Hell Below/Stars Above

Hell Below/Stars Above
Studio album by
ReleasedMarch 20, 2001
RecordedJanuary 3 – March 18, 2000
StudioSunset Sound Recorders, Hollywood, Los Angeles, California
Genre
Length44:56
LabelInterscope
Producer
Toadies chronology
Rubberneck
(1994)
Hell Below/Stars Above
(2001)
Best of Toadies: Live from Paradise
(2002)
Singles from Hell Below/Stars Above
  1. "Push the Hand"
    Released: February 2001[1]

Hell Below/Stars Above is the second studio album by the American alternative rock band Toadies, released on March 20, 2001, by Interscope Records. It is the first Toadies album to feature lead guitarist Clark Vogeler, who joined in 1996, and the band's final album with founding member and bassist Lisa Umbarger. The album was the Toadies' first in nearly seven years, and was their second attempt at recording a follow-up album to their platinum-selling debut album Rubberneck (1994); the band's first attempt, Feeler, had been rejected by Interscope in 1998.

Hell Below/Stars Above was produced by Tom Rothrock and Rob Schnapf and was recorded at Sunset Sound Recorders in Los Angeles, California between January and March 2000. Disagreements with Interscope delayed the album's release for an entire year after its completion. Unlike earlier Toadies' releases, Hell Below/Stars Above was jointly written by all of the band's members instead of by frontman Vaden Todd Lewis only, resulting in it becoming more stylistically varied. The album's overall sound was influenced by 1970s rock music, and was cleaner and less aggressive than the grunge-informed Rubberneck.

Hell Below/Stars Above received mixed reviews from critics and was a significant commercial failure upon release, with the album only reaching number 130 on the Billboard 200 chart and selling less than a tenth of Rubberneck's sales, primarily due to Interscope's complete lack of promotional support for the album.[2] Disillusioned with the album's failure, Umbarger quit the Toadies four months after its release, resulting in the group's disbandment in October 2001. It was the Toadies' last album prior to their reformation in 2006.

  1. ^ "The Toadies Network". April 1, 2001. Archived from the original on April 1, 2001. Retrieved June 25, 2022.
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference :0 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).