Def and Twisted

It’s always been common knowledge that 1983 and 1984 were crucial years as far as the development of the metal genre is concerned, and for good reason. List just a selection of the seminal albums that came out during that period, and it’s easy to see how those of us who experienced that explosion firsthand as teenagers would immediately wax poetic, misty-eyed at the memory of such a wealth of incredible new music that came out in such a short time frame.

From 1983: Piece of Mind, Holy Diver, Kill ‘Em All, Restless and Wild, Melissa, Show No Mercy, At War With Satan. From 1984: Ride the Lightning, Powerslave, Don’t Break the Oath, Balls to the Wall, Defenders of the Faith, Morbid Tales, Haunting the Chapel, Fistful of Metal, Bathory.

Artist: Def Leppard

Album: Pyromania [Deluxe Edition]

Label: Island / Mercury

US Release Date: 2009-06-23

Image: http://images.popmatters.com/music_cover_art/p/pyromania-cover.jpgAnd I could go on. At the time, it just felt like a seemingly unending supply of killer new music, but with the clarity of hindsight, the fact was heavy metal was being changed irrevocably on a regular basis, the influence of some of those releases still resonating a decade, even two decades later.

While it’s important to chronicle the underground ascent of metal in ’83-’84, just as crucial was the rise to prominence of the genre’s more accessible side, as band after band, aided by some of the most savvy, contagious singles of the decade, brought heavy metal into North America’s mainstream consciousness. While Quiet Riot, Motley Crue, Ratt, Dokken, Bon Jovi, Scorpions, Whitesnake, Van Halen, and even a reunited Deep Purple experienced chart success that ranged from significant to spectacular, two bands in particular led the charge with their third albums.

One was a band of pretty youngsters that originated from the New Wave of British Heavy Metal and was desperately trying to achieve stateside success. The other, a homely bunch of New York club scene veterans who experienced only a meager level of success in the UK. And conveniently enough, both of their breakthrough albums have been gussied up a quarter century later, repackaged for nostalgic Gen Xers as expanded deluxe editions.

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Although they deny it, when Def Leppard released the single “Hello America” in March of 1980, there was no doubt in the minds of many that the Sheffield band was bent on making it big on the other side of the Atlantic. Produced by Judas Priest collaborator Tom Allom, the1980 debut On Through the Night was a good, rough-around-the-edges hard rock record, but sales sputtered. With Mutt Lange at the helm for 1981’s follow-up High ‘n’ Dry, on the other hand, the band’s predilection towards straightforward rock riffs and gigantic hooks was offset remarkably well by Lange’s notoriously slick production.

Lange, who just came off producing a string of best-selling albums including AC/DC’s classic trifecta of Highway to Hell, Back in Black, and For Those About to Rock, as well as Foreigner’s hugely popular 4, truly started to develop his own trademark sound with these talented Brits, best exemplified by the stately power ballad “Bringin’ on the Heartbreak”, which would provide Def Leppard with its first foothold in the US later that year. With audiences’ appetites whetted, the band, along with their savvy management team and their cutting-edge producer, went for broke on album number three.And did Pyromania ever break. Ten million copies sold in America alone. Three top 40 singles, unheard of for a band with British metal roots. Videos in heavy rotation on MTV. Headlining arena tours. Released on January 20, 1983, it captured the zeitgeist in a way that no American hard rock band would equal until Bon Jovi did three years later, coincidentally, with their third album. To this day the record is one of the defining moments of ‘80s pop music, and while many other like-minded, lavishly-produced hard rock/pop metal albums have gone on to symbolize ‘80s excess at its most garish, Lange’s immaculate, pristine, and undeniably calculated sound makes Pyromania timeless.

Listening to it today, one of the more intriguing aspects of Pyromania is how it balances both the masculine aspects of riff-driven, pounding hard rock with the more effeminate characteristics of pop music. It’s an incredibly androgynous record, something every other band during “cock rock’”s heyday, for all of their gender bending images, would never dare to attempt sonically.

Examples are strewn all throughout the ten-track album, from “Stagefright” to “Billy’s Got a Gun”, but the best is the album’s most famous track. Chart-topping single “Photograph” starts off with a biting rhythm riff, gargantuan AC/DC-like beats provided by Rick Allen, and a swaggering vocal intro by Joe Elliott, but when the bridge kicks in, synthesizers start to dominate, giving way to a chorus of chiming guitars, a wistful delivery by Elliott, and what would become a Lange trademark, those lush, heavily layered, harmony vocals sung in a gentle falsetto.

It was and still is four minutes and eight seconds of pop perfection. It’s no wonder the song and the album was an across-the-board smash: it was made for mass consumption, accessible to both sexes of all ages, and not just horny 14-year-old boys.

Without a doubt, the album’s singles far outweigh the deep cuts, but the lesser tracks do manage to hold their own, albeit just barely at times. “Rock Rock! Till You Drop”‘s asinine lyrics are only made palatable by the incendiary guitar work of Steve Clark and Phil Collen and its inspired mid-song breakdown, while the tacky synth effects on “Die Hard the Hunter” ultimately give way to a brilliantly dark track that subtly hearkens to the band’s NWOBHM days.

Still, when you have some comparatively lightweight tracks smattered in between such brilliant cuts as the classy, gorgeous ballad “Too Late For Love”, the gloriously goofy, arena-igniting “Rock of Ages”, and the stupendous, multi-faceted album highlight “Foolin'”, the odd slip into rock ‘n’ roll cliché is never a bad thing, especially when the ride is this much fun.

Whether or not it’s worth shelling out bucks for these slickly-designed, slipcase-sporting digipaks is always debatable, with so few releases truly worth the exorbitant price, but the new reissue of Pyromania is as good a deluxe edition that’s come out in recent years. First of all, the remaster is phenomenal, obliterating the previous CD version, crisp, boisterous, but devoid of the overcompression that plagues the majority of mainstream rock and metal recordings these days.

Equally impressive is the second disc, which contains a complete, 15 song live set recorded in Los Angeles in September 1983. By then the band was well into its world tour, road-hardened, tight-sounding, and ferocious, and their adrenaline-fueled set is hair-raising at times. Distanced from Lange’s meticulous hand, Def Leppard’s songs benefit immensely from the much rawer approach in a live setting, taking on new life, “Rock Rock!”, “Foolin'”, and “Photograph” absolutely blistering, “Billy’s Got a Gun” sounding darker, and “Mirror Mirror (Look Into My Eyes)” topping the High ‘n’ Dry original.

The real revelation on the live disc is Rick Allen, who doesn’t so much anchor the songs with his drumming but propel them, infusing each track with a level of energy that, despite all his brave and noble efforts in the years since the 1984 accident that cost him his left arm, he would unfortunately never be able to duplicate again. In fact, compare this set to the band’s highly touted yet exhausted-sounding comeback gig in Donington three years later, and it’s no contest; circa 1983, Leppard was as explosive as the album’s title, young, hungry, and ready to conquer. And this reissue is as close to a perfect snapshot of that era as we will get.

Still Ravenous

Still Ravenous

Around the same time, New York band Twisted Sister had been plugging along for more than a decade, but had little to show for it. Despite earning a loyal local following, no record labels were interested in a bunch of fug-ugly dudes who dressed in drag and cartoonish make-up and boasted one of the most profane frontmen to ever grace a stage in Dee Snider. By the time 1980 rolled around, however, the NWOBHM was in full swing, and when such UK magazines as Sounds and Kerrang! started to catch on to Twisted Sister’s Brit-friendly, traditional heavy metal approach, the band did the opposite of what Def Leppard was doing, and set their sights east across the Atlantic.

Artist: Twisted Sister

Album: Stay Hungry

Label: Rhino

US Release Date: 2009-06-30

Image: http://images.popmatters.com/columns_art/s/stayhungry-cover.jpgTheir fortunes improved somewhat, as Secret Records released the raucous debut full-length Under the Blade in 1982 to wide acclaim among the UK metal community, which in turn led to the band signing with Atlantic Records. You Can’t Stop Rock ‘n’ Roll (1983) effectively played up their blue-collar sound, the robust production by Stuart Epps accentuating the increasingly refined songwriting and the band’s knack for rock anthems, exemplified by “The Kids Are Back”, “You Can’t Stop Rock ‘n’ Roll”, and the top 20 UK single “I Am (I’m Me)”.

With Twisted Sister’s popularity in the UK and Europe on the upswing, the band’s American label remained baffled by these self-professed dirtbags, but their club shows in the US were starting to draw very well, and even though label brass were indifferent to the music, the responses to those shows were so positive Atlantic decided to take a bit of a gamble on the band’s third album. Producer Tom Werman was a hot commodity, coming off Motley Crue’s classic Shout at the Devil, but his approach with Twisted Sister would be decidedly different than that on Crue’s record.

With the label bent on making the new album a commercial success, Werman would tone down the band’s bruising sound significantly. Although that rubbed the musicians the wrong way, without that glam rock sheen Stay Hungry probably wouldn’t have been the crossover hit it would be upon its release in May 1984.

Besides, despite the somewhat soupy guitar sound by the overrated Werman, Stay Hungry remains a phenomenal metal album. Aided tremendously by its slapstick video, breakthrough single “We’re Not Gonna Take It” was the teen anthem of that summer, carried by Snider’s charismatic, sneering performance and sing-along chorus, with AJ Pero’s ingenious, funky little cowbell-enhanced drum intro serving as the song’s central hook.

While “I Wanna Rock” was a logical follow-up, contagious enough to keep sales high later in the year, unlike Pyromania, Stay Hungry is far more rewarding if you delve a little deeper into the album. The UK influence is undeniable on the throttling title track, Pero’s thrashy beats reminiscent of Discharge’s adrenaline-fueled “d-beats” and Motorhead’s unadulterated speed. Snider’s near-eight minute “Horror-Teria” suite is a tremendous slice of Alice Cooper-inspired shock rock, his versatile voice perfectly suited to the personae he portrays on “Captain Howdy” and the concluding “Street Justice”.

The murky, menacing “The Beast” and the thunderous “S.M.F.” give the record a dose of much-needed muscle, while conversely, “The Price” would go on to be one of the most sincere-sounding, least contrived power ballads of the ‘80s. Best of the lot, though, is the theatrical, five minute mini-epic Burn in Hell, its combination of doom tones, blistering speed, and deliciously bombastic vocals predating the equally over-the-top approach of Dimmu Borgir, who in turn recorded a superb cover version of the track in 1999.

The new 25th Anniversary Edition offers listeners a wealth of bonus material, the majority of the second disc’s tracks a collection of previously unreleased demos recorded in December 1983, including no fewer than ten tracks that never saw the light of day. Far rawer and much more aggressive than anything we hear on Stay Hungry, some might say these demos are a better indication of what Twisted Sister was all about, and for good reason.

Despite the bare-bones mix and Snider’s often flat singing, it’s the sound of a band in its element, better suited to the gutter than the penthouse. Of course, hearing some of the unreleased tracks, it’s easy to see why they didn’t make the cut, but others, like “We’re Coming On”, “Call My Name”, and the Manowar-like “You Got to Fight” hold their own against the stronger tracks on 1985’s otherwise disappointing Come Out and Play.

Of the early versions of the album tracks, the loosey-goosey rendition “We’re Not Gonna Take It” shows just how much it needed Werman’s touch, while on the other hand, “Burn in Hell” and “Stay Hungry” already sound fully-formed, the band tight, Snider ferocious. Capping it all off is the surprisingly good new track “30”, a boisterous, punk-fueled tune not far removed from the style of bassist Mark Mendoza’s former band the Dictators.

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By the time 1987 rolled around, the career trajectories of Def Leppard and Twisted Sister were going in opposite directions. Incredibly, Def Leppard’s much-delayed, much-hyped Pyromania follow-up Hysteria was an even bigger hit, eventually topping 12 million units sold in the US. Twisted Sister, meanwhile, made a series of poor decisions in the wake of their well-earned success, the nadir being the pop metal fluff of ’87’s mediocre Love is For Suckers.

Two decades later, though, the ’80s metal retro circuit is a thriving business in North America, and while both bands haven’t exactly lit up the charts as of late (well, save for Twisted’s undeniably merry A Twisted Christmas), they continue to draw well. The rock anthem, whether it’s about rocking till you drop or just simply proclaiming that you just wanna rock, is a bit of a dying art these days, and these bands, and especially these two albums, are terrific reminders of how fun it all used to be.