Varga - Oxygen (1995)

Right, let's be clear, I'm not gonna review too much of this mid '90s stuff, but Varga are a slight exception. Put simply, this is typically mid '90s 'metal' that fuses rap, funk and a hint of grunge, and when stirred it makes for a mildly entertaining listen, mainly as I'm a sucker for scratching when it's done right. Of course, many years previously the kings of crossover style Mordred were incorporating rap, funk, soul etc into their sound, but it took an atrocious band like Rage Against The Machine, and to a lesser extent, the even worse Clawfinger, to bring their style of 'rap metal' to the masses. Varga sit somewhere in between, remaining far more obscure and less polished, on a track like 'So Real' they fuse together a crunching style of funk with noisy raps and injections of scratching. 'Hay In The Needlestack' operates on a bruising guitar and whining violin before a lazy, grunge-style vocal drifts in, but quickly I'm losing patience with this - the vocals quickly become a shifting snap, and Varga become a metal crossover by numbers sorta band, summing up a terrible time for music. I'm left vacant all too often by this time of music, wishing it would make up it mind instead of jumping on a bandwagon that soon toppled into some ravine and saved us all, until fuckin' Limp Spastic came along. 4/10