''Haunted Cities'' is the second studio album by the American punk rock/ hip hop 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 LaSalle Records was an American record label and a former division of Atlantic Records. History The record label was founded in 2004 and was owned by musician Travis Barker. The label is located in Corona, California. Most of the bands curren ...

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 its first 20 years of operation, Atlantic earned a reputation as one of the most i ...

, 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 a list of albums ranked by physical and digital sales and (from March 2015) audio streaming in the United Kingdom. It was published for the first time on 22 July 1956 and is compiled every week by the Official Charts C ...

, #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, singer, songwriter and producer. Known for his distinctive voice, he is the singer/guitarist for the punk rock band Rancid and hip hop/punk rock supergroup Transplants. ...

and

Dave Carlock David Walter Carlock is an American record producer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. His production style has been described as very hands on and song oriented. He received a Grammy Award for engineering Pink's, "Trouble". Biography Ear ...

. Rancid's

Matt Freeman Matthew "McCall" Freeman (born Roger Matthew Freeman; April 23, 1966) is an American musician, singer and songwriter. He is best known for his bass work with the punk rock bands Operation Ivy, Rancid and as the frontman of Devil's Brigade. ...

The Slackers The Slackers are an American ska band, formed in Manhattan, New York in 1991. The band's sound is a mix of ska, rocksteady, reggae, dub, soul, garage rock, and jazz. The Slackers' notability is credited to their prolific career, tours of Nort ...

Vic Ruggiero Victor "Vic" Ruggiero, (also known as Rugaroo, Bad Vic or Lord Sluggo) is a musician, songwriter and producer from New York City who has played in reggae, blues, ska and rocksteady bands since the early 1990s, including The Slackers, Stubb ...

Cypress Hill Cypress Hill is an American hip hop group from South Gate, California. They have sold over 20 million albums worldwide and have multi-platinum and platinum albums. They are considered to be among the main progenitors of West Coast and 1990 ...

's B-Real and

Sen Dog Senen Reyes (born November 22, 1965), also known by his stage name Sen Dog, is a Cuban-American rapper and musician who is best known as a member of the rap group Cypress Hill and as the lead vocalist for the heavy metal band Powerflo. He has ...

Dilated Peoples Dilated Peoples is an American hip hop group from Los Angeles, California. They have had little mainstream success in the US, with the exception of the song " This Way", a 2004 collaboration with Kanye West. Better known in the UK, they reached t ...

Rakaa Rakaa Taylor, better known by his stage names Rakaa, Rakaa Iriscience, and Iriscience, is a rapper from Los Angeles, California. He is a member of Dilated Peoples alongside Evidence and DJ Babu. Career Rakaa released the solo debut album, ''Crow ...

, and

Boo-Yaa T.R.I.B.E. Boo-Yaa T.R.I.B.E. is an American hip hop band from Carson, California, consisting of the American Samoa Devoux brothers Paul (died 2020), Ted (died 2018), Donald, Roscoe, Danny (died 2022), David and Vincent. It is noted for its use of a liv ...

made their appearances on the album as additional musicians and vocalists.

Houston Houston (; ) is the most populous city in Texas, the most populous city in the Southern United States, the fourth-most populous city in the United States, and the sixth-most populous city in North America, with a population of 2,304,580 in ...

-based rapper

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

made

screwed and chopped Chopped and screwed (also called screwed and chopped or slowed and throwed) is a music genre and technique of remixing music that involves slowing down the tempo and deejaying. It developed in the Houston hip hop scene in the early 1990s by DJ ...

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

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and #35 on the

UK Singles Chart The UK Singles Chart (currently titled Official Singles Chart, with the upper section more commonly known as the Official UK Top 40) is compiled by the Official Charts Company (OCC), on behalf of the British record industry, listing the top-s ...

. 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 edition.

Critical reception

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

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

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

average In ordinary language, an average is a single number taken as representative of a list of numbers, usually the sum of the numbers divided by how many numbers are in the list (the arithmetic mean). For example, the average of the numbers 2, 3, 4, 7, ...

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 music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databas ...

, 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."

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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 act of creating musical sounds with the voice. A person who sings is called a singer, artist or vocalist (in jazz and/or popular music). Singers perform music (arias, recitatives, songs, etc.) that can be sung with or without ...

, bass,

guitar The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected stri ...

keyboards Keyboard may refer to: Text input * Keyboard, part of a typewriter * Computer keyboard ** Keyboard layout, the software control of computer keyboards and their mapping ** Keyboard technology, computer keyboard hardware and firmware Music * Musi ...

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

executive producer Executive producer (EP) is one of the top positions in the making of a commercial entertainment product. Depending on the medium, the executive producer may be concerned with management accounting or associated with legal issues (like copyrights o ...

, producer,

engineering Engineering is the use of scientific method, scientific principles to design and build machines, structures, and other items, including bridges, tunnels, roads, vehicles, and buildings. The discipline of engineering encompasses a broad rang ...

* Rob "Skinhead Rob" Aston - vocals *

Travis Barker Travis Landon Barker (born November 14, 1975) is an American musician who serves as the drummer for the rock band Blink-182. He has also performed as a frequent collaborator with hip hop artists, is a member of the rap rock group Tran ...

drums A drum kit (also called a drum set, trap set, or simply drums) is a collection of drums, cymbals, and other Percussion instrument, auxiliary percussion instruments set up to be played by one person. The player (drummer) typically holds a pair o ...

, loops,

percussion A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Exc ...

- vocals (track 1) * Paul Devoux - vocals (track 4) * Vincent Devoux - vocals (track 4) * Ted Devoux - vocals (track 4) * Loius 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 use ...

(track 3) *

- 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 afte ...

(tracks: 1, 6, 8), organ (tracks: 8, 10), producer, engineering * Kim Jade Fry - bass (tracks: 2-3) *

- 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 ...

(track 7) * Carlos Paugar - drum programming (track 12) *

Farfisa organ Farfisa (Fabbriche Riunite di Fisarmoniche) is a manufacturer of electronics based in Osimo, Italy, founded in 1946. The company manufactured a series of compact electronic organs in the 1960s and 1970s, including the Compact, FAST, Professiona ...

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 family of classical music instrument in the woodwind group. Like all woodwinds, flutes are aerophones, meaning they make sound by vibrating a column of air. However, unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is a reedless ...

(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 pr ...

(track 5) * Obi Fernandez -

trombone The trombone (german: Posaune, 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 vibrating lips cause the Standing wave, air column ...

(track 5) * Rich Graiko -

trumpet The trumpet is a brass instrument commonly used in classical and jazz ensembles. The trumpet group ranges from the piccolo trumpet—with the highest register in the brass family—to the bass trumpet, pitched one octave below the standard ...

(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 Estevan Oriol is an American of Mexican-Italian descent, photographer and music video director based in Los Angeles, California. His work has been featured in magazines, usually reflects Los Angeles urban and gang culture, and he has also photograp ...

photography Photography is the art, application, and practice of creating durable 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 employed ...

Charts

Album Singles

References

External links

* {{Authority control 2005 albums Atlantic Records albums Transplants (band) albums