Unsane Special – Poll Results

Time to reveal the results of the poll on best album by Unsane, but also – here’s something else that needs to be said…
With more than 200 votes submitted, it became the most popular poll on IHRTN (with Killing Joke poll being a close second). Much of the credit for this should go to Unsane themselves / their FB fans and Scrapesound.
But I digress…here are the results!
 
1st place – Scattered, Smothered & Covered (Amphetamine Reptile, 1995)
Back in ’95, when M in MTV still stood for something, the video for Scrape (which was made on a budget of $200 and features a plethora of skateboarding accidents) helped to turn the song into a surprising hit for the band.
Scattered also contained such crowd favorites as Alleged (which was covered by Melvins on their recent split with the band).
Total votes: 62
Fun Facts:  the album is in Decibel Magazine’s own AmRep Hall Of Fame (along with Hammerhead‘s Into The Vortex)!
Scattered also shares its name with Hootie & The Blowfish album (which, interestingly enough, came out on Atlantic – the same label that put out Unsane’s own Total Destruction in 1993)
 
2nd place – Visqueen (Ipecac, 2007)
Visqueen is the only album that the band produced for Mike Patton’s label Ipecac and it was also a follow-up to Unsane’s “comeback” album Blood Run.
Music video was made for the song Against The Grain and the album features Unsane’s longest track (“East Broadway”, which clocks at nearly 9 minutes).
Total Votes: 45
Fun Facts: Unlike its predecessor, the album features dead body on the cover. As Whole Lotta Covers blog points out:

At face value, the abandoned corpse, which the viewer is left to decide if the victim was shot, slit or bashed, carries an innate shock value. Of course, the subtle message here is that Unsane (a tremendous live act) are stating that the appreciation of human life has dwindled to the point a killer leaves the victim in an open field without remorse, much less an effort to properly bury the remains. In turn, the visual presentation states that we, as a society, have grown less appreciative of life to the point Unsane can slap a gruesome painting on their album and most people will hardly blink.

 
3rd place – Occupational Hazard (Relapse, 1998)
And this one brings us back to the 90s…
Occupational Hazard was the fourth full-length that the band recorded and the band was forced to take a long break afterwards due to an unfortunate set of circumstances:

Later that same year (1998) – in seeming fulfillment of the album’s title – Spencer was attacked by four people after playing a concert in Vienna, Austria. He ended up in hospital suffering internal bleeding and underwent major surgery. As a result of Spencer’s injury, and touring over ten months of the year, the band decided to take a break in 2000.

Spencer and Curran went on to play with Cutthroats 9 and and Curran was also in JJ Paradise Players Club but it wasn’t until 2005 that Unsane started recording together again and produced Blood Run.
Total votes: 34
 
Honorable mentions:
Self-Titled (City Slang / Matador, 1991) – Debut album with the infamous cover.
# of votes: 21
 
Total Destruction (City Slang / Matador / Atlantic, 1993) – video for Body Bomb eerily references blowing up towers and featured Natz from Cop Shoot Cop
# of votes: 20
 
Wreck (Alternative Tentacles, 2012) – Band’s latest. It came out on Jello Biafra’s label Alternative Tentacles and features a cover of Flipper’s “Ha Ha Ha” among other things.
# of votes: 10
 
Blood Run (Relapse, 2005) – The “comeback” album and the only one of all Unsane record to feature non-bloody cover art.
# of votes: 7
 
Other Answers – 1 or 2 votes:
Attack In Japan (Blood Butterfly / ZK + Rebel + SPV GMBH, 1997)
Singles 89-92 (City Slang / Matador, 1992)
Unsane / Slug Split (PCP Entertainment, 1992)
The Cutthroats 9 – Self Titled (Man’s Ruin, 2000)