''Haunted Cities'' is the second studio album by the American

punk rock Punk rock (also known as simply punk) is a rock music genre that emerged in the mid-1970s. Rooted in 1950s rock and roll and 1960s garage rock, punk bands rejected the corporate nature of mainstream 1970s rock music. They typically produced sh ...

hip hop Hip-hop or hip hop (originally disco rap) is a popular music genre that emerged in the early 1970s from the African-American community of New York City. The style is characterized by its synthesis of a wide range of musical techniques. Hip- ...

band

Transplants Transplant or Transplantation may refer to: Sciences *Transplanting a plant from one location to another *Organ transplantation, moving an organ from one body to another *Transplant thought experiment, an experiment similar to Trolley problem *Tra ...

. It was released on June 21, 2005 via LaSalle Records/

Atlantic Records Atlantic Recording Corporation (simply known as Atlantic Records) is an American record label founded in October 1947 by Ahmet Ertegun and Herb Abramson. Over the course of its first two decades, starting from the release of its first recor ...

, and sold close to 34,000 copies in its first week and came in at #28 on the US ''Billboard'' 200, #72 on the

UK Albums Chart The Official Albums Chart is the United Kingdom's industry-recognised national record chart for album, albums. Entries are ranked by sales and audio streaming. It was published for the first time on 22 July 1956 and is compiled every week by the O ...

, #140 on the Top 200 Albums France.

Production

Audio production of the record was handled by

Tim Armstrong Timothy Ross Armstrong (born November 25, 1965) is an American musician, songwriter and record producer. Known for his distinctive voice, he is the singer/guitarist for the punk rock band Rancid (band), Rancid and hip hop/punk rock supergroup T ...

and Dave Carlock. Rancid's Matt Freeman, The Slackers' Vic Ruggiero,

Cypress Hill Cypress Hill is an American Hip hop music, hip hop group formed in South Gate, California in 1988. One of the first Latin groups to gain mainstream recognition in hip hop, they have sold over 20 million albums worldwide, and have obtained multi ...

B-Real Louis Mario Freese (born June 2, 1970), known by his stage name B-Real, is an American rapper. Since 1991, he has been one of two lead rappers in the hip hop group Cypress Hill, along with Sen Dog. He has also been a part of the rap metal ban ...

and Sen Dog,

Dilated Peoples Dilated Peoples is an American Los Angeles-based Hip hop music, hip hop trio, composed of rapper and record producer Evidence (musician), Evidence, rapper Rakaa, and Beat Junkies deejay and record producer DJ Babu. The group is better known in t ...

' Rakaa, and Boo-Yaa T.R.I.B.E. made their appearances on the album as additional musicians and vocalists.

Houston Houston ( ) is the List of cities in Texas by population, most populous city in the U.S. state of Texas and in the Southern United States. Located in Southeast Texas near Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, it is the county seat, seat of ...

-based rapper

Paul Wall Paul Michael Slayton (born March 11, 1981), better known by his stage name Paul Wall, or the Ice Man, is an American rapper and DJ. He has spent much of his career affiliated with Swishahouse, and has released several albums under the label and ...

made screwed and chopped version of the album, released months later the same year.

Background

The album spawned three singles: " Gangsters and Thugs", "What I Can't Describe" and "Crash and Burn". Its lead single, "Gangsters and Thugs", peaked at #25 on the US

Alternative Songs Alternative Airplay (formerly known as Modern Rock Tracks between 1988 and 2009, and Alternative Songs between 2009 and 2020) is a music chart published in the American magazine ''Billboard'' since September 10, 1988. It ranks the 40 most-play ...

and #35 on the UK Singles Chart. It also included two bonus tracks: "Red Dawn", which was previously released as B-side of CD formatted "Gangsters and Thugs" single and was added later on as the thirteenth track on the Japanese version of ''Haunted Cities'', and "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7", which was dropped as non-album promotional single and was added later as the thirteenth track on its

Best Buy Best Buy Co., Inc. is an American multinational consumer electronics retailer headquartered in Richfield, Minnesota. Originally founded by Richard M. Schulze and James Wheeler in 1966 as an audio specialty store called Sound of Music, it was r ...

edition.

Critical reception

''Haunted Cities'' was met with "mixed or averages" reviews from critics. At

Metacritic Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...

, which assigns a weighted average rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, this release received an

average In colloquial, ordinary language, an average is a single number or value that best represents a set of data. The type of average taken as most typically representative of a list of numbers is the arithmetic mean the sum of the numbers divided by ...

score of 55 based on 11 reviews. In a review for

AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All-Music Guide and AMG) is an American online database, online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on Musical artist, musicians and Mus ...

, Johnny Loftus noted how the album "suffers lyrically", while going on to say, "the whole package ends up having this strangely alluring glimmer. It's like discovering California Babylon after being lost in suburbia."

E! Online E! Entertainment Television is an American basic cable television network. It is owned by the NBCUniversal Media Group division of Comcast's NBCUniversal. The channel focuses primarily on pop culture, celebrity based reality shows and movies. ...

explained: "''Haunted Cities'' has more of a street-smarts vibe and is actually more listenable. Despite some song titles that foreshadow darker themes, this musical locale is more inviting than intimidating."

Track listing

Personnel

vocals Singing is the art of creating music with the voice. It is the oldest form of musical expression, and the human voice can be considered the first musical instrument. The definition of singing varies across sources. Some sources define sing ...

bass Bass or Basses may refer to: Fish * Bass (fish), various saltwater and freshwater species Wood * Bass or basswood, the wood of the tilia americana tree Music * Bass (sound), describing low-frequency sound or one of several instruments in th ...

guitar The guitar is a stringed musical instrument that is usually fretted (with Fretless guitar, some exceptions) and typically has six or Twelve-string guitar, twelve strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming ...

, keyboards,

synthesizer A synthesizer (also synthesiser or synth) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis a ...

executive producer Executive producer (EP) is one of the top positions in the production of media. Depending on the medium, the executive producer may be concerned with management accounting or associated with legal issues (like copyrights or royalties). In film ...

, producer,

engineering Engineering is the practice of using natural science, mathematics, and the engineering design process to Problem solving#Engineering, solve problems within technology, increase efficiency and productivity, and improve Systems engineering, s ...

* Rob "Skinhead Rob" Aston - vocals *

Travis Barker Travis Landon Barker (born November 14, 1975) is an American musician, songwriter, and music producer who is the drummer for the rock band Blink-182. He has collaborated with hip hop artists, is a member of the rap rock group Transplants ...

drums The drum is a member of the percussion instrument, percussion group of musical instruments. In the Hornbostel–Sachs classification system, it is a membranophones, membranophone. Drums consist of at least one Acoustic membrane, membrane, c ...

, loops,

percussion A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a percussion mallet, beater including attached or enclosed beaters or Rattle (percussion beater), rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or ...

* Sen Dog - vocals (track 1) * Paul Devoux - vocals (track 4) * Vincent Devoux - vocals (track 4) * Ted Devoux - vocals (track 4) * Louis Freese - vocals (track 6) * Rakaa Taylor - vocals (track 12) * Richard Stites -

backing vocals A backing vocalist is a singer who provides vocal harmony with the lead vocalist or other backing vocalists. A backing vocalist may also sing alone as a lead-in to the main vocalist's entry or to sing a counter-melody. Backing vocalists are us ...

(track 3) * Dave Carlock - backing vocals (tracks: 4, 8, 12), bass (tracks: 5, 12), guitar (tracks: 5–6, 8), keyboards & synthesizer (tracks: 2–8, 12),

theremin The theremin (; originally known as the ætherphone, etherphone, thereminophone or termenvox/thereminvox) is an electronic musical instrument controlled without physical contact by the performer (who is known as a thereminist). It is named aft ...

(tracks: 1, 6, 8),

organ Organ and organs may refer to: Biology * Organ (biology), a group of tissues organized to serve a common function * Organ system, a collection of organs that function together to carry out specific functions within the body. Musical instruments ...

(tracks: 8, 10), producer, engineering * Kim Jade Fry - bass (tracks: 2–3) * Matt Freeman - bass (tracks: 5, 11) * Gemi Taylor - guitar (track 4) * Nic C -

drum programming Programming is a form of music production and performance using electronic devices and computer software, such as sequencers and workstations or hardware synthesizers, sampler and sequencers, to generate sounds of musical instruments. These mu ...

(track 7) * Carlos Paugar - drum programming (track 12) * Vic Ruggiero - Farfisa organ &

Wurlitzer organ The Rudolph Wurlitzer Company, usually referred to as simply Wurlitzer, is an American company started in Cincinnati in 1853 by German immigrant (Franz) Rudolph Wurlitzer. The company initially imported stringed, woodwind and brass instruments ...

(track 6) * Jennifer Tefft -

flute The flute is a member of a family of musical instruments in the woodwind group. Like all woodwinds, flutes are aerophones, producing sound with a vibrating column of air. Flutes produce sound when the player's air flows across an opening. In th ...

(track 12) * Dave Holden -

saxophone The saxophone (often referred to colloquially as the sax) is a type of single-reed woodwind instrument with a conical body, usually made of brass. As with all single-reed instruments, sound is produced when a reed on a mouthpiece vibrates to p ...

(track 5) * Obi Fernandez -

trombone The trombone (, Italian, French: ''trombone'') is a musical instrument in the Brass instrument, brass family. As with all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player's lips vibrate inside a mouthpiece, causing the Standing wave, air c ...

(track 5) * Rich Graiko -

trumpet The trumpet is a brass instrument commonly used in classical and jazz musical ensemble, ensembles. The trumpet group ranges from the piccolo trumpet—with the highest Register (music), register in the brass family—to the bass trumpet, pitche ...

(track 5) * Scott Abels - percussion (tracks: 4, 6, 10, 12) * Brett Reed - percussion (track 10) * DJ Odie - scratches (tracks: 3, 11–12) * DJ Pone - scratches (tracks: 4–5, 10) * Billy "Jam" Kiernan - sound fx effects (track 5) * John Silas Cranfield - assistant engineering * Nick Ferrero - assistant engineering * Chris Rakestraw - assistant engineering * Alicia Simmons - assistant engineering * Ian Suddarth - assistant engineering * John Morrical - additional engineer, assistant engineering * Fredrik Sarhagen - additional engineering * Brian "Big Bass" Gardner - mastering * Neal Harrington Pogue - mixing * Mark Machado - artwork (logo & cover) * Estevan Oriol -

photography Photography is the visual arts, art, application, and practice of creating images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is empl ...

Charts

Album Singles

References

External links

* {{Authority control 2005 albums Atlantic Records albums Transplants (band) albums LaSalle Records albums Albums produced by Tim Armstrong