Artist: Twisted Sister
Label: Atlantic Records
Release Date: 1983
Rating: 4 Skulls
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Title: You Can't Stop Rock 'N Roll Artist: Twisted Sister Label: Atlantic Records Release Date: 1983 Rating: 4 Skulls |
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Death's Review:
Anyone besides me unfortunate enough to have caught the "Forty Least Metal Moments" program on VH1 this past weekend? If you did then you know what I'm talking about when I tell you that the show was one of the silliest and most misinformed programs about metal out there, and trust me I've seen some pretty bad ones. You want to know what is least metal? A program devoted to exposing stupid, forced, so-called "black marks" on 80's metal personalities supposed "metal credibility" or whatever. This one had multiple extended references to Michael Bolton, seemed to love talking about things like Pat Boone and/or Celine Dion covering hard rock and/or metal stuff, made fun of Bruce Dickinson for being a fencer, and talked with a so-called panel of metal "experts" about lost "metalness" of bands like Autograph, Nelson, and Aerosmith. Wow. Even when it was covering items about cool bands and/or musicians, such as Jim Martin of Faith No More becoming a champion pumpkin farmer, it seemed to just plain get it wrong: For example, repeatedly emphasizing how Faith No More, the band, was always "metal to the bone," a statement I'm not too sure is really all that true. Anyway, the bottom line that - with the exception of Scott Ian and Ronnie James Dio - both of whom get a pass on principle, my opinion of everyone associated with that show took a nosedive. The host of that train wreck was Twisted Sister's Dee Snider. I needed a quick fix of Dee at his best as a counter-measure, and so I busted out one of my all-time favorites: You Can't Stop Rock 'N Roll. Yes, Stay Hungry is the more known Twisted Sister classic, but You Can't Stop Rock 'N Roll is simply a great hard rock record. I love it, and not in an 80's camp or guilty pleasure kind of way. It seriously kicks ass. This is a loud, drinking, driving fast kinda old-school heavy metal record. The riffs are loud, the attitude is aggressive a la late-70's, early-80's Judas Priest, the songs are heavy and catchy, and there is a certain urgency mixed with toughness to Snider's vocals that really brings it all together."The Kids Are Back" sets the tone right out of the box - tough, riff/heavy, take no shit lyrics and strong vocals come right out of the box. Snider takes center stage with the heavy "Like a Knife in the Back," which follows. Nice basswork on the fills by Mark "the Animal" Mendoza as well. The drums power forward "Ride to Live, Live to Ride" in a way that makes the song perfect for driving fast on a deserted highway - nice double-bass drums from A.J. Pero (Dee also hits a cool falsetto note just before the outro solo). "I Am (I'm Me)" foretells the commercial side of Twisted Sister that was to develop with their next record, mining the soon-to-become-familiar empowerment of the underdog lyrical territory that would make Snider a hero to some. I like it better than the less-intense "We're Not Gonna Take It" while being just as catchy. "The Power and the Glory" is another great showcase for Snider's ability to belt out heavy metal with intensity, carried forward once again by Mendoza's bassline. I like the way Snider spits out the lines "But when I looked inside, the writing on the wall 'said it's a long way down, face it clown, fool you're gonna fall.'" Good drumming once again here too. "We're Gonna Make It" is a cool "shout it out" tough-guy metal anthem. As always, the solos are merely serviceable yet do the job and add to the feel.
All in all, that's probably the best way to explain this album some twenty-plus years after its release: Simple yet effective very early 80's heavy metal that was only just beginning to flirt a bit with some hard rock radio commerciality. "I've Had Enough" sounds almost vaguely Iron Maiden-esque at the beginning, and again is driven by Mendoza's MVP bass playing. The next two songs are polar opposites: "I'll Take You Alive" is another rocker (good solos), and "You're Not Alone (Suzette's Song)" is a very commercial power-ballad (Snider shows his sensitive side!). Of course, the album's crowning and most well-known moment is the classic anthem of a title track that closes the album. Absolute early-metal perfection if you ask me. One of the all-time killer riffs. Anyway, the CD I'm using to write this review is actually a Spitfire re-issue with three bonus tracks: "One Man Woman" (OK but slightly bluesy and kinda boring), "Four Barrel Heart of Love" (once again, straightforward, nothing special and kinda of cheesy with lyrics similar to the title and gang backing vocals at key points of emphasis) and "Feel the Power" (now this one is worth your time, with some thrashy metal drums and frantic Snider lyrics).
Bottom line: highly recommended to anyone interested in seriously exploring the roots of early 80's heavy metal beyond Iron Maiden, Dio, Ozzy, Scorpions and Judas Priest. Let me warn you in advance however: this is not as underground, as evil or as raw as most of the "cooler" NWOBHM bands surfacing at the time (1983), and most of this stuff does come across as a pretty dated, which along with the period-production, may be part of the album's modern-era charm. But at a time when Maiden and Priest were on album-oriented rock radio, the classic metal bands championed by bikers and drinkers were adding a little commercial songwriting into the mix and coming up with albums like this one. Not as deep or as fantasy-laden as Dio or Maiden, not as scary as Ozzy nor as epic as Priest, Twisted Sister was, in the end, nothing more than a New York-area bar band, yet one with some passion behind it, an interesting vocalist and some songwriting flair. For those of you who like some of the songwriting on the deeper album cuts on Stay Hungry such as "Captain Howdy," and are interested in scaling the commerciality, polish and over-the-top antics back a notch to focus more on the raw music while still maintaining a kernel of the sensibilities that made Stay Hungry a worldwide sensation a couple of years later, this is worth your time (if you want to go two notches in that direction then dial yourself up a copy of the album before this, Under the Blade).
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