The ’90s may have been a fruitful decade for genres of music of all kinds, but the fact is that there’s so many bands and albums that simply got overlooked. Whether it was because of a dominant genre or two or the fact that said band or album may have been ahead of their time, anyone with even a passing interest in music of the decade can easily find stunning records they’ve never heard.
Failure’s Fantastic Planet was the victim of post-grunge + nu-metal’s popularity, and also a lack of promotion from their label at the time. It was to be their last album for 19 years, but the record’s spacey alt-rock sound earned Failure a cult fan base anyway.
Clocking in at almost 70 minutes long, it makes a lot of sense why Fantastic Planet was overlooked. The record’s sci-fi themes were a key part of the album, even down to the album art itself. In a perfect world, the spacey melodies of “Stuck On You” and “Another Space Song” would’ve put Failure’s ambitions in the same category as The Smashing Pumpkins or other “alternative” greats. Perhaps Fantastic Planet was just too far ahead of its time, but what a masterpiece to be discovered. Paramore even covered “Stuck On You” on their 2006 Summer Tic EP, proving their influence spans further than one might think.
