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The Black Lips

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For the first five years of their career, the Black Lips were known more for the stage antics involving gentials, urine, and blood, the antics that got them banned from multiple clubs around their native Atlanta. Ultimately, though, it was the songs in their studio work that helped them break through. The band became unified after their original guitarist, Ben Eberbaugh, died in a car accident in 2002. Traces of their Nuggets-mining garage rock could be heard on Black Lips! (2003) and We Did Not Know the Forest Spirit Made the Flowers Grow (2004). Their relentless touring and continued stage antics eventually started to win over fans, and their best album to date, Let It Bloom (2005), earned the band a deal with Vice Records.

After the inevitable drunken live album from Tijuana, Los Valientes del Mundo Nuevo, the band released its studio debut for Vice, Good Bad Not Evil (2007), which became its breakthrough, receiving critical plaudits and appearing on several year-end lists. The ambiguous "Oh Katrina!" won a lot of blog attention, and "Veni Vidi Vici" got more attention after its references to Jesus and Mohammad got it pulled from a supermarket ad in Europe.

By the decade's end, the Black Lips no longer needed to carry the crowd, as fan's expectations led to one of the more raucous live sets in America. 200 Million Thousand (2009) was something of a victory lap.