Joey Beltdrives’ Bumpy Backspins: Troublegum – Therapy? – 1994

Troublegum – Therapy? – Released February 7^th, 1994, A&M Records

Troublegum was the fourth album from Belfast rock/metal band Therapy?

For the uninitiated that’s a statement, not a question.

Troublegum is often regarded as one of, if not the, band’s finest album. It was the band’s second album on A&M and sits somewhere between their heavier early period and the slightly poppier sound which followed.

The reason for the album’s enduring popularity is largely to how it sits in that sweet spot, it’s very much a heavy rock album, albeit one that’s full of earworms, with choruses that are unforgettably catchy even when the lyrics are disturbing. (Or perhaps because of it.)

Throughout the course of this article, you’ll notice that I repeatedly refer to “the band’s” this and that because I don’t know how to form the possessive of Therapy?

The question mark is part of the band name, one which began life as a typographic anomaly but was later left hanging for the sense of ambiguity and mystery it created.

It’s been foiling spell checkers for decades since and today is no exception. 

Wait Are You Doing 90s Rock Bands Again?

Yep.

Do I also need to issue a heavy metal trigger warning? Or justify why I’m covering this on a blog that predominantly covers dance music?

Well, I already mentioned Therapy? on my review of the Judgement Night Soundtrack, a massively successful and influential rock/rap crossover album from 1993.

There’s also the fact that they shared once an EP with Orbital, were remixed by artists ranging from the Sabres of Paradise to Photek and that their subsequent album featured production work by fellow Belfast native David Holmes.

Prior to this album you may also note their interest in sampling, including on the band’s previous album, Pleasure Death, which had sampled dialogue from Brion James’ character in Bladerunner, “wake up, time to die!”

Course that sampling thing worked both ways.

As a teen, my very first crude sampler experiments regularly pilfered chopped up beats from Pleasure Death. To this day I still can’t think of any metal drummer with more funk than Fyfe Ewing.

Therapy? were always open to experimentation and receptive to new ideas, and with so much going on around them, socially and culturally, as well as musically, you can hear these influences percolating through the music with each subsequent release.

Those of us who came of age in the Ireland of the 1990s worshiped the band as gods, growing up amidst a prolific five-year streak of musically progressive Therapy? albums – it does feel as though we literally all grew up together.

This section’s all about the albums of the past, many of which directly shaped my yoof and Troublegum certainly fits that category. An outstanding album from an age when it was still possible for bands to make true, authentic rock and roll while enjoying huge commercial success.

Rock Therapy

The album starts off with Knives which is a song about… well, knives.

“I’m gonna get drunk, come round and fuck you up” – let’s not kid ourselves, it’s also very Irish.

I may be a die-hard raver, but I also have many fond memories of moshpits, flailing limbs frozen in strobelights while being being happily battered around the floor to this track.

Screamager is an anthem for our generation and an indelible part of my teenage years.

First there’s that killer riff and that perfect singalong chorus but moreover, the lyrics exemplify a core point I’m going to come back to again and again – they’re perfect teenage lyrics.

Up next we have Hellbelly, with its infectious riff and curious refrain, “Jesus without the suffering”, followed by Stop It You’re Killing Me.

Want to mention the lyrics on this one too:

As a teenager these lyrics resonated and as I hear them again they appear to resonate even more now.

Only difference is that I know for sure both myself and the world are equally fucked and all the while the refugee boats keep sinking.

And that’s what I mean when I say they’re perfect teenage lyrics – they express sentiments we used to say out loud, but now we’re scared to utter. 

If you know and love these songs you sing along and nod along too, in full agreement.

If this is your first time, however, I understand how the lyrics may initially appear juvenile, it’s because we’re not teenagers anymore, we’re so-called adults who’ve since been conditioned to couch our feelings in layers of bullshit and “no I’m fineism”.

Which is what we want, nobody thinking we’re not ok, not having to ask or answer questions or have anybody else’s feelings make us feel uncomfortable, but then Andy Cairns don’t give a fuck because he’s a rock and roll god.

Nowhere was the first single from the album and is another perfect example of a track that’s more profound than it has any right to be.

I already mentioned Screamager as an indelible part of growing up, but if you’re going to make a biopic (Yes I Kam! – The Joey Beltdrives Story is the current working title) or any other movie which takes place anywhere on the island of Ireland in the early 90s, it’s essential that you have this song prominently featured on the soundtrack.

More juvenile profundity:

I knew this then, I know this now and yet, like so many of us, three decades on I’m still working on getting that internal feng shui right.

But let’s be honest, this chorus applies to all of us in one way or another.

It should be the mandatory theme song to every political rally, the national anthem of every country and the official theme song for humanity as a species.

Next up, Die Laughing – what I love about this one is the discordant bridge, where the chords and riff are out of tune with each other.

On paper it’s wrong yet it works so well, as we bang our heads for a few bars then we’re back to the chorus, “I think I’ve gone insane, can’t remember my own name…”

Sentiments like that are why I need Therapy?

Unbeliever is a slow chugger with dour lyrics about alienation and longing, “don’t belong in this world or the next one.”

It sits at the exact middle of the album and often gets played in the middle of live sets too.

It’s a middle song, basically, there to keep the energy levels steady and give us all a wee rest before ramping up the tempo once more.

Trigger Inside has all the classic Therapy? elements. Musically, it sounds quite reminiscent of previous albums and lyrically we have the reoccurring themes of loneliness with blatant serial killer overtones. 

Lunacy booth is another one of the more forgettable tracks on the album. I don’t mean it in a bad way, it’s just with so many of the other iconic tracks on the album it sounds like filler by comparison.

That said the opening lyrical salvo, “reveal yourself to me, Like cheap pornography”, does tend to linger in one’s memory.

Isolation is a Joy Division cover. It was the fourth single from the album and the band also released a zoom-performance of the track during lockdown, for obvious reasons. Not a fan of Joy Division but I do love this version.

Turn sees bass player Michael McKeegan supplying the main riff while Andy’s guitar follows.

There’s a teensy bit of a ska influence on this one, I feel, plus some reverse echo on the vocals for the chorus which is an effect I always love.  

Femtex – the only thing more explosive than the name of this track is the opening line, “masturbation saved my life.”

Fun fact – a guy at school wrote this very lyric on the front of one of my schoolbooks because he thought it was funny. My math’s teacher later saw it book and sent me to the principal’s office.

“Explain yourself young man” – would have probably been a lot easier if the principal had heard of Therapy?

Might have helped him be less of an uptight arsehole too.  

Unrequited is an example of the band using odd time signatures, something they experimented with on previous albums, while the inclusion of strings hints at future tracks like 1995’s Dianne.

We once again return to the theme of alienation in Brainsaw, “I’m in hell and I’m alone.”

Course we all felt that way as teenagers. I know I certainly did, especially while waiting outside the principal’s office under threat of suspension for having masturbatory lyrics scrawled on the front of my maths textbook. (Algebra always was a load of wank anyway.)  

After Brainsaw the album finishes off with a tinny acoustic rendition of “you are my sunshine” for whatever reason, then the song “skips” with a broken record effect, a nice quirky end to a perfect rock and roll album.

Masturbation Saved My Life

In my day we didn’t need self-help apps or have Mark Manson motivational quotes crowding our newsfeeds, we had Therapy?

Anger, violence, isolation, rejection, mental health issues and a general, inescapable sense that one’s life has no purpose, meaning or trajectory – we could cure all those ills with just one band.

The themes on this album are universally negative but for me this is feel good music.

See, I’ll be the first person to admit that the lyrics on this album aren’t very mature or sophisticated, but they’re still very, very clever. 

And if you listen long enough to allow your ingrained “adult” thought patterns to subside for a moment, you’ll realise your core feelings haven’t changed all that much since you were a teenager and part of the reason you’re so unhappy as an adult is because you’re afraid to express your disenchantment publically. 

As teenagers we all felt shit so it was ok. We were all in the same shitty grey boat, full of leaks, raggedy sails, dragging our oars, going nowhere.

Whereas now we’re all meant to be competing to show the world how happy and successful we are while every shiny surface of our digital dystopia reflects our sense of utter self loathing.

It’s not that we’ve grown up – we haven’t – it’s just we’ve just gotten much better at burying our feelings. And sometimes we need rituals like this to help them resurface so we can exorcise them in healthy ways.

For me, the true genius of this album is twofold. Firstly, how the lyrics evoke the full spectrum of teenage feelings; anger, apathy, nihilism, alienation and pure murderous rage.

These are emotions we’ve been conditioned to view as negative. And yet listening to this album is an overwhelmingly positive experience, or better yet, the euphoric shared experience of hearing the band play songs from the album live.

And that’s the second reason why this album is so ingenious, it reassures us that, although we’re definitely are all still crazy, probably even more so, at least we’re not alone.

Troublegum is often considered the band’s best album. It’s because it kept the more traditional metal elements, the anger and the loud guitars, but garnished them with singalong poplike sensibility.

When interviewed about the album Andy Cairns said, “We’re very grateful for what the album has done for us.”

“It wasn’t really tied to any genre and the lyrics are like punchlines to jokes. I wasn’t a teenager when I wrote it, but some of the lines were left over from when I was.”

“I think most can relate to that time when you’re 16, 17, and life’s shit and you’re trying to figure out where you are in the world.”

The more things change the more they stay the same.

Revisiting this album, and the feelings and memories I associate with it, three decades on, brought up a lot more than just nostalgia. It’s brought up perennial frustrations on the one hand, yet I aksi found myself thinking back to who I was back then and realising how far I’ve come.

In some ways I’ve grown and perhaps even matured, but in other, more important ways, I’m still going to continue with Therapy?