Skid Row ~ 40 Seasons: The Best Of... (hits comp) (album review) ... Slave to the metal!

Style: glam metal, heavy metal, hard rock, 80's rock, hair metal
Label: Atlantic
Year: 1998
Home: New Jersey

Members: Sebastian Bach ~ lead vocals
Scotti Hill ~ guitars
Dave "The Snake" Sabo ~ guitars/b. vocals
Rachel Bolan ~ bass/ b. vocals
Rob Affuso ~ drums

 

Everyone knows Skid Row & their pretty boy blond frontman Sebastian Bach. While everyone can probably name & maybe hum a bit of their 3 big hits: "Youth Gone Wild", "18 & Live" & "I Remember You". But, what we tend to forget is that these all came off of the same debut album (Skid Row) with nothing of consequence coming from the following 3 albums before their breakup not quite a decade later. So this is an album of 16 hits with 13 of them unknown. So, one can't help but wonder if this is really a collection of hits or a way to make more money for the band? Further, everyone knows Skid Row as a glam band, but their second album Slave To The Grind was actually the first heavy metal album to hit #1 & listening to this album one is made aware that Skid Row is indeed a heavy metal band with their glam debut almost a mistake. This is almost two bands - the glam & the metal. If you've forgotten anything after their hits, or didn't know, it's almost a jarring listen. Though, considering their debut came out in 1989 & glam would soon be killed by grunge, it's not surprising the direction they went. Though, even Bach's wild vocals change so the third album sounds nothing like Skid Row of before. Suddenly the falsetto screaming vanishes, but so does the music that would propel it. The band of Subhuman Race, the last album before the break-up, shows a growing band not afraid to experiment with fairly interesting & unexpected results that show much more development beyond their debut than many bands show. If Bach hadn't been fired & the band split who knows where they might have gone musically. They did reunite in 1999, sans Bach, but the current band is just a blip on the nostalgia circuit. This is not so much a hits package as a career retrospective of the pre-reformation Bach era. It's a great overview of the Skid Row legacy. The stuff is all great & it's a shame it didn't fair better on the charts. If you don't already own a Skid Row album having already listened to this album twice tonight I can honestly say you've got a blaring gap in your collection. This really should be 13 hits & 3 songs we don't remember.