Label: Warner Brothers
Year: 1992
Home: n/a
Members: Tommy Shaw ~ vocals/guitars
Ted Nugent ~ guitars/vocals
Jack Blades ~ bass/vocals
Michael Cartellone ~ drums
Additional: Robbie Buchanan ~ keyboards
Tower of Power ~ horns
Paul Buckmaster ~ strings
This album was a guilty pleasure when I first heard it. I'm a Yankee of two centuries, so the name immediately caught my eye, while I liked the single I
heard on the radio, "Where You Goin' Now." I didn't need much more
incentive to investigate, particularly as I was at an age where I wanted
to hear everything & anything that was musical. I'll confess I didn't know Ted Nugent, nor could I tell you what hits Styx had to their name. Nor had I heard D.Y.'s even more commercially successful debut album. If I had heard the single from that album, "High Enough," I didn't know it was the same band. Many critics call that debut the better of their two albums, yet, stepping back from nostalgia & listening again as I write this, I think this is in many ways just as good as the debut. Really, they have different attributes. I think this album is more even & uniform musically than the debut. That album always struck me as a band exploring, not quite sure what their sound was. Yet, I will give it credit for being the more musically diverse album. Second, where this lacks diversity, it makes up that by packing a huge guitar swingin' groin thrustin' punch in the gut that I never got on the debut. The songs are all strong, though at times blending together, but never take the foot off the pedal. The dynamics & energy are cranked up high here, while the layers of sound rope you in & keep you in for the full ride. This is a monster rock album, maybe hair metal excess at its extreme best, where its failures are lifted up by its strengths. Ted Nugent shines in all his charismatic bigger than life glory with one amazing solo after another. He single-highhandedly catapults the album from its AOR basics to a high flying trapeze act of hair wavin' rock. I've heard most of his catalog & rate his work with D.Y. as some of his best.
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