Congregation (album) - Legacy

Legacy

The first band hailing from outside the Pacific Northwest to join the Sub Pop stable, Ohio's Afghan Whigs brought a healthy injection of libido to the label's angsty roster ... eering frontman Greg Dulli used Congregation to cultivate the stylized, seductive evil that he would go on to perfect on the Whigs' 1993 masterwork Gentlemen.

Along with Gentlemen, Congregation is generally considered by music writers to be part of The Afghan Whigs' peak era. Dulli cites it as "the record where we came into our own". Melody Maker dubbed it "the finest rock LP of the decade" and commented that it is "nothing less than rock raping pop, a ferocious deflowering of Motown's romantic ideal". With Congregation, Stephanie Benson of Rhapsody found the band to be "crucial to the birth of '90s alternative rock." Allmusic editor Jason Ankeny viewed the album as the band's artistic breakthrough and "ticket to the big leagues", calling it "an incendiary and insidious set which bridges the gap between the noisy aggression of the band's early releases and the soulful swagger of their later work." Ankeny also cited it as "the grunge era's most overlooked masterpiece" and an indication of the band's musical growth, writing that "while still unmistakably a member of the Sub Pop stable, there's a greater maturity and depth to their sinewy sound, with a newfound grasp of mood and nuance".

Yahoo! Music's Chris Norris called it a "disjointed set, which finds the band suspended between its punky roots and a more voluptuous later style." The Spin Alternative Record Guide (1995) noted "a creative musical blend" on the album, but concluded that "the results feel like dress rehearsals for Gentlemen, with one partial exception, 'Conjure Me,' and one absolute triumph: a surging final track ... that might be the Afghan Whigs' strongest recorded performance." In The New Rolling Stone Album Guide (2004), Rolling Stone journalist Joe Gross gave the album three-and-a-half out of five stars and viewed it as a "quantum leap" over the band's previous work, commenting that it "shows that they ditched grunge for soul because they were no damn good at the former and ladies dig the latter." In 2002, Italian music magazine Il Mucchio Selvaggio included the album in its list of 100 Best Albums by Decade. Polish webzine Screenagers ranked it number 79 on its 2004 list of the Top 100 Albums of the '90s. Italian music journalists Eddy Cilìa and Federico Guglielmi included Congregation in their 2010 book on essential rock albums.