Sunday, December 12, 2010

Classic melodic rock CD of the week


By Stephen Kasenda

SLAUGHTER “The Wild Life” (1992)

"The Wild Life" saw daylight in 1992, when most 80s bands began to suffer as the grunge wave started sweeping in. Slaughter managed to produce several hit singles and hit gold status, but after this album everything went sour commercially for them. Ironically, the next release, “Fear No Evil”, in my opinion, is their peak of creativity. This album showed a rich variety of musical perspectives, from those mandatory emotional-fueled ballads, to psychedelic hard rock, to groovy melodic rock, to early 80s heavy metal.

"Reach For The Sky" and "Out For Love" are good openers, but the title track steals the show. That first single has a blasting chorus and Blas Elias pumped up the groove nicely. "Dance For Me Baby", with its naughty Van Halen-ized beat, and "Old Man" with its Aerosmith flair, are great examples of Slaughter taking on some past references. "Days Gone By", "Real Love", and "Streets of Broken Hearts" are all sensational ballads - hard to top them all and they remain timeless classics to this day. I always found the songs to be very inspiring and adorable.

At the verge of glam's decadence, Slaughter still delivered a classy effort. This is their second best album of all time after "Fear No Evil", and together with the debut, all three are essential must buys for glam fans.

Read more of Stephen’s features at MetalMusicArchives.

Re-live "The Wild Life":

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