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With some things, you just know. Not long after I got Prove You Wrong (Epic, 1991), which turns 20 today, I knew it was for me. I bought the longbox at a tiny record store by train tracks where kids smoked and did bad things. No doubt that store is gone now. But the mystique of the album’s artwork – a subtly deadly combination of metal and jellyfish – and its perfect fit for me burn as brightly as ever.
Musically, Prove You Wrong is a paradox. It’s Prong from note one, with a tight coldness that hits sideways. Mainman Tommy Victor’s songs rarely let loose. Even at their highest momentum, they don’t tip over into the red like, say, Slayer. Instead, rage seethes below the surface, perhaps frustated at being caged. (
Yet the record is a rainbow of influences. It’s a transition from Beg to Differ’s technical thrash to Cleansing’s industrial metal. So it offers those elements, along with Prong’s hardcore punk roots, post-punk’s taut grooves, post-punk’s hollow dub, post-punk’s white take on James Brown (dig those Jimmy Nolen ninth chords in the title track), and, yeah, post-punk. I don’t mean the stovepipe jeans disco that soundtracked Williamsburg for a while; I mean the hostility-at-low-gain practiced by Joy Division and Killing Joke. (The latter’s take on dub was perhaps a Cold War-hardened mutation of The Clash’s white dub.)
The result is curiously devoid of midrange. Since Victor’s guitar slinks rather than scorches, the impetus comes from the rhythm section. In “Positively Blind”, rubbery bass interjects in almost Primus-esque fashione; the hard-edged, reverbed drums recall contemporaneous recordings (Cowboys from Hell, Vulgar Display of Power) by Pantera. Midrange is payoff, but here we get 45 minutes of undertow. Frustration could be one reaction, but a better one would be letting onself be carried along.
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I’ve done that for years with just the title track. “Prong”; “Prove You Wrong”. On a purely visual level, that phrasing has beautiful symmetry. And for a personal mantra, it doesn’t get more hard-hitting than “Prove you wrong / You can bet on it”. This is about as close to a personal credo as I have. I realize that living according to something phrased in the negative might not be the healthiest thing. However, it is what has kept my fire burning in my adult life. What can I say? I love revenge movies.
Looking more closely at the other songs now, I see a theme of individualism running throughout. The evidence comes in pieces: “For society’s will / Denied my own person / But there’s still a will / For my own lesson”; “Dependence on no one, I distrust and oppose”; “It is a reason why I got control / It’s the treason, better off alone / Got an answer, individual creed”; and my favorite – “Not fit in / So be it”.
What’s interesting is that these aren’t rallying cries. They’re spittings by someone trapped in a hopeless situation. Victor helplessly proclaims, “I’d give you hell if I could”, then tacks on “I swear”. This isn’t revolution, but frustration. The theme of individualism is common in metal, but it’s rare to encounter treatments this nuanced. You can don all the corpsepaint and spikes in the world, but at the end of the day, you’re still a cog in systems larger than yourself: commerce, finance, government, reality.
The biggest example of this on the album is “Contradictions”. It’s a deep cut I long overlooked. Young me liked music fast and catchy, and this song is slow and plodding, as if Slayer’s “Seasons in the Abyss” remained mired in its intro. (See also Ministry’s “Scarecrow”, another slow-crusher-with-wide-open-feel-colored-by-a-tritone descendant of Led Zeppelin’s “When the Levee Breaks”.) Over Swans-esque percussion, Victor asks, “All these contradictions / Which wrong will you choose?” There’s no way out – yet one man stands, shaking his fist.
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HEAR PROVE YOU WRONG
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“Positively Blind”
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“Contradictions”
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BUY PROVE YOU WRONG
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Prong was before their time. They still make some great albums today (aside from the god-awful remix of “Damager”). Definitely an underrated band.
“Prove You Wrong” is one of my favorites. I can’t believe it’s been twenty years since its release. Those first almost country-like twangs of the title track set the tone of the song and lend a balance to the crushing chorus. Always a treat to listen to. “Hell if I Could” has to be my favorite track on that album. “I swear/you’ve not far to go!” — perfect.
If only they would tour more.
Definitely damaged my hearing listening to this record, and seeing them live. I always enjoyed this band. 91 will always be the year grunge broke but there were bands that caught my attention outside of the flannel set, including these guys, and Tool. Added to the fact that its hard being a power trio. But they were original, and its strange to see it was twenty years ago.
One of those special Headbanger’s Ball discoveries. Essential.
This and “Badmotorfinger” were my favorite records of the infamous Fall of 1991. And I had almost all of them from the get-go. I really liked this at the time…thought they were one of the few bands doing something close to Voivod in some way. I hated Voivod’s – “Angel Rat” from the same time period and decided that THIS was the record I wanted from them. Ironically, years later, I finally once and for all really DISCOVERED “Angel Rat” and now think it is genius.
Unconditionally excellent, this album is. Interesting retrospective and I will now listen to it differently.
I remember listening to this on the school bus, in my sweeeet Sony Discman, practically every day as a high school freshman. The album had just come out, and I loved it. I loved Beg To Differ, too, but thought Prove You Wrong was better. 20 years later and I’m still listening to metal. I have all Prong’s albums, lots of which are fantasic — but Prove You Wrong still stands out to me as Prong’s best. Long live Tommy Victor! I’d love another new Prong album soon!
Huge in the NY college radio scene. Classic album and a great part of my childhood.
Many fond memories of this tape. I bought this and The Grindcrusher a couple of days before my grade 12 theology retreat (I went to a catholic school) and played them both multiple times over the course of the day just to get me through. I never really thought of the “helpless” vibe until you mentioned it in this article, but in hindsight I probably related to that side of things being that I was stuck in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of people I didn’t like being subjected to a religion that I had pretty much given up on.
It was also thanks to this album that I got into Killing Joke. People can shit on Prong all they want, but they were one of the greats in the early 90s…
I have this on cassette and still bust it out every now and then to revisit these old grooves. I really like Cosmo’s scholarly comments on the sound. I would never had thought of it this way, but it makes so much sense. What a highly underrated album, by a highly underrated band. I saw Tommy Victor on the last Danzig tour and he was seriously amazing. He put feeling back into those old Danzig classics and gave them the soul that had been missing since John Christ’s departure. When i listen to the Ministry albums with Tommy V., we just don’t get to hear what he is capable of. Through the 90s I think that I saw Prong open for more bands that any other act.
If this album were released now what would it be like. Could be huge, could be weird like it was when it was released. But either way, it would probably only be viable to a certain group of folks. But so often really good music can just get overlooked. This is a classic, IMHO, and thanks to Cosmo for bringing it back into peoples minds. I’ll be popping it into the cassette player at home this week.
Cosmo, are you a fan of Candiria. I get a Candiria feel when listening to this, though it’s my first exposure.
Prong…love em so much my nickname was Prong hahah.
Really wanna find the Pointless video..nowhere to be found.
Anyone have it by any chance?
my god thats the greatest thing ive ever read about prong. just fuckin beautiful writing. thx cosmo