The Velvet Undgerground's best record and therefore one of the best records ever. Very aggressive, intoxicating, energetic, brilliant, and poorly produced. I hypothesize that the reason this was the best Velvets record is that it was more of a collaboration between all the members (Lou Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison, and Maureen Tucker) than the other records in which Lou Reed is the dominant figure. In other words, the Velvet Underground had synergy which is most evident in this album. BTW I use the term collaboration interchangably with noise war.
Electricsound's writeup is not entirely right about the line-up: it's the same line-up as on the first album; the first album just had Nico on a few tracks. And jonlasser's writeup is not entirely right about the absence of heroin references (see Sister Ray).