Head for the Door by The Exies

Head for the Door, the third album from Los Angeles rockers the Exies, came out on Virgin on November 30, 2004, their second for the label after Inertia. Nick Raskulinecz produced it and keeps it tight and heavy: post-grunge built on big, blunt riffs and choruses that come at you head-on. The band's name is short for the Existentialists, though the record is far more interested in hitting hard than in brooding.

"Ugly" led the way as the first single and picked up real airplay, its chorus a slab of power chords you could pick out from the next room; it also served as the theme for WWE's Survivor Series in 2004. The songs traveled into video games too: "Slow Drain" turned up in NFL Street 2, "What You Deserve" on the Juiced soundtrack, and a cover version of "Hey You" in the first two Guitar Hero games. Between them, the band's two Virgin albums sold more than 400,000 copies.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.