Unknown Soldier

The Lowdown
Within a year Long Island’s most gharish exponent were back in the studio with Stuart Epps to record their sophomore set, an album that would further add fuel to their already burning glam metal fire. Their debut album Under the Blade (see review) had been a hard hitting if somewhat regurgitated effort as an album, but it had done the business in getting the band noticed due to its decent sales and the band’s much talked about live show. The band had already gone down a storm in the UK in 1982 and like many other fellow American bands, had actually got their commercial break in the UK, so much so that most American record companies had initially thought that they were a British band. The band were soon snapped up by a major label in Atlantic to record the first of their two best known albums and You Can’t Stop Rock ‘n’ Roll would be the first of these with the other being their biggest seller Stay Hungry which would be released in 1984. On You Can’t Stop Rock ‘n’ Roll, the band would largely hit their peak with a much more consistent affair than shown on their debut and the resulting album luckily came out just a few months after Metal Health by Quiet Riot (higher up on this list) and that was the album largely responsible for igniting the whole glam metal movement as far as the record buying public were concerned in 1983, making the Twisted Sister album an en-vogue release. You Can’t Stop Rock ‘n’ Roll is largely on a par in terms of quality as the Quiet Riot album, thus making it one of the best of the year overall. But in both sound and image the ‘Twisted Ones’ as they were known, went in for a different approach to most of their contemporaries (all explained on their previous review) So yet again the band give us another ten tunes all written by the delightful Dee Snider that would revolve around their raw sound and ‘real man metal’ approach, and this is summed up immediately on the album opener “The Kids Are Back”. This song gives us Dee Snider combining Kiss style anthemic vocals with that classic Alice Cooper sneer in certain places and the whole thing is further beefed up by the dual guitar power of Eddie Ojeda and Jay Jay French. The album has some really glorious sounding mid-paced pounders edging on the faster side of things, like “Like a Knife in the Back” “We’re Gonna Make it” "You Can't Stop Rock 'n' Roll" and “The Power and the Glory” no not the Saxon song but a great track that gets faster as it progresses. It’s these type of songs that give the album its energy and strength and are designed to the strengths of both Dee Snider. and the band and are as good as anything else out there at this time, also I’ve even seen reviews that called some of these tracks filler……….. well **** that! There is also the obvious single in “I Am (I’m Me)” but the pick of the lot is the flowing biker anthem “Ride to Live, Live to Ride” one of the best songs ever put out by the band, but this point is excellence is balanced out by the album’s poorest song in the soppy ballad “You’re Not Alone (Suzette’s Song)” which was apparently written by Dee Snider to his wife. You Can’t Stop Rock ‘n’ Roll results in being another one of those early glam metal albums, that not only the band themselves would struggle to better over the coming years, but most other bands of their ilk as well. The album also sees the start of the band’s glory years, where in 1983 they were one of the leading bands at Castle Donington and the band also released the first of a number of well remembered singles throughout the 1983 to 1985 period. The album also appears on Metal-Rules 'The Top 100 Heavy Metal Albums' list one of the better online lists.

Dee Snider- Vocals
Eddie ‘Fingers’ Ojeda- Guitar
Jay Jay French- Guitar
Mark ‘The Animal’ Mendoza- Bass
A.J Pero- Drums

Production- Stuart Epps

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