The second half of the 1990s saw Moby in career turmoil after years of being a successful techno wunderkind. The release in 1996 of "Animal Rights", a dark, eclectic, guitar-fueled record built around the punk and metal records that he loved as a teenager, proved a critical and commercial disaster that left him considering quitting music altogether and going back to school to study architecture. He explained: "I was opening for Soundgarden and getting shit thrown at me every night onstage. I did my own tour and was playing to roughly fifty people a night." However, he claimed, "I got one piece of fan mail from Terence Trent D'Arby and I got a phone call from Axl Rose saying he was listening to "Animal Rights" on repeat. Bono told me he loved "Animal Rights". So if you're gonna have three pieces of fan mail, that's the fan mail to get."