That makes Binge & Purge a time capsule of sorts: it’s the closest thing we have to real Best Of record from the group, and it’s the only great-sounding live recording we have left from this era of the band. (The next live recording Metallica released was S & M, a recording they made with a live symphony orchestra that unfortunately included too many of their post-Black Album songs for many fans’ likings.) This means that, as a great summation of what made early Metallica so great, Binge & Purge is essential.

It’s also, in retrospect, a sign of the reckless debauchery and cyclical addictions that the band members would experience throughout the next ten years before beginning the road to some of their recoveries during the recording of St. Anger. Frontman James Hetfield infamously throws a pint of beer on a well-meaning fan. The band disappears for fifteen minutes in the middle of a show, leaving hazed bassist James Newstead to play on his own until they return. (They call it a solo, but you just know they were backstage getting mid-show blowjobs from whatever women were around that night.) And while this drunken idiocy leads to some great laid-back moments, it also feels sad in retrospect.

Maybe I’m just getting old and missing the point though.

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Even the record’s most popular tracks would be considered oddities by today’s standards, but I’d argue that’s what actually makes it a great record. Before electronic music became a convention, Autechre was testing the boundaries and trying things out. And I don’t feel like we get that today, at least not in the same way.

Part of that is the way the album embraces techno. In a lot of circles, particularly today’s synth-pop scene, techno seems to have fallen out of fashion. Autechre was inventive with Incunabula, but they weren’t so many years ahead of their time as to sound like Sylvan Esso. They were influenced by techno like everybody else was in 1993.

That being said, it’s not as if all electronic music used to sound like this. Autechre is in a league of their own throughout. Even they know they’re doing something unique: Incunabula is Latin and references the early development or infancy of an object. (The term was originally used to describe printed books published before 1501.) It’s a sly reference to the groundbreaking work Autechre was doing in the genre.

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