Highly Refined Pirates is Minus the Bear's debut full-length album, released on November 19, 2002, by Suicide Squeeze Records. Minus the Bear was an American indie rock band formed in Seattle, Washington, in 2001, and comprising members of Botch, Kill Sadie, and Sharks Keep Moving. Their sound was described as "Pele-esque guitar-taps and electronics with sophisticated time signature composition." Minus the Bear released six albums and four EPs. The band's final line-up consisted of Jake Snider (vocals, guitar), Dave Knudson (guitar), Cory Murchy (bass guitar), and Alex Rose (synthesizers, vocals). On July 17, 2018, the band announced their retirement and accompanying farewell tour.[4] Their final live performance was December 16, 2018, at The Showbox in Seattle.

Korn (printed and stylized as KoЯn) is the debut studio album by American nu metal band Korn. It was released on October 11, 1994, through Immortal and Epic Records. Before recording the album, the band was approached by Immortal/Epic Records after a performance at Huntington Beach, California. The band signed to their label because they did not want to "sign away all of their creative freedom". The band would record at Indigo Ranch Studios in Malibu, California, with producer Ross Robinson, who also produced their 1993 demo Neidermayer's Mind. The recording took place from May to June 1994. After the recordings, Korn toured with Biohazard and House of Pain. The album's themes include child abuse, drug abuse, and bullying. The album cover depicts a young girl being approached by a large man who is holding what appears to be horseshoes or possibly blades. Furthermore, the girl's shadow gives the appearance that her body is being hanged due to the position of the band's logo. Photography was done by Stephen Stickler, and the design was directed by Jay Papke and Dante Ariola. The first single, "Blind", charted at number 15 on the Canadian Alternative 30, and the album peaked at number 10 in New Zealand as well as number 72 on the Billboard 200. The debut album has sold at least 2.1 million copies in the United States and 10 million copies worldwide, according to Nielsen SoundScan as of January 4, 2013. The album is considered by many to have started the nu metal genre. Korn toured with many bands to promote the album. Initially, Korn joined the Sick of It All Tour. Following the Sick of It All Tour, Korn joined the Danzig 4 Tour. Korn also toured with Megadeth, Fear Factory, and Flotsam and Jetsam. Before Korn developed a name, they had moved into a small house together in Huntington Beach, California, south of Los Angeles, where they began working on songs. Soon after moving, they rented Underground Chicken Sounds, a recording studio, from Jeff Creath, who had previously allowed lead singer Jonathan Davis to live in his garage. While they were recording at the studio, they attracted a crowd of people when performing the prelude to "Clown". The band's bass guitarist, Reginald "Fieldy" Arvizu, said that the crowd gathered because the band's style sounded so "different". Korn was formed in 1993. Within two weeks of their establishment, they recorded a demo containing "Blind", "Predictable", and "Daddy". A couple of weeks later, Korn played their first-ever show at a club called California Dreams in Anaheim. Korn began playing gigs in the summer of 1993. While performing at Huntington Beach, the band was spotted by Immortal/Epic A&R Paul Pontius. He approached the band offering to record an album through their company. Although the group had offers from several other labels, Korn went with Immortal/Epic because they did not want to "sign away all of their creative freedom". While Korn was looking for a place to record their debut album, they asked producer Ross Robinson to produce their album. After accepting the offer, Robinson suggested they record at Indigo Ranch, Malibu, California. The band would record the majority of the album there, while additional recording took place at Bakersfield's Fat Tracks. Korn recorded most of the album with all members playing simultaneously, as opposed to recording instruments separately. In addition, Indigo Ranch was located on a hill rather than in the city, allowing them to record outside, resulting in the "distinctive" sound and quality of music given off by their instruments. The banging sound near the ending of "Ball Tongue" was created via a guitar cord striking a music stand. The bagpipes on "Shoots and Ladders" are often thought to have been recorded on a mountain-top. However, they were actually recorded with a microphone set up at the back door of the studio while Jonathan Davis walked past outside playing. As he walked further from the microphone, this led to the sound naturally fading quieter. Davis said that "Daddy" features him singing the song alone in the dark without knowing that his vocals were being recorded. Korn finished recording the album by the end of June 1994. Since Robinson produced the album, his career was launched by its success, as it "taught Robinson how to produce." In an interview with the heavy metal magazine Metal Hammer, Davis touted Robinson's behavior, saying: "Ross is a very pure and clean-spirited person, and you feel it when you're with him. He's the kind of person that can draw that out of you. I felt very safe with Ross." The album was released on October 11, 1994, through Immortal and Epic Records. During the recording of Korn, there were four outtakes: "Christmas Song", "Sean Olson", "Layla", and "This Broken Soul". "Sean Olson" was put on the single release of "Shoots and Ladders", and featured on The Crow: City of Angels soundtrack. In 2015, Davis ranked the 1994 debut album as his favorite Korn album.

Street Survivors is the fifth studio album by the Southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd, released on October 17, 1977. The LP is the last Skynyrd album recorded by original members Ronnie Van Zant and Allen Collins, and is the sole Skynyrd studio recording by guitarist Steve Gaines. Three days after the album's release, the band's chartered airplane crashed en route to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, killing the pilot, co-pilot, the group's assistant road-manager and three band members (Van Zant, Gaines, and Gaines' older sister, backup singer Cassie Gaines), and severely injuring most who survived the crash. The album was an instant success, achieving gold certification just 10 days after its release. It would later go double platinum. The album was recorded twice, once with Tom Dowd at the helm at Criteria Studios in Miami, Florida, and then at Studio One in Doraville, Georgia, five months later with uncredited co-producers Kevin Elson and Rodney Mills. The Doraville recording was used for the initial release of the album. In March 2008, the album was re-issued with these alternate versions of most of the songs. Differences are minor on some songs, with the major difference being a much slower and extended earlier version of "That Smell." Also included are two songs recorded for, but not included on the original album, "Georgia Peaches" and "Sweet Little Missy," with the latter being included twice, in demo and final form. Also included is a version of "Honky Tonk Night Time Man," with Ronnie's alternate autobiographical vocal take, entitled "Jacksonville Kid," which is believed to be the last vocal take he ever recorded in a studio. The song "One More Time" was added to the album, presumably after it was decided to drop one of the two tracks above. However, this song is the original recording from their 1971 Muscle Shoals demo; it was not re-recorded for this album. Hence it features Greg Walker and Rickey Medlocke in place of Leon Wilkeson and Artimus Pyle. Street Survivors was a showcase for guitarist/vocalist Steve Gaines, who had joined the band just a year earlier on the recommendation of his sister Cassie. Publicly and privately, Ronnie Van Zant marveled at the multiple talents of Skynyrd's newest member, claiming that the band would "all be in his shadow one day." Gaines' contributions included his co-lead vocal with Van Zant on the co-written "You Got That Right" and the guitar boogie "I Know A Little," which Gaines had written before he joined Skynyrd. So confident was Skynyrd's leader of Gaines' abilities, that the album (and some concerts) featured Gaines delivering his self-penned blues "Ain't No Good Life" - one of the few songs in the first incarnation Skynyrd catalog to feature a lead vocalist other than Van Zant. The album also included the hit singles "What's Your Name" and the ominous "That Smell" - a cautionary tale about drug abuse that seemed to be aimed at fellow band members (both Collins and Gary Rossington had serious car accidents which slowed the recording of the album). On October 20, 1977, only three days after the release of Street Survivors, and five shows into their most successful headlining tour to date, Lynyrd Skynyrd's chartered Convair CV-300 ran out of fuel near the end of their flight from Greenville, South Carolina, where they had just performed at the Greenville Memorial Auditorium, to LSU in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Though the pilots attempted an emergency landing on a small airstrip, the plane crashed in a forest five miles (8 km) northeast of Gillsburg, Mississippi. Ronnie Van Zant, Steve Gaines, Cassie Gaines, assistant road manager Dean Kilpatrick, pilot Walter McCreary, and co-pilot William Gray, were killed on impact. The other band members (Collins, Rossington, Wilkeson, Powell, Pyle, and Hawkins), tour manager Ron Eckerman, and road crew survived, but suffered serious injuries. Following the crash and the ensuing press, Street Survivors became the band's second platinum album and reached No. 5 on the U.S. album chart. The single "What's Your Name?" reached No. 13 on the single airplay charts in January 1978. The original cover sleeve for Street Survivors had featured a photograph of the band standing on a city street with all its buildings engulfed in flames, some near the center nearly obscuring Steve Gaines's face. After the plane crash, this cover became highly controversial. Out of respect for the deceased (and at the request of Teresa Gaines, Steve's widow), MCA Records withdrew the original cover and replaced it with a similar image of the band against a simple black background, which was on the back cover of the original sleeve. Conspiracy theorists have long claimed that only those band members touched by flame in the photograph were killed in the crash, but this is not true (flame appears to touch nearly all band members). Thirty years later, for the deluxe CD version of Street Survivors, the original "flames" cover was restored.

The Way of All Flesh is the fourth studio album by French heavy metal band Gojira. The album was released on 13 October 2008 in Europe via Listenable Records and on 14 October in the US through Prosthetic Records. It sold around 4,200 copies in the United States in its first week of release to debut at number 138 on the Billboard 200 chart. It also reached no. 1 on the Top Heatseekers chart and no. 21 on the Top Independent Albums chart. The album was recorded at the band's home studio while Joe Duplantier produced it. The drums were recorded in Los Angeles and engineered by Logan Mader, who also mixed and mastered the album. The cover features artwork created by vocalist Joe Duplantier, who was responsible for the artwork on past albums. Joe Duplantier revealed to Total Guitar magazine that the album deals with their vision about life and death. "The Way Of All Flesh is everything we have to go through until death. I’m 30 years old now and it’s the first time as a human being that I’ve thought about my own death philosophically, and the time that I have to spend here on Earth. It’s something that we’re all concerned about. But it’s almost taboo. You don’t go to a party and talk about death, right?” Duplantier also references the bands that Gojira have toured with as well as the environment and landscape of the band's hometown Bayonne as influences on the writing of this album. Randy Blythe from the American band Lamb of God appeared as a guest vocalist on the song "Adoration for None." The song "The Art of Dying" is a reference to the Buddhist concept of rebirth, and features introspective lyrics. At the end of the song "The Art of Dying", there is a small part that is played backwards. If backmasked, the section would bear a resemblance to the song "Esoteric Surgery", which is then repeated at the end of that very next track. A similar technique is used at the end of "Wolf Down the Earth." On 6 October 2008, a music video was released for the song "Vacuity", produced by Julien Mokrani and Samuel Bodin. The video was shot near the band's hometown in France, and starred the Duplantiers' cousin, actress Claire Theodoly. On 11 January 2009, Gojira released a second music video from the album, an animated video for "All the Tears", illustrated by Jossie Malis. In March 2013, Listenable Records made a double vinyl format of the album available for pre-order, with the official release date listed as 29 April 2013; 250 copies each of blue and white vinyl were manufactured.