2004 was a different time, man. Asymmetrical haircuts were flatironed in the front and hairsprayed in the back for maximum volume. Lopsided liprings and bandanas (or, briefly, surgical masks) were must-have accessories for off-center t-shirts and jeans that couldn’t be tighter if they were painted on. It all looked ridiculous in public, of course, but it didn’t matter: it was all constructed to look best from the MySpace Angle™, which was the ultimate arbiter of clout.

I Am Hollywood probably isn’t the Most Scene record of that era, but its chaotic genre-hopping and anything-goes grab bag of pop culture references is perhaps the most emblematic record for the hyperactive attention deficit of the early 2000s scene.

He Is Legend was such a part of the zeitgeist that I don’t even remember what it was that got me to listen to this record in the first place. It’s likely that I bought a copy simply because it was on the Solid State roster, though whether it was because I heard a single on a sampler compilation or not is fuzzy. In my memory, I was dragged almost unconsciously to it. But it became an intrinsic part of my listening library, alongside mewithoutYou, As Cities Burn, Norma Jean, Blindside, and Underoath. So when this reissue was made available at Furnace Fest last year, I couldn’t say no. And honestly, I was expecting this record to have aged a lot more poorly than it did.

The two singles—”The Seduction” and “I Am Hollywood“—bookend the album with all of the scatterbrained hypermania that I remembered. And to be sure, there’s plenty of that same ADHD-driven, moshpit-ready shapeshifting in the deep cuts (I seem to remember them using the term “glamcore”), but the record has more clarity of purpose than I gave it credit for. Sure, most of the tracks have dozens of sections that never repeat, grabbing flavors of alternative, classic rock, thrash, and pop punk into their metalcore/post-hardcore palette, but it’s not as shallow as many of their contemporaries. Tracks like “Eating a Book” with its infectious chorus hook and the Deftones-by-way-of-Santana “Dinner With a Gypsy” are more salient than schizophrenic, and prove that the band had some songwriting muscle hidden beneath all their bewildering acrobatics.

But none of this would have worked without the mercurial vocal skill of Schuyler Croom. His delivery unfolds like a rapid-fire Swiss Army Knife, employing acidic sneers, death metal growls, soaring falsetto, and sassy spoken word, often in juxtaposing lines. It’s hard sometimes to tell whether he’s keeping up with the band or if they’re racing to keep pace with him.

Overall though, it’s hard to tell if this record would translate well to contemporary listeners. The Scene™ feels like such a “You Had to Be There” phenomenon that artifacts from that period are impossible to understand without the full context. Still, for those of us that were There, this record is a dazzling gem that still has most of its luster.