashing". Wild Type Droid appears in "A Lifetime of Joy'' (albeit with "droid" being pluralised).
- Bad People Abuse Animals: "Mange" describes the singer's girlfriend not just abruptly skipping town with "some old friend", but leaving her dog locked in the basement of her house to die in the process. (There's no word on whether the song was based on a true story, if that helps.)
- Bookends: Closing track "Daylight", from Fantastic Planet, uses the music box heard in the beginning of "Saturday Saviour" for its Album Closure.
- Call-Back: The Heart Is A Monster has the same kind of numbered "Segue" tracks as Fantastic Planet and is implied to be a sequel to it. In The Future goes on with it as well.
- The Tree Of Stars EP is named after a lyric in "Another Space Song", a track off Fantastic Planet.
- Concept Album: Fantastic Planet tells (although somewhat loosely) a story of a heroin addict (possibly named Leo) and the way his life is slowly coming apart.
- Cover Song: The band's version of "Enjoy the Silence" appeared on a Depeche Mode tribute album the year after their breakup, and in 2022 they released a cover of "Waiting Room" by Fugazi.
- Early Instalment Weirdness: Their debut album Comfort is more of a straight Post-Hardcore album, and lacks the more expansive production value of later Failure albums due to being produced by Steve Albini. Comfort is also generally Darker and Edgier than their later albums, with Ken Andrews often gravitating towards rather macabre lyrics. The lyrics of Magnified still get pretty dark at points ("Wonderful Life" is a striking example), but started bringing more of the abstract and metaphorical lyrics that Failure are better known for.
- On the band's early self-released singles ("Count My Eyes/Comfort" and "Pro-Catastrophe/Dipped in Anger"), Greg Edwards played a fretless bass guitar, giving the songs a strange, proggy feel that went away once he switched to a standard bass.
- Epic Rocking: "Screen Man" (6:16), "Salt Wound" (6:35), "Wet Gravity" (6:06), "Small Crimes" (7:13), "Heliotropic" (6:15), "Daylight" (6:01), "I Can See Houses" (6:33) and "The Pineal Electorate" (6:54). "You're Too Much" from Golden also clocks in at 6:08, though the final two minutes of that are silence to cover up the Hidden Track "Don't Look Up".
- Fading into the Next Song: "Moth" -> "Frogs" on Magnified, and "Bad Translation" -> "Half Moon" on Wild Type Droid.
- Fair-Weather Friend: "Empty Friend" is about a shallow person who is only there to get high with you.
- Fake-Out Fade-Out: "Small Crimes" does this, reducing the track to being almost completely (though not quite) silent, before bringing the volume back up and having a noisy guitar solo join in, then fading the song out for real.
- Gratuitous Panning: The riff in the beginning of "Smoking Umbrellas".
- Grunge: Despite coming significantly after grunge came into vogue, they're not considered Post-Grunge due to their rejection of commercial elements.
- Limited Lyrics Song: "Don't Look Up" is just Greg singing "don't look up my asshole/don't look up there" four times.
- Love Is a Drug: The themes of obsession and addiction are intertwined on Fantastic Planet, especially in "Stuck On You".
- Lyrical Cold Open: "Swallow" and "Dirty Blue Balloons". Also "Wake Up", after a short feedback squeal.
- Miniscule Rocking: "Don't Look Up" (0:53), "Princess" (1:21), "A Lifetime of Joy" (1:55) and most of the "Segue" tracks.
- One-Man Song: "Bernie" and "Leo". Also "Screen Man", in the unnamed category.
- Overworked Sleep: A particularly dark version in "Wonderful Life", where a female commuter is so tired she falls asleep at the wheel and presumably crashes and dies.
- Perishing Alt-Rock Voice: Pretty much Greg Edwards's default voice. Ken Andrews's quieter vocal moments also approach this territory.
- Precision F-Strike: The last line of "Swallow" is "let me in, motherfucker", with the offending word uttered barely above a whisper. "Heliotropic" also drops the line "seems like I'm fucked forever" towards the end.
- Sampling: The monologue before the final chorus of "Solaris" is sampled from The Sacrifice, directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, who also directed the original film adaptation of the novel that inspired the song and its name.
- Sanity Slippage Song: "Moth" and "Frogs", put back-to-back on Magnified. "Moth" seems to be about someone who suspects he might be going insane and does not talk to other people for the fear of showing it. In "Frogs" he is already on his way to a mental institution.
- The third verse of "Wonderful Life" on the same album also depicts someone struggling to cope as he goes without the "pills that keep him sane".
- Self-Deprecation: It's right there in the name of the band.
- Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: "Heliotropic" gets into this territory a bit. The title is an adjective referring to flowers that naturally follow the movement of the Sun, tying in to the rest of the lyrics about an addict shunning the rest of the world away. The final verse also uses the uncommon words "phantasm" (a ghost or other general figment of the imagination) and "oxidize" (to combine with oxygen, probably alluding to iron oxide, the most common form of which is rust).
- Shout-Out:
- "Solaris" is a big one to the book of the same name by Stanisław Lem and the movie based on it.
- 'Fantastic Planet'' takes its name from a 70's French movie.
- The video for "Stuck On You" references James Bond film title sequences.
- Siamese Twin Songs: "Wonderful Life" ends with a drum break that cues in the next song, "Undone".
- Space Rock: One of the most notable bands to do so in the 90's, mixing it with Grunge, Post-Hardcore and a tinge of Alternative Metal. Their post-reunion sound fits this genre even more.
- Special Guest: Hayley Williams duets with Ken Andrews on "The Rising Skyline" from Location Lost - the first Failure song to feature a guest vocalist.
- Step Up to the Microphone: Greg Edwards's only lead vocal during the band's original run was on the joke track "Don't Look Up". Post-reunion, he sang the verses of "Atom City Queen" and the bridge of "Mulholland Dr.", then full lead vocals on "The Pineal Electorate" and "Half Moon".
- Technician/Performer Team-Up: Ken Andrews and Greg Edwards. Ken's guitar parts tend to be of the more aggressive and noisy variety, while Greg is capable of playing more intricate guitar parts (and piano/keyboards on top of that).
- Three Chords and the Truth: "Princess" uses three different chords at most, a far cry from their later Space Rock arrangements.
- The Something Song: "Another Space Song".
- Title Track: Played straight with Magnified. Subverted with Comfort, which was the name of a song that the band released in 1991, but it didn't reappear on the album of the same name.
- Surreal Horror: All over the place, particularly on the tracks "Moths" and "Frogs".
- Uncommon Time: "Solaris" is mostly in 6/4, extended to 9/4 on the line "turn to flesh and drag me back to life". The choruses and outro revert to 4/4 time.
- Word Salad Lyrics: Downplayed. The band makes heavy use of bizarre metaphors and phrasing, but their lyrics are still generally understandable and tell a cohesive narrative.