Throwback: “Crazy Life” by (hed)p.e.

Last week saw the 20th Anniversary of the underrated third album “Blackout” by Huntington Beach California’s (hed)p.e., a record once dismissed by frontman Jared Gomes as “Corporate Junk”. He has long claimed to have given in to the pressure from their then label Jive Records to create an all out Nu-Metal record that brought forward some of their melodic ideas along with clean vocals and at the expense of the rap flow and turntable action the band had on seminal album “Broke“. Somewhere along the line guitarist Chad Benekos exited stage left to be replaced by former Snot and Amen man Sonny Mayo, credited as playing but it was later revealed in an interview that Wesley Geer’s last contributions to the band were the guitars on the album. Despite those controversies the album still managed sales of 28,000 in the first week with three singles appeared on the soundtracks to EA games. It’s also not without its fair share of decent tunes to help your breathe more easily and so we’ve picked out personal favourite in deep cut “Crazy Life” as a celebration of that. Afterall, if the album was a mistake, it certainly served to fire Gomes up with a string of fantastic albums to follow but the fact they’re still a Global touring entity today is something to be applauded if not cherished.