Skid Row: Slave to the Grind (2LP) [BMG]

Why you'll love it

This BMG reissue spreads Slave to the Grind across two LPs. It was the first heavy metal album to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in the SoundScan era, selling 134,000 copies in its first week, and went double platinum in the US.

This edition

• 2LP set

About the album

Skid Row could easily have made a second helping of their hit debut. Instead they wrote most of Slave to the Grind in a New Jersey studio, demoed it with producer Michael Wagener and came back heavier, angrier and a good deal more ambitious, with the title track heading straight for speed metal territory.

Wagener recorded the band in Fort Lauderdale and Studio City between late 1990 and early 1991, and the title track on the finished album is actually the original demo; the band tried to beat it in the proper sessions and couldn't match the intensity. "Monkey Business" swaggers, "Riot Act" is a short, furious blast, and "Quicksand Jesus," "In A Darkened Room" and "Wasted Time" give Sebastian Bach the big ballads he was built for. Dave Sabo and Scotti Hill's guitars bite throughout, and "Get The F*** Out" needs no further explanation.

Bach's father, the painter David Bierk, made the cover, a long mural based on Caravaggio's Burial of St. Lucy with modern gadgets slipped into a medieval scene and John F. Kennedy in the crowd. It's the most art-historically literate thing ever to hang in a teenager's bedroom, and we include our own.

Also at Kops: more Skid Row on vinyl · browse Metal

Tracklist

Listen

On Atlantic / BMG (cat# 964201371), a reissue of the 1991 album.