Hell Below/Stars Above is the second studio album by American rock band Toadies, released on March 20, 2001 by Interscope Records. It is the first Toadies album to feature lead guitarist Clark Vogeler, who joined in 1996, and the band's final album with founding member and bassist Lisa Umbarger. The album was the Toadies' first in nearly seven years, and was their second attempt at recording a follow-up to their platinum-selling debut Rubberneck (1994); the band's first attempt, Feeler, had been rejected by Interscope in 1998.
Hell Below/Stars Above was produced by Tom Rothrock and Rob Schnapf and was recorded at Sunset Sound Recorders in Los Angeles, California between January and March 2000. Disagreements with Interscope delayed the album's release for an entire year after its completion. Unlike earlier Toadies' releases, Hell Below/Stars Above was jointly written by all of the band's members instead of by frontman Vaden Todd Lewis only, resulting in it becoming more stylistically varied. The album's overall sound was influenced by 1970s rock music, and was cleaner and less aggressive than the grunge-informed Rubberneck.
Hell Below/Stars Above received mixed reviews from critics and was a significant commercial failure upon release, with the album only reaching number 130 on the Billboard 200 chart and selling less than a tenth of Rubberneck<nowiki/>'s sales, primarily due to Interscope's complete lack of promotional support for the album. Touring for the album wrapped up in September 1996, after which the band fired lead guitarist Darrel Herbert, who no longer wanted to tour. After auditioning several guitarists in late 1996, the band settled on Clark Vogeler of the alternative rock band Funland, which had broken up earlier in June. The band recorded 14 songs for the album, which was envisioned as an attempt to make "a more mature record" than Rubberneck. Ultimately, the band ended up handing Feeler over to Interscope in an unmixed and unmastered state; the label then withheld the album from release, unhappy with its perceived change in sound. many Texan acts, including The Reverend Horton Heat and Tripping Daisy, were dropped from their labels during the merger, and the Toadies' perceived inactivity left their future at Interscope uncertain. The band was able to stay on the label, as the person who was supposed to drop the band was fired during the merger, and because Todd Lewis was able to convince Interscope's new president, Tom Whalley, to keep them on the label. The band opted to work again with Rubberneck producers Tom Rothrock and Rob Schnapf again, favouring their "full" production style. Furthermore, the band, still in financial difficulties as a result of not doing a major tour for several years, relied on royalties coming from Rubberneck to keep them afloat; Todd Lewis called "Possum Kingdom", which was still receiving somewhat regular radio rotation several years after its release, the "pay-the-rent" song for the band. In order to make up for the lack of touring money, Lisa Umbarger took on a part-time role working for Starbucks, and Clark Vogeler reluctantly had to borrow money from his girlfriend for basic necessities such as toilet paper and food. alternative rock, hard rock, punk rock, post-grunge, While mostly consisting of heavy rock songs, several tracks feature a more emotional, softer-sound, including "Pressed Against the Sky" and "Doll Skin". Todd Lewis called "Pressed Against the Sky" "really on-your-sleeve and emotionally bare [and] not trying to hide behind a scary story", and cited the song as evidence of his matured song writing abilities. "Since Rubberneck, I’ve been trying to express myself without relying on some story to hide what I’m really getting at."
The album's penultimate track, "Hell Below/Stars Above", best presents the album's creative visions. The song showcases a progressive song structure, starting off as a straight forward fast rock song before expanding into a more bluesy song with a gospel choir and piano at the end. Todd Lewis wrote the first half of the song, with the rest of the band contributing something to the end of the song afterwards. The song also includes piano performed by Elliott Smith, who had worked with Rothrock and Schnapf in the past.
The lyrical content on Hell Below/Stars Above covers themes such as sex, relationships, murder, religion, and was partially inspired by the struggles the band faced. "I think it's fun to pull off a love song that's really f---in' twisted," Lewis said about the song to MTV News. "It's funny to hear a love song about something really dark and sick that still sounds nice and pretty."
Artwork
thumb|The stained glass window on the Dallas Power and Light building, used for the album's disc and inner tray artwork.|218x218pxThe album's cover is a picture of an angel, and was taken from the 1996 book Pillars of the Almighty by f-stop Fitzgerald and Ken Follett, a book which contains photography of churches and buildings. The band used the image to form the rest of the album's aesthetic. The disc artwork and the inner tray card is an image of a stained-glass window taken from the Dallas Power and Light building. The artwork inside the fold-out liner notes contain an enlarged image of the front cover, with a combination of various words from the album's lyrics running through the middle.
Release and promotion
Hell Below/Stars Above was not immediately given a release date after it was turned into the label, and a waiting game that the band described as "frustrating" and "fucking depressing" ensued. but the label eventually moved its release to March 6, and finally, to March 20, 2001, possibly to avoid competition with Big Dumb Face's Duke Lion Fights the Terror!!!. It was released exclusively in North America. Despite the near seven-year gap between releases, the band was not worried about the scale of the record's initial success, and believed it would become successful overtime; Rubberneck had only become successful a year after its release.
The first song to be released from Hell Below/Stars Above was "Heel", which appeared on Sampler 2000, a promotional sampler released by Interscope during the Vans Warped Tour. It was initially planned that the album's intended first single, "Motivational", was to be released in mid-December, but following the album's delay to March 2001 it was pushed back to February. At the last minute, the album's first single was changed to "Push The Hand" thanks to a fan poll on the band's website. The single was released in late February 2001. It was added to 48 radio stations upon its release, and reached number 30 on Billboard<nowiki/>'s Active Rock Chart. The album's only single, "Push the Hand", was promoted for two weeks on the radio, which was "the minimal amount they were legally required to do", according to drummer Mark Reznicek.
20th anniversary reissue
The band announced a 20th anniversary vinyl reissue of the album on March 24, 2021. A release date is unknown as of November 2022.
Reception
Critical reception
Upon its release, Hell Below/Stars Above received generally mixed reviews from critics.
Several critics praised the album for its energy. In a positive review from Texas Monthly, Andy Langer commented: "Time and familiarity haven’t dulled the punch of the Toadies’ creepy narratives, muscular hooks, and unfettered aggression". While he said that the album's songs, bar the title track, were "business-as-usual", he concluded that "time may not have made them a different band, but Hell Below/Stars Above proves it has made them a better one." There was also some praise directed towards the album's heavier sound. Writing for Allmusic, Mark Morgenstein remarked that "If 1995's Rubberneck was a pretty heavy album, with guitars swimming in a post-grunge murk, Hell Below/Stars Above finds the band trudging through primeval sludge, awakening the ghosts of heavy metal past", and that "Hell Below/Stars Above isn't all that original, but it's nirvana to some headbangers in an era when rap-metal was the only metal played on the radio." Chris Molanphy of CMJ New Music Monthly similarly called the album "a pulverizing comeback" and commented "What puts the Toadies over [its grunge peers] isn't the player's chops so much as their range– few bands successfully mix turgid and tense as they do, disdaining solos and remaining heavy."
Most of the album's criticism was largely directed towards the quality of the band's song writing and production, many who called it unoriginal and outdated. In a negative review of the album, Orlando Weekly called the album a "bare-bones effort" and inferior to Rubberneck: "The hooks are weak, the guitars mushy, and the songs are unremarkable. "You'll Come Down" and "Jigsaw Girl" stand out, but none of the tracks has the power of "Tyler," dooming the disc to a hitless existence." Similarly, PopMatters criticized the album's "weak" songwriting, and dismissed the Toadies as "a cheap xerox copy of Collective Soul. And, considering Soul doesn’t have much of an identity to call its own, the band is more akin to being a copy of a copy: kinda faint and hard to see without a lot of squinting." The GW Hatchet was critical of the album's lyrics, labeling the album "sadistic rock". Several reviewers criticized Todd Lewis's vocal performance, which were described as "strained at best" The GW Hatchet described his vocals as "loud yelps between verses that are eerily reminiscent of fingernails on a black board". In 2022, Ultimate Guitar ranked the album at number 9 on its list of the "Top 10 Grunge Albums That Survived the '00s".
Commercial performance
Hell Below/Stars Above became a commercial disaster for the band. In the US, the album debuted at number 130 on the Billboard 200 chart and fell off the chart the week after. Six months after the album's release, the album had sold 54,432 copies in the US, and only 6,260 copies sold in the band's Texas home state. By January 2002, the album had sold a meagre 61,000 copies, which was ninety-four percent less than Rubberneck's million-copy sales. The album made an appearance on MTV News' "2001's Biggest Flops", who called the album "the biggest sales fiasco of the year". The band made the conscious decision to travel to "secondary markets"<!-- not referring to the economic market term --> and less-commonly toured locations such as Lubbock, Texas. One of the band's shows during the tour, at the Paradise Rock Club, Boston, was recorded and posthumously released as a live album, titled Best of Toadies: Live from Paradise, in November 2002. The band's shows were much smaller than Rubberneck<nowiki/>'s, and some fans had not even heard about the album a month after the record's release. Demoralised and disappointed with the album's failure, the band member's relationships became increasingly strained.
Lewis would confirm to the Dallas Observer via phone call that the Toadies were breaking up on August 22, 2001; the newspaper would announce the breakup the following day. The news of the band's breakup came as a surprise to Umbarger, who expected the band to continue without her. "I thought I could have the benefits of going to Starplex and watching from backstage. I thought the Toadies as an entity would continue. I didn't know it would have such a big effect." Umbarger wanted to participate in the farewell shows, but could not due to scheduling conflicts; she believes that Lewis deliberately planned these shows to be in conflict with her schedule.
Track listing
Personnel
Personnel per liner notes.
Chart positions
Album
{| class="wikitable"
!Chart (2001)
!Peak
position
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| US Billboard 200