A Review of the Album "Beg to Differ" by American Thrash Metal Band Prong

New York City area thrash metal band Prong made its entry into the music business with their pretty good debut album called Force Fed. How would their second studio album "Beg to Differ" be? One word can be used to describe this 1990 album and it is BETTER!

Tommy Victor’s vocals see a marked improvement as it is easier for me to understand him now. The band also moved away from the punk metal style that had been a part of their debut. Mike Muir definitely has some competition now.

These guys wanted to bring attention to the various social ills of the world including how people try to defraud others by using their ego to look like they are heroes. This theme is described in the song called Lost and Found.

The slower song called Your Fear is about the fact that some people live their lives without a reason as the clock ticks by. The song has a very interesting melodic part in it which would be unheard of for a band that has had the pride of being fast and aggressive and not really a melodic thrash metal band.

With this song, Prong shows that they are one of the outstanding American industrial groove thrash bands. The song Take It in Hand is a slower version of the song Cut Rate but then it massively speeds up just like Annihilator’s Alice in Hell album.

What is interesting though is that there is a song on this album that could describe the current atmosphere in the US in 2019. This song is called “For Dear Life” describes how the free market enterprise has taken over as the hassles and hard times have become the normal situation as many people are living paycheck to paycheck. It feels like they are holding on for dear life. As the song suggests, saying our prayers is the one thing that we can do as humans to try and maintain a sense of normalcy and sanity in hard times or when the prices of food or gas rise especially in the developing nations of the world. I wonder if some of these conservatives that praise the capitalist system so much realize how much economic inequality results from this system.

The production is clearer and more noticeable on Beg to Differ compared to Force Fed. The song Beg to Differ is a song about how the world has lost its good ways and lost its values as so many people try to find ways to cheat the system. These kinds of people will try to get money anyway they can. In a way, Beg to Differ is lyrically similar to the song Anything for Money, a song which would not be in existence until 1996. It takes lots of work and perhaps an element of luck to stay financially solvent. Financial solvency is addressed in the song called Right to Nothing. The song says that whoever achieves their goals and becomes whatever they had set out to become, they should be the satisfied one. The song called Just the Same has a Sacred Reich and Annihilator influence in it as the album ends with a very solid finish.

"Beg to Differ" is actually a better album than 1994’s Cleansing even though the production may not be as good as that one. The songs on Beg to Differ are of better quality than the more popular Cleansing (an album that I grew up with). Beg to Differ is one of the most solid albums of the year 1990 for sure and it has no bad songs at all!