A funny thing, though, in the years since its release, Metal MAchine Music has actually grown in stature. It's become touchstone for bands like Sonic Youth and Nine Inch Nails, has been placed at the forefront of the fuck-you New York No Wave scene, and has been classified alongside musique concrete composers like Stockhausen. There are no lyrics to react to, no melodies to dismiss as pedestrain. It's junk guitars placed in front of jacked-up amplifiers, so close that the resulting feedback vibrates the strings -- thus causing the guitars to play themselves. Think of it as a kind of sonic Jackson Pollock: if order emerges from the chaos, it's haphazard, thus making its beauty that much more surprising and engaging. In truth, the way you feel about it may vary depending on the day you listen to it. Those feedback squalls are like straight, clean lines shooting up into the air, rigid as steel bamboo, tangling the higher they get towards heaven. Tones come and go, a deafening drill-like sound bores through the center then vanishes. The ear-splitting upper-register notes collect in a far corner then dissipate. You get lost inside these notes the same way you'd get lost inside a metal-pressing plant after midnight. It's four sides of the same basic thing, but each stray squiggle of sound -- unplanned and unforced -- adds kind of character and distinction.

Or, it could just be really fucking aggravating.