William_the_Bloody

Actually, he put the Crue over Def Leppard once before, and I banking that this Iron Maiden album, being stuck between its two colossal albums won't fair as well.

Would you like to take a wager, if you lose, you must publicly state that your musical love for Extreme and White Lion runs much deeper than it does for Bathory & Slayer

Unknown Soldier

Guess what, I always liked Extreme.

__________________
Metal Wars

Power Metal

Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History

William_the_Bloody

ewe!

The Batlord

What do female sheep have to do with hair metal?

__________________

William_the_Bloody

I cannot expand my thoughts on Extreme without offending our host.

The Batlord

Like that's ever stopped us before? Remember. This is the guy who has on multiple occasions put the Scorpions at the top of his lists. No mercy.

__________________

Anteater

Not to break up the party or anything, but anyone who has bad stuff to say about Extreme obviously hasn't spent any time with this particular masterpiece-

__________________
Anteater's 21 Fav Albums Of 2020

Anteater's Daily Tune Roulette

Unknown Soldier

The Lowdown
1983 may have seen the arrival of glam metal as a lucrative metal genre thanks to Quiet Riot, but to date the best album of this sub-genre had been put out by the sleazy Motley Crue with Too Fast for Love in 1981 (see review) and in the intervening years until Shout at the Devil, the band had worked hard to become the darlings of the ‘Sunset Strip’. Shout at the Devil was the band’s commercial breakthrough, now whether it would’ve been their breakthrough if Quiet Riot hadn’t landed big with “*** on Feel the Noize” and their Metal Health album, could easily end up being a point of debate. Either way Motley Crue’s sophomore would again have the best glam metal tag album on this year’s list, making both their albums vital listens. Motley Crue at this time were probably one of the most controversial bands on the planet, with their lurid tales of decadence and living the ‘rock star’ lifestyle to the limit and their adventures can be found in any number of publications out there, making them the Led Zeppelin or Aerosmith of the 1980s in regards to ‘sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll’. Niki Sixx again pretty much dominates proceedings on the album and Vince Neil gets more of a look-in on the writing department for some of the songs this time around. Needless to say the band sparked controversy with the album cover with its use of the pentagram, which sparked some Christian groups to claim that the band were encouraging their fans to listen to Satan. Which of course was jack shit, as the fun loving Motley Crue in their post-apocolyptic glam warrior image were a world away from that sort of thing and clearly the album cover was just a useful marketing tool. In fact I see the album cover as an almost ‘avant-garde’ concept by the band, as this type of cover would soon become pretty much the norm when it came to extreme metal bands a few years down the road. In fact the alternative CD album cover with four heavily painted faces of the band was probably what was more expected as an album cover, but in hindsight a zillion other glam metal bands went in for covers like that, so the pentagram effort was the best here. Too Fast for Love producer Roy Thomas Baker was swapped for Tom Werman, a producer who was often criticized as being too clean sounding when it came to this type of music, personally again that’s a load of bollocks, as he produced three of Cheap Trick’s best sounding albums of the late 1970s! Upon its release the album was panned by critics stating that the album was poor, with one even stating that the album ‘couldn’t even provide cheap thrills to jaded teens’ which of course now meant that the album just had to be a classic and it would take the so-called experts a number of years to realise it! The album starts with the spoken intro “In the Beginning” which to be fair is kind of pointless, but it leads into the romping title track “Shout at the Devil” which welcomes us back the scratchy vocals of Vince Neil and he’s accompanied now by the larger than life sounding riffs of Mick Mars and the cymbal heavy drum style of Tommy Lee. Things then get even better on “Looks That Kill” one of the true killer tracks by the band and the often maligned vocal style of Vince Neil, actually has a song built right here for him…..**** let this pour right out! Third single from the album “Too Young to Fall in Love” sounds like a signature band classic, but I was surprised to read that it was described as a lesser track by fans at the time, weird! “Knock Em’ Dead, Kid” is one of those late album gems, usually only ever put by bands totally on top of their game. Now the above mentioned songs are all commercial metal singles material, with the rest of the album made up of similar sounding songs that instead of having that instant singles feel, have a more straight-forward album track vibe to them and this is apparent on songs like “Bastard” which drags longer than its three minutes, then there is the faster Saxon styled “Red Hot” a good song. “Ten Seconds to Love” is a slightly weaker effort on what the band does best, but that still makes it a good song. The band go in for a distorted and heavy cover of the much covered Beatles track “Helter Skelter” and it’s an admirable effort, before the album closes out with the top drawer “Danger” one of the best here. Supposedly the album has a Satanic theme, but guess what…… every time I listen to this album I always forget to listen out for it, largely because Vince Neil’s vocals are too scratchy to concentrate on for long and also because this is Motley Crue, so who cares what they’re singing about! Overall Shout at the Devil pushes the envelope a bit further for the band, by increasing the diversity slightly and layering it all with some of the biggest pounding heavy metal riffs of the year, making this album and the debut a perfect pair for any metal collection.

Vince Neil- Vocals
Mark Mars- Guitar
Nikki Sixx- Bass
Tommy Lee- Drums

Production- Tom Werman

__________________
Metal Wars

Power Metal

Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History

William_the_Bloody

5?!?....5??... f)ckin 5!?... 5!?!!!...five. Holy $hit dude, this Motley Crue's crowning achievement and one of the greatest metal albums ever made. After this they would sell out and become a pussy glam band.

I mean I appreciate all the effort you've put into this thread but how is this supposed to be a hard and heavy history when all the pussy bands come in first. Please don't put Def Leppard's Pyromania ahead of Kill em all...just....please don't...you might have a mob of metal fans storming your home if you do.

Wow! You were totally right Batlord, I'm glad you didn't take that wager. The Scorpians... & over Highway to Hell to Give him hell Batlord, Give him hell!!!

All in good fun UN

Unknown Soldier

I gave their previous album position.4 and so 5 is still pretty high. The reason why there are four other albums above this, is that all four of the above are all good enough to be in position 1, whereas I felt the Motley Crue album to be slightly below that.

__________________
Metal Wars

Power Metal

Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History