Rocked (formerly Rocked Reviews) is a YouTube Video Review Show in which St. Louis native and rock aficionado Luke Spencer reviews rock music. Primarily, he reviews new and upcoming rock albums from artists both big and small, going in depth into a few of the tracks the album has to offer. As long as it can be considered rock or metal, it's eligible for review by him. He's also known to conduct interviews with some rock groups, and showcases his own photos of bands giving live performances in a segment called Moving Pictures.
Luke has two series in which he gives more detailed, track-by-track album reviews. The first of these series is ''All Time Favorite Albums." In this, he reviews albums he holds near and dear to his heart and that he could listen to over and over again. So far, Luke has done reviews on the following albums:
All Time Favorite Albums
- Thirteenth Step - A Perfect Circle
- Days of the New - Days of the New
- Frances The Mute - The Mars Volta
- Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too - New Radicals
- Master of Puppets - Metallica
- White Pony - Deftones
- Relationship of Command - At the Drive-In
- Ten (Pearl Jam Album) - Pearl Jam
- Dookie - Green Day
- The Battle of Los Angeles - Rage Against the Machine
- Meteora - Linkin Park
- Wish You Were Here (1975) - Pink Floyd
Conversely, Luke's other series, and by far his most popular, is Regretting the Past. Here, he does a track-by-track analysis of albums many consider to be horrible, yet sold incredibly well despite this. It's through this series that Luke coined the term "The Triforce of Suckage", a monicker he uses to refer to Limp Bizkit, Nickelback, Creed. Luke has reviewed the following albums on Regretting the Past:
Regretting the Past
- Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water — Limp Bizkit
- Silver Side Up — Nickelback
- Weathered — Creed
- St. Anger — Metallica
- All the Right Reasons — Nickelback
- Come Clean — Puddle of Mudd
- A Thousand Suns — Linkin Park
- No Pads, No Helmets... Just Balls — Simple Plan
- The Young and the Hopeless — Good Charlotte
- Extreme Behavior — Hinder
- Risk — Megadeth
- 15 — Buckcherry
- Save Rock and Roll — Fall Out Boy
- Results May Vary — Limp Bizkit
- Devil Without a Cause — Kid Rock
- Chinese Democracy — Guns N' Roses
- Still Not Getting Any... — Simple Plan
- Diabolus in Musica — Slayer
- The Gift of Game — Crazy Town
- Scars & Souvenirs — Theory of a Deadman
- Overexposed — Maroon 5
- Every Six Seconds — Saliva
- 14 Shades of Grey — Staind
- The Reason — Hoobastank
- Trapt — Trapt
- Cocky — Kid Rock
- The Drug in Me is You — Falling in Reverse
While Luke usually only provides voice overs and doesn't show himself on his regular album reviews, he does show himself in the flesh to do longer videos like in the series listed above. On-screen, he dresses like a true rock and metal fan, with a black tank top and messy hair kept in place by a bandana, though as of 2022, in recent videos, he has ditched this fashion style and appears without a bandana and often with a jacket.
Rocked Reviews became a part of Channel Awesome in November of 2014, and left in April of 2018.
This reviewer provides examples of:
- Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: He thinks that these sorts of people were the target audience for most of the oversexed Post-Grunge of the '00s, arguing that they were anthems for drunken soccer moms who wanted to feel 'rebellious' when the kids were out of the way.
- April Fools' Day: His list of the "Top 10 Best Simple Plan Songs".
- Berserk Button: The "Triforce of Suckage" aside, he really gets enraged if bands use certain topics in an inappropriate way to make a point on their songs. A prime example is in Good Charlotte's The Young in the Hopeless review, where "Hold On" is put on the album as a song of hope, and to not give up... only to then throw in a song called "The Day That I Die", which happily proclaims of an individual being Driven to Suicide. He was not amused.
- A minor one was in Limp Bizkit's Results May Vary review, where the song "Head for the Barricade" has Durst use the Columbine Massacre as a means to fight against bullies. Luke goes so far as to call out not only the band themselves, but the people who worked on the album for even allowing that in the first place.
- Bookends: Luke's first mention in his list of the "10 Intense Onstage Injuries" is when Nirvana's Krist Novoselic knocked himself in the head with his own bass guitar at the 1992 MTV Video Music Awards. The last mention is Dave Grohl breaking his leg in a stage fall during a Foo Fighters concert in 2015.
- Call-Back: In the Devil Without a Cause video for Regretting the Past, Luke brings in several other Channel Awesome reviewers to tell the audience "Don't listen to Kid Rock", including The Nostalgia Critic, The Rap Critic, and Todd in the Shadows. In the Regretting the Past video for Cocky, he does the same thing, bringing in new participants like Mic The Snare, Jon from ARTV, Crash Thompson, Nash Bozard of Radio Dead Air, and Myke C-Town.
- The Cameo: He has had Crash Thompson, Spectrum Pulse, Jon from ARTV, Dominic Noble, Calluna, the two from Shark Jumping, the Nostalgia Critic, Nash, Matthew Buck/Film Brain, and others appear in some of his reviews. He also seems to be friends with other internet reviewers, mainly those who were associated with Channel Awesome.
- Caption Humor: Indulges in this. Much of the comic relief of the show comes from speech bubbles that add jokes or witty insight, usually in relation to whatever picture is being shown.
- Celebrity Resemblance: Has been commented for his resemblance to Hollywood Pretty Boy actor Bradley Cooper.
- Central Theme: Luke usually invokes a central theme into a video on an album/band shown on Regretting the Past, mainly to show why a certain album is to be regretted and how the rock genre was in his opinion damaged by them.
- For bands:
- Limp Bizkit and Simple Plan (Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water, Results May Vary, No Pads, No Helmets... Just Balls and Still Not Getting Any...): Vague, non descriptive and annoying whiny lyrics sung by what Luke describes as man children.
- Nickelback and Theory of a Deadman (Silver Side Up, All the Right Reasons and Scars & Souvenirs): Mediocre, bland, formulaic and generic hard rock/post-grunge music fueled by a marketing and research scheme designed to get radio airplay, sell albums and sell concerts, not invoke musical creativity or create new music (see The Generic Guy trope below). Also creepy stalker lyrics and themes (shown most often on his video on "All the Right Reasons") and bad storytelling, lyrics and general songwriting skills ("Too Bad", "Photograph" and "If Everyone Cared" are prime examples of this). In the case of Scars & Souvenirs, it has been noted that it is essentially a weaker version of a Nickelback album, with the cliché lyrics and generic riffs and drumming criticized, along with the misogynistic tone of several songs. ("Bad Girlfriend" and "Little Smirk" being examples of the latter)
- Creed (Weathered): A contradictory album with songs that do not mesh well together.
- Metallica, Megadeth and Slayer (St. Anger, Risk and Diabolus in Musica): Trying to buy into mainstream rock radio and failing miserably, and also buying an album regardless of quality due to the band name on it.
- Puddle of Mudd (Come Clean): Giving Wes Scantlin a music career despite the train wreck he has become ever since the album's release, with a criminal record a mile long and falling album sales.
- Linkin Park (A Thousand Suns): A confusing album with transitions that don't fit in and only three songs worth looking back on.
- Good Charlotte and Maroon 5 (The Young and the Hopeless and Overexposed): Selling out in order to gain wider exposure, radio airplay, and album and track sales, as well as to sell out concerts. For Good Charlotte, they preyed on impressionable teenagers with contradictory songs that appeal to their music tastes, whereas with Maroon 5, they changed their sound from being a pop rock band to full-blown pop on the belief that rock music is dead.
- Hinder and Buckcherry (Extreme Behavior and 15): Bland hard rock music designed for shock value and rough lifestyles, usually talking about sex, drugs, alcohol and bad relationships constantly while doing nothing to make it substantial or put deep meaning into them. It is also noted constantly about the use of basic chords, riffs and drum patterns in their music to highlight the blandness as well as the blending in between the two to show their non uniqueness.
- Fall Out Boy (Save Rock and Roll): Calling a pop album Save Rock and Roll despite moving full away from the rock genre in general and using too much pop elements such as synthesized instruments for a rock band.
- Kid Rock (Devil Without a Cause and Cocky): Giving Kid Rock a career despite his lyrical content mainly consisting of bragging, sex, borrowing from other artists, and even using slurs.
- Guns N' Roses (Chinese Democracy): An album that took 14 years, a revolving door of musicians, and $13 million to make, that turns out to be an effort that's not worth what was put into making it.
- Crazy Town (The Gift of Game): A bait-and-switch record with the hit single ("Butterfly") sounding nothing like the rest of the album, which turns out to be badly written and produced nu metal.
- Saliva (Every Six Seconds): An album supposedly about relationships but is actually mostly bragging and complaining by frontman Josey Scott.
- Staind (14 Shades of Grey): An album that is phoned in and with a frontman that doesn't seem to be interested in making music.
- Hoobastank (The Reason): A poorly produced, badly written and overall uninspired album made with almost little-to-no effort.
- Trapt (Trapt): Generic butt-rock from a band whose vocalist is far more known in present times as a notorious right-wing troll.
- Falling in Reverse (The Drug in Me is You): Outdated and chaotic trashcore with whiny lyrics sung by an unstable and butthurt former criminal turned transphobe.
- He defines the themes of what he thinks of "butt-rock" as below:
- Generic guitars that play basic chords and riffs.
- Guitar static that permeates throughout the song.
- A whiny singer that sings in a nasally and monotone style.
- Terrible and lazy lyrics that often fail creatively and seem like a joke.
- He also defines the themes of what he thinks is "trashcore":
- Sloppy guitars and riffs.
- Growling "Cookie Monster-esque" vocals, complete with tons of shouting.
- Poorly written and lazy lyrics that try too hard to be serious.
- A unconvincing tough-guy image.
- For bands:
- Continuity Cameo: Some of his videos, mostly for Regretting the Past, will include cameos by other internet critics, most of whom also contribute to Channel Awesome. For example:
- The Nostalgia Critic makes cameos in Luke's RTP on All The Right Reasons to force him to review the album's third track "Photograph". In this cameo, the Critic brings up Food Fight, one of his most popular reviews to date.
- In his Regretting the Past on Kid Rock's Devil Without a Cause, he brings up some fellow Channel Awesome reviewers to echo his claim of "Don't Listen to Kid Rock". When The Rap Critic cameos, he quotes a lyric he previously commented on from "Cool Daddy Cool" in his "Worst Lyrics I've Ever Heard... This Month (May 2015)"note .
- Cowboy BeBop at His Computer: Occurs frequently in the Google Bard videos, with Bardy the Google Bard often making factually incorrect statements, such as wrong information on band lineups and album release counts, and thinking Adrian Smith died before the release of Virtual XI.
- Crazy Cultural Comparison: A common recurring gag in Regretting the Past is when Luke usually brings up a masterpiece of an album (or an amazing band's entire discography in extreme cases) that sold either around as well as or less than the mediocre to terrible album he's about to review, just to show that mediocrity can sell just as well as (if not better than) quality.
- Crossover: Luke reviewed
Scooby-Doo! and KISS: Rock and Roll Mystery with Calluna. - Don't Try This at Home: While showing that the scene of him drinking bleach in reaction to Buckcherry was done with water, Luke notes "Don't try the things you see me do on this show... including listening to those albums!"
- Drinking Game: Luke does a variation of this in the Regretting the Past for No Pads, No Helmets... Just Balls. After a few tracks, he decides to eat some Cheese Whiz after every "cheesy" line on the album.
- The Generic Guy: Considers Nickelback to be the musical manifestation of this. Both his Regretting The Past videos on Nickelback are filled with criticism that the albums are generic and bland.
- Good Cannot Comprehend Evil: During his Regretting the Past of Results May Vary, Luke is just stymied about how and why Limp Bizkit got so popular when their music is not only below average, but also that the lyrics are just full of either whining or bragging.
- Gosh Dang It to Heck!: Not perfectly invoked, but he actually doesn't swear on camera. The music he's reviewing and even guests say swears sometimes, but he himself doesn't. Kind of a stark contrast from other Channel Awesome producers. He was raised Mormon, by the way, so that explains it.
- A true example is found in his "Regretting the Past" review of Buckcherry's 15, where he specifically refers to "Crazy Bitch" as "Crazy B". (Though in an updated version of "Top 10 Worst #1 Rock Songs", he refers to "Crying Like a Bitch" by Godsmack by its actual title.)
- Another example in his "Regretting the Past" review of Kid Rock's Devil Without a Cause combined this with Curse Cut Short, showing a pro-Trump T-shirt that displayed red as "United States of America" and blue as "Dumbfuckistan". He stopped reading before he could finish the latter.
- He tends to use Fred Durst's name as a substitute swear word/pejorative for "fucking up" (Dursting up) or "assholes/idiots" (bunch of Dursts).
- Head Desk: Luke smacks his head on the wall when he says Nickelback's All The Right Reasons have sold more copies than Alice in Chains' entire discography.
- Hypocrite: Makes Good Charlotte out to be this in his The Young and the Hopeless RTP for including "Hold On" which is about hope, only to follow up a few tracks later with "The Day That I Die", which celebrates suicide.
- Made Myself Sad: Often happens when Luke's analogies during Regretting the Past episodes turn out to be an Awful Truth.
- "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer: Luke realizes that Nickelback's Silver Side Up was released on the exact day of the attacks on the World Trade Center. He initially figured someone was messing with Wikipedia that day, but they weren't.
- Only in Florida: Luke lived in Jacksonville where he started his review show (he has since moved back to St. Louis), and his appearances on What the Fuck Is Wrong with You? as a guest co-host typically revolve around ridiculous stories in Florida.
- Person as Verb: Luke tends to use Fred Durst's last name as a term for when a band squanders their musical talent for the sake of commercial gain.
- Pet-Peeve Trope: Luke has something against, as put by a Homestar Runner clip he always plays when highlighting, "Songs that try to pass off na-nas, la-las and doot-doos as legit lyrics". And many Regretting the Past albums have those.
- Public Secret Message: Somewhat subverted. While reviewing Metallica's St. Anger, he theorizes that there must be a hidden message to the album due to its harshness. The very last song on the album (kinda) proves him right when James Hetfield can be heard shouting "KILL" over and over again.
-
Real Song Theme Tune: Early episodes had the intro to Audioslave's "Out of Exile", before shifting to a royalty-free song. - "The Reason You Suck" Speech: He breaks into a blisteringly pissed-off (and dead serious) rant against Good Charlotte for making "The Day That I Die", a song that romanticizes suicide, in his RTP video on The Young and the Hopeless — especially given that the same album contained the anti-suicide anthem "Hold On". He feels that that song, above all else, proved that they didn't care about anything other than getting rich, because if they actually gave a damn, they would've thought twice about sending such legitimately toxic and dangerous messages to their mostly teenage fanbase.
- Rock Me, Asmodeus!: Naturally, Slayer's entry on Regretting the Past brings up this trope, complete with Malcolm's Devil from The Nostalgia Critic (although he mentions that along with liking to influence the world through rock music, seeing a band record a bad album is really funny for him).
- Shared Universe: As a Channel Awesome reviewer, and due to various cameos and crossovers, Luke counts as part of the Reviewaverse.
- Shower of Angst:
- In the Silver Side Up episode of Regretting The Past, Luke feels he's not getting into the proper mood to listen to Nickelback. So he goes into the shower and cries to the music. It didn't work as expected.
- The lyrics to Buckcherry's songs on 15 (specifically, "Next 2 You", "Crazy Bitch", and "Brooklyn") cause him to do this three times due to how dirty they make him feel. By the third time, he's washing himself (and his mouth) with bleach. He tries to take a fourth one at the end of the review, only to find the Denny's Stalker waiting for him in the bathroom.
- Stalker with a Crush: In his view, a lot of the Post-Grunge "butt rock" of the 2000s (citing Nickelback's All the Right Reasons and Buckcherry's 15 as examples) sounds like it was written by "Denny's stalkers", guys who hang out at Denny's and stalk the first pretty girl they see in the hopes of getting in her pants.
- Suckiness Is Painful: Very, very, prevalent in Regretting the Past. When it's extreme, Luke will consider bailing out (he tries skipping "Photograph", and the Limp Bizkit cover of "Behind Blue Eyes" makes him rush outside and attempt to be run over by a car).
- Take That!: Luke decides the middle initial of Trapt's Chris T. Brown stands for Trashbag, and calls him "Trashbag Brown" through the whole episode.
- Toilet Humour: Luke uses a farting sound effect whenever talking about Metallica's Load and ReLoad. The second time he uses that, a caption bubble states "I want you to remember that fart noise whenever you hear Load or ReLoad." He even describes the albums as "two big loads."
- Un-person: In the Regretting the Past episode for Hoobastank's The Reason, Luke went out of character for a minute to warn viewers not to bring up the fact that convicted pedophile Ian Watkins of Lostprophets guested on the album on the track "Out of Control," stressing that he doesn't want to give such people attention for their crimes, and not mentioning either Watkins or his band while doing so. He also stated that he would be setting the spam filter in the comments to filter out mentions of Watkins' or Lostprophets' names. In his list of "10 Bands Tarnished By Their Singer", he reclarifies this during the intro of the video.
- The Voice: Well, in his standard album reviews, at least (until 2019, when he started occasionally appearing onscreen). While he does appear in person for special videos like "Regretting the Past", "All Time Favorite Albums" and band interviews, he's pretty much just a disembodied voice on his shorter album reviews.
