by Greg Prato

If you think back to what rock music looked and sounded like circa 1989, Seattle's Tad was a true anomaly. No spandex. No pointy guitars. No pretty boy frontman. Instead, you had a frontman who weighed the same amount as three or four members of Warrant spliced together, and a flannel shirt-wearing band with hairspray-free long hair that played punk rock slowed down to a powerful Sabbath-like pace. All the evidence you'll ever need is on the group's debut full-length released in the aforementioned year, the warmly titled God's Balls. Produced by the same gentleman who manned the controls for both Soundgarden's Screaming Life and Nirvana's Bleach, Jack Endino, God's Balls is chock-full of mammoth riffs and lurching chord progressions. Tad was always responsible for some of rock's best song titles, and God's Balls is no different -- "Cyanide Bath," "Satan's Chainsaw," and "Nipple Belt" would have all sounded extraordinary announced by Casey Kasem on American Top 40. Many picked Tad to follow Soundgarden and Nirvana up the chart ladder, and God's Balls showed an awful lot of promise -- it was certainly on par with both act's debut releases. Unfortunately, lawsuits stemming from ill-advised album cover art would soon throw a wrench in Tad's plan for global domination.