Hey, everyone. Bigthony Screamtano here, the internet's busiest music nerd. It's time for a classic review of Justice's †.

This is the game-changing debut album of France's own Justice, a duo of DJs, producers, multi-instrumentalists, and songwriters featuring Gaspard Augé, as well as Xavier de Rosnay, who started working together shortly after meeting as graphic designers in the early 2000s, which explains why the album art here is so good. The duo's shared interest in all things rock, pop, electro, and disco explains why the music is so good.

Truth be told, the early 2000s were an interesting time for electronic dance music. I mean, it just got done taking the '90s airwaves by storm with a myriad of new exciting styles and sounds. The French duo Daft Punk kicked the decade off by proving that the genre's commercial heavy-hitters could stay successful while simultaneously delivering high concept, high ambition projects like Discovery. The record was a cultural force whose influence was obviously going to be felt at some point.

But with the burgeoning online scene at the time, that happened sooner rather than later because the ball on that really started rolling before Thomas [Bangalter] and Guy-Manuel [de Homem-Christo] could faceplant on the following Human After All a few years later with a bunch of ham-fisted electro rock fusions that many fans still don't know what to make of to this day.

But before that, and before Justice could build up to the greatness that is 2007's † over here, they first had to cut their teeth as performers, as producers, and most importantly, remixers.

This was pretty integral to how the duo built a name for themselves early on. I mean, for example, their remix of MGMT's "Electric Feel" won a Grammy Award for Best Remixed Recording, Non-Classical in 2009. And prior to that, they first got their foot in the door over at Ed Banger Records after winning a remix contest reassembling Simian's track, "Never Be Alone". And when the commercial release of that went about as viral as a remix could on the internet at that time, Justice soon found themselves retooling recent works from the likes of Mr. Oizo, Soulwax, Britney Spears, even Franz Ferdinand, as their success melted into the indie and alternative scenes in some surprising ways — as well as the growing music blogosphere, which was popular at the time and was a hotbed of new and up-and-coming talent.

Justice eventually found themselves remixing for Daft Punk, too, for the title track of Human After All that I mentioned earlier. You really have to admire the balls on both of them for doing this. Remember, this is even before they came out with their first album. Justice's version — their remix of this track — takes a lot of creative liberties but also has a lot of reverence, too. Clearly, they saw and respected Daft Punk's vision on this track, really leaning into a lot of the harsh and super aggressive textures that had so many fans scratching their heads at the time, but then also adding an oddball quality to it with all these unhinged synth funk leads. They really did not shy away from this opportunity, even though they had a tall order to fill, and Daft Punk weren't exactly being praised all over the place for this record.

Now, Justice not only passed this remix test with flying colors, but they took all the years of experience they were accruing (DJing and remixing) and putting all of that into their first record.

Again, considering how Justice first started gaining momentum and building a name for themselves, can we be surprised this record is packed with hip-hop samples, electro samples, disco, new wave, and prog samples, too? Flipped song sections and microedits as well are all coming together for 12 pretty explosive tracks. But not only do Justice put their production chops to the test on this LP, with the tracklist, they create a super holistic experience, too. This album is not just simply an assembly of moments. It is actually a dance record of biblical proportions, as it sounds like an ode to the modern club banger itself. A new testament for dance music, with all the heavy, noisy, grandiose theatrics of an arena rock show implemented with super jerky edits and pounding house kicks.

The killer sequencing on this project starts, of course, with "Genesis", a track whose massive horns on the intro are pretty much the EDM equivalent of the Big Bang. There's something about the start of this track that, to me, just evokes, Charlton Heston's Ten Commandments movie. That's maybe not what Justice were going for here, but that's at least what it reminds me of.

But once the kicks and bass come in, it really sounds a lot more like a midnight drive through a burning, cyberpunk metropolis, or maybe a Michael Jackson remix for electro-nerds wearing leather jackets. And while sure, you do get these nice, nuanced little builds, transitions, rhythmic changes like you should on any good house track, the way Justice goes about it, we get them in this very harsh, glitchy quality, which just adds to this album's and this track's edge.

From here, we go into a super smooth and perfect transition into "Let There Be Light", keeping the momentum going as well as the biblical themes. Here, we get more dance kicks, colored with stuttering funky bass lines with a super guttural tone in these searing, prog rock organ chords. We get some pretty lovely keyboard passages on the outro of the song as well, which feels like something out of an ABBA track.

After this, we have the massive single for the duo, "D.A.N.C.E.", which was one of my favorite songs of 2007. A song that aesthetically has a lot of overlap with the two previous tracks, but really what separates it is the anthemic chorus, the big choral group layers, which is built off of this interpolation of Madonna's portion from Britney Spears' "Me Against the Music" encrusted in these bold little lashes of string melodies popping in and out of the mix. It's a thriller of a cut.

After this, we have "Newjack", which turns up the heat on the really jittery edits, the noise, the disorienting shots of distortion. The bits of vocals you're hearing popping in and out comes straight out of the Brothers Johnson's "You Make Me Want to Dance", which makes this track feel like a synth funk jam that you're hearing on the spin cycle, watching it get tossed around through the glass, covered in soapy water.

Getting more toward the middle of the record, we have the "Phantom" and "Phantom, Pt. II" cuts, the first of which carries the groove and momentum from the previous track but colors it with some different robotic vocal leads. "Pt. II", gives us a lot of the same elements obviously but eases up on the aggression and covers everything up in strings. It's more refined, a little more Bee Gees influenced for sure.

Then from here, tracklist on the record begins to sweeten up a bit with the song "Valentine", which is a cute little synth instrumental that lands us very gently on "The Party" – a song on this record, even for some fans of Justice, that has proven to be a little divisive here and there, mostly because of its purposefully awkward rap verses from none other than Uffie, someone who was a bit of a musical phenomenon on the blog scene years ago but since is just not really making the cultural impact that I think she originally intended to. (I know she came out with a record not too long ago, but it just didn't really generate all that much discussion.)

But look, as odd as this song sounds, back in the day, there was a little bit of a demand an audience for this trashy, novelty party rap. If you think the music on this record was not engineered and created to appeal to that audience, you're delusional. This record essentially takes the 'trashy night out' party anthem but turns it into a religious experience, which is cool. That's why I love it, but that's what it is at its core.

Uffie, very playfully and in a very silly fashion, stumbles her way through these bars about going out, getting wasted, having a good time, hanging with your friends. Also, what makes the song additionally so special to me are these ingeniously applied samples of Juicy J's stuttering vocals from the chorus of "Stay Fly", which just fit in so well. I just love that Three 6 Mafia tie-in. It's such a random and incredible nod.

"DVNO" has this very awkward Europop energy to it that I like quite a bit with some of the lyrical phrasing and even the singing itself. Then after this, we get "Stress", which I think is my favorite Justice song ever and is built pretty heavily off these large string and orchestral samples from David Shire's "Night on Disco Mountain" off the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. I will just forever admire Justice for turning what was originally this novelty disco classical crossover into a gritty banger that is so anxious you have to dance to it to get the jitters out. From the wailling strings to the screaching noises and stuttering synths, sirens, and even these Devo-sampled synth drill drops, pretty much every sound on this track is meant to make you feel like you're being chased down by something.

Then, "Waters of Nazareth" after this is actually a very effective release from all of the tension built up by stress. The calm after the storm, if you will. Then the closing track ["One Minute to Midnight"] is like a credits roll moment for the album, giving a lot of open space to the synths to end things off in a somewhat cinematic way.

But yeah, it's a really noisy, heavy, intense, fun, visceral, explosive, wonderfully sequenced album, in my opinion — one of the best sequenced in electronic dance music in general. It just continues to age so well after each passing year, and for further context, was really just a cultural reset at the time it came out. Because not only were the blogs just going absolutely crazy for this thing, but this record really helped to broaden in a massive way the growing love for French house that Daft Punk originally put on the map.

But yeah. Love the hell out of this record. Amazing record, mind-blowing record.

Anthony Fantano, Justice. Forever.