W.A.S.P.
W.A.S.P.
1984
Capitol Records
W.A.S.P.
1984
Capitol Records
Rating: A
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| I dunno what this has to do with entomology but ok |
Have other people reviewed this album? Why yes. RazorFist's Metal Mythos episode on the band in question goes more in depth than I care to. I'm neither a journalist (perish the thought) nor an expert on the group in question. In fact, I find the entire premise of doing a text review of a purely auditory artform to be an exercise as pointless as, say, making a film adaptation of a story that only works because it's a commentary on the medium it's originally presented in. But I'm of the mind that I'm a better human being than Zack Snyder. Failing to clear that low hurdle I'm merely some goblin jerk with an opinion. And that opinion is that W.A.S.P. rules ass. One of the best metal bands out there, period. Up there with Accept as one of the most consistently great, too. The first five albums these guys dropped are all essential listening; a feat matched only by the immortal genre codifiers that are Black Sabbath. Without further ado, here are my thoughts on the first album my favorite band produced. Expanded addition, with originally planned intro track, of course.
I'm on the prowl and I watch you closely, I lie waiting for you
Well, I'm the wolf with the skeepskins clothing
I lick my chops and you're tastin' good
I'll do whatever I want to to ya, I'll nail your ass to the sheets
I'll power-thrust 'til the sweat starts to sting ya:
I F**K LIKE A BEAST
Originally left off the album due to being too risque for the general audience and sold as a limited release international single in one the more brilliant marketing bids the metal genre has ever seen, this infamous track is... honestly one of my least favorite the band has done. It's overexposed and honestly just not as catchy or heavy as the other stuff on the album. It's a meme. A novelty. Blackie Lawless seems to agree with me as he hasn't performed it live since the Bush era, following his spiritual rebirth into the second or third most unfathomably based Christian metal act out there.
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| Three guesses as to who the most based of the bunch is |
That and it's just plain overplayed. Ironic, huh? You'd think this is the only song these guys ever recorded according to some fools in the metal scene. Well I hate to break it to you but these guys aren't RATT. They're not Cinderella. They're not Velvet Revolver or Buckcherry any of those other dweebs who stumbled upon one catchy tune and ran it into the ground - they're W.A.S.P. and they rule ass.
This same tune would be later reworked - in my opinion to immensely better effect - on their fourth album The Headless Children in the form of mid-album killer track 'Mean Man'
Song Rating: C
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You say you don't wanna starve
Or pick the table crumbs that fall
You don't wanna beg or plead at all
You don't want no nine-to-five
Your fingers to the bone
You don't want the rock piles - bloody stones
Oh, you've just got to be
Up high where the whole world's watchin' me
'Cause I, I got the guts to be somebody
The superior lead single to this album. Search your feelings, you know it to be true. It's punchier, tighter written, and leaves the listener feeling better than they came in. Overplayed? Oh, absolutely. But if you're gonna be a killer band that only has one song that gets consistent radio play, you could be much worse off.
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| It could also be the worst song your band has ever produced. |
Very solid track. Also not my favorite.
Song Rating: B
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What can I do for you?
Am I your wildest dream?
What do I move in you?
Am I what I seem?
My eyes, the lie and you cry;
Love brings you pain
And if you try to love me
You'll not be the same
L.O.V.E.
All need's my love machine, your
L.O.V.E.
All need's my love machine, your
L.O.V.E.
All need's my love machine, your
L.O.V.E.
All need's my love machine tonight, tonight
An exemplary hair metal track. As in it does what it does so well that it's practically a stereotype of the genre. You could play this to any set of people between the ages of seventy-five and eleven and they'd be like "Yeah, that's definitely an '80s hair metal tune." Then they'd ask you to crank it again. If they had taste. If they don't they're not worth the effort and cannot be trusted to manage money or carry simple tasks to term. Use this to vet dates and business partners. It's a foolproof method.
Song Rating: B+
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4) 'The Flame'
Show me a place where love is sweet
I ain't gonna fake it
And hey, little girl, if you want my love
Now's the time to take it
Before the flame burns out
Before the flame burns out
Before the flame burns out
Before the flame burns out
Solid album filler track. Honestly not wild about it one way or the other. Your standard sex-drugs-rock-n-roll anthem. Narrowly avoids the pitfall of becoming a lame rock-n-roll song about rock-n-roll by not listing it by name. Rock-n-roll songs that are explicitly about rock-n-roll have a 95% chance of being utter garbage. I have no idea why that's the case but it is. If I had to guess it'd be the diminishing returns of nostalgia and the seemingly perpetual state of all good music existing solely in the past because of it. Hell, even Family Guy landed an uncharacteristically accurate joke at the expense of this phenomenon.
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5) 'B.A.D.'
You hear the cries of love - a sad tune
And feel the salt lick stingin' - love's wound
Those tears that you cry leave a blood stain
They fall to the ground like a sweet rain
'Cause bad girls, they do
B.A.D. - Bad
Make your mom and daddy sad
B.A.D. - Bad
It's the bloody fix ya do
Okay, so we've established that W.A.S.P. can S.P.E.L.L.. It seems to be one of their favorite things to do. I'm glad that this new generation of scumbag bad boy dropouts take their vernacular exercises so seriously.
Hard for me to really rate this one. The tune and lyrics individually are decent enough but put together they have this really dirty, awful vibe. It just makes you feel like a total dirtbag in a way that usually only Bryan Adams manages to pull off on accident. And I don't mean a vaguely suave Razor Ramon type dirtbag who hangs out at bars to pick up easy slatches either. I mean the kinda dirtbag who haunts his old high school parking lot in his beat up Firebird despite having dropped out three years ago. Utter, unrepentant douchebag music.
I kinda love it.
Song Rating: (Not) B(.A.D. - Bad)
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A blackboard jungle - toe the line the rulers made
A homework hellhound screams at me: MAKE THE GRADE
Tick tock, three o'clock - I'm sitting here and countin' off the days
A fire bell is ringin' hell and I'd sure love to see it blaze
(BURN IT DOWN)
(School daze) School daze, I'm here doin' time
(School daze) School daze, my age is my crime
(School daze) School daze I'm here doin' time
(School daze) School daze, I'm attendin' Hell High
Every child who's ever gone through the American public education system can attest that it sucks. It's too long, half of the teachers have no idea what they're doing, you get forced to do homework almost every night, and you learn nothing practical after age fifteen unless you take a shop or home econ class. Honestly, Thomas Jefferson was on to something. Basic education like being able to read and write? That should be for everyone. Anything that requires tutoring above a ninth grade level? A kid outta show some initiative to deserve that. The world is full of overeducated idiots nowadays who'd better serve themselves and their fellow man by picking vegetables or tarring driveways than opining on concepts they clearly do not have the faculties to comprehend, let alone examine with any depth.
But enough about me, time for the music.
It rules. Everything about this song works. The introduction with the Pledge of Allegiance comes back in one of my favorite bridge drops this band has ever done:
I pledge no allegiance and I bet
They're gonna drive me crazy yet
Nobody here is understandin' me
I pledge no allegiance and I bet
They're gonna drive me crazy yet
I'm dyin' here and tryin' to get free
Song Rating: A+
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7) 'Hellion'
Hell hound, hot leather on your legs
That smokin' powder keg you're riding on is
Hellbound
And you're the one they claim
Is going down in flames
You're riding Hades' rails
(Hellion)
HELLLLLLLLLLLLLION
THE DEVIL'S HELLION CHILD
HELLLLLLLLLLLLLION
WILL NEVER HAVE TO DIE
Truly this is what the word "banger" was meant for, Gorilla. Brings a tear to my eye. Absolutely perfect. A masterpiece of metal from start to finish. A truly immaculate hunk of evil, dirty metal. I love it. I love it. I love it.
The gods you worship are steel
At the altar of rock-n-roll you kneel
A slave who forever rocks
Is chained in the devil's locks
And slain by the bloody axe I wail
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| Also totally headcanon Loona theme. |
Song Rating: A+
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Taste the love, the Lucifer's magic
That makes you numb
The passion and all the pain are one
You're sleeping in the fire
Oh crap it's a ballad. And a great one at that. Blackie Lawless gets to show off more traditional pipes in this one. Kinda seductive, ngl. I'd have sex with Blackie Lawless if he sang to me like this. Even though he's explicitly trying to twist my soul to the dark side with this tune.
You'll begin to notice that this album is very bottom heavy. Pear-shaped, if you will. And I mean that in a good way. This album has a fat, strong ass. It's a bold Latina woman who ain't never gonna leave you once you get married and insists she make the taco shells at home in the toaster oven instead of buying them in the store like the senseless gringas do. A bold, daring, but all the same uniquely sensitive Spanish speaking werewolf woman who always waits for you to get home from work with
I forgot what point I was making.
This tune is great.
Song Rating: A+
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On your knees, that's where you all shall be
Well, I bid you come taste your first deadly sin
Ridin' the wild wind and the door to submission
Will open and you shall fall in
"...what the fuck was that?"
- Blackie, hearing something as the song closes
Thrash metal time. I physically cannot stop from headbanging when this one comes on. It's one of those.
I know they're going for demonic energy but it honestly comes off more like goblin energy. Impish, petty evil. That's honestly the reason why most of W.A.S.P.'s lame rock-n-roll songs about rock-n-roll work. They're explicitly about scummy, bad behavior and they very seldom glamorize it. These are songs about things you should not be doing. It'll become really, really obvious come their fourth and fifth albums that you are not supposed to emulate their behavior.
Song Rating: B
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10) 'Tormentor'
I am
the Lord
of Liars
And I
command
the force
of fire, fire, fire
The tune from RAGEWAR. Bask in it, folks. Bask it its glory.
Again, note how it never actually glamorizes any of the demonic imagery. Expressly told from the POV of a terrible force that you'd be a fool to idolize. A lot of lesser metal acts fail to maintain that distinction. This is what puts W.A.S.P. above a Motley Crue, Warrant, or Ghost in that regard. And I like all those bands to some extent - they're just not thematically even album to album (or even track to track) with their presentation.
Song Rating: B
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And you, you cry but no-one hears (or cares)
And hope's the rope that keeps you tied in knots:
THE TORTURE NEVER STOPS
THE TORTURE NEVER STOPS
I'm a mark for this song. A mark for this whole album, really. It's just something I like. Do I have any groundbreaking insight upon it or any witticisms set aside for each individual track? Not really. Which is probably why I'm gonna change the format the next time I attempt an album review. There's really only so many ways you can say "This works well as a piece of music. It is fundamentally sound and the lyrics meet with the instrumentation in such a way as to enhance both". Perhaps going track-by-track in detail is not terribly feasible. Because getting however many pages in and realizing you're just gonna start repeating yourself is a type of torture. And the torture never stops.
Song Rating: A
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12) 'Show No Mercy'
White Anglo-Saxon
A violent reaction
Fire is my fuel
Steel and iron rule
Ride on wasteland
On madman's badlands
Ride on wasteland
And I will survive
To show no mercy
The b-side to the 'Animal (F**k Like a Beast)' single. Definitely a b-side. Yup.
Nothing wrong with it, nothing outstanding. A solid filler track. Rolls off nicely. It's like a toothless version of future W.A.S.P. great 'Restless Gypsy'.
Song Rating: Filler
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13) 'Paint It Black' (The Rolling Stones cover (doy))
That's right folks - two decades before Ghost started doing excellent metal covers of random tunes as hidden tracks on their albums, W.A.S.P. did the same. It's a gimmick that I'm glad is making a comeback. Bands that actually do have a unique sound should do covers. I do wanna hear what different artistic takes on the same material sound like. Maybe one day I'll even do an entry where I compare versions of 'The Great Pretender' or 'House of the Rising Sun' to see which is my favorite. (Spoilers: it's Dolly Parton and Joan Baez's versions respectively.)
This is almost a perfect cover.
I have no bloody idea what handcuffs have to do with this song, though. Really should've left that little aside out of the final product, guys. Takes it down a full letter grade for me, honestly. It's almost as pointlessly egregious as Limp Bizkit's additions to 'Behind Blue Eyes'.
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| L... I... M... P... L... I... M... P... L... I... M... P... |
Song Rating: B
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