Skid Row: " The Gang's All Here"

Ironically the first album by these guys that I have checked out post- Sebastian Bach is called "the Gangs All Here". Much like most bands in their position they are keen to find someone who sounds almost just like their old singer. This is the first album to feature drummer Rob Hammersmith, despite Rob being in the band since, 2010. This is also the band's first album with new singer Erik Gronwall from Sweden. The title is infected with the kind of 80s cheese that this band rose above with more of an edge. Erik does however prove he can do a fitting Sebastian Bach. The get caught up in a peppy upbeat glam sound on "Not Dead Yet" and while Erik can hit high notes, I would like to hear him pull off the kind of grit Bach was capable of on songs like "Piece of Me". 

"Time Bomb" is the first song that has a heavier more forward-thinking sound. Erik has more power than grit, but when properly delivered, it works, I think he has not dealt with the same kind of troubled life experiences Bach had at his age so you can feel it in the energy of his voice, it is more youthful and optimistic, but much less wild.  "Resurrected" fall back into the trap of the 80s sound.  They get heavier in a way that is dynamic and does not force their new singer to be someone he is not on "Nowhere Fast".   "the Lights Come On", is true to Skid Row, but a step backward for them as a band, since they are trying to recreate the first album here.  The riff that opens "Tear it Down" reminds me of "Shout at the Devil" but overall, I like this song better than the previous one. 

They continue to show their mastery of the power ballad on "October song". It is hands down so far, the album's best song. Is it good enough to earn this album a place on my iPod, well that is another story.  "World's On Fire" should be the album heaviest song, but that is not the case. This album is better than expected but I do not feel moves what they do forward like their previous albums, so I will round this down to an 8.5, which is still better than most of their peers. 

 

9

The Top 100 Albums From the 90s : 100 to 91

Living up to my word here's the top 100 albums from the 90s starting with 100 to 91. The deciding factor on these albums isn't how many they sold or how critical acclaim they received , but how they have stood the test of time and how much I find myself listening to them decades later.


  100- Mogwai -"Come on Die Young" One thing I reflected upon in regards to the 90s while I was making this list is that they were a decade in which I did not take a sober breath. So one of the big questions asked of music during this time was... "How does it sound when I'm high? "...Here is a band that passed that test with flying colors, they are from the days when post-rock wasn't a thing, this dreamy drug soundtrack bubbled into my mind.

 

99- AFI - "Black Sails in the Sunset" I remember thinking , these guys kinda sound like LA Guns. They brought cock rock vocals into hard core punk, before inspiring Myspace bands to do the same a decade later.

 


98-Skid Row - "Slave to the Grind" 


A more metallic swan song to the days of hair metal and an album that helped us transition out of the 80s once and for all. These guys were always harder than other hair bands, I saw Pantera open up for them on this tour.

   

97- the Refused- "The Shape of Punk to Come" Little did they know how prophetic this album title was. More scream than emo.

 

  96-Agalloch - "Pale Folklore" 1999 ? Shit there are bands still trying to catch up to these guys. This displays more of their folk side than they currently embrace.

 


95-King Diamond- "the Eye" This came out on the heels of the first three albums, which are classics. It might not be the first King Diamond album I grab to listen to, but it has held up better than some that came after it.He never really fit into the 90s as the 80s epic Iron Maiden vibe drenched in Halloween was more of his thing.



94-Dimmu Borgir - "Spiritual Black Dimensions" The second wave of black metal might have come out of Norway in the 90s , but that didn't mean Americans were listening to no matter how cvlt they claim to be at best you were listening to Deicide or Incantation, I known I was working at a record store when this came out and it took blast beats a minute to grow on me. This is the first album that would cement what would become their classic sound.




93- Death Angel - "Act III" We might fondly think of these guys as old school thrashers carrying the flame now, but this album symbolized the nail in the coffin for thrash as it now only had a power ballad that sounded more like "Under the Bridge" than "One", but this was before "Under the Bridge" had even come out. It's what happened when the Anthrax skate -shorts wearing metal hit the West Coast.



92-Rammstein -"Sehnsucht" Yes... the album with "Du Hast", though most of the other songs on this album are better than that. These guys still party like its 1996. I prefer the songs where he sings and the whole stiff German thing doesn't do it for me like some of the more grooving parts. Held up much better over the years than Fear Factory.




91- Vast - "Video Sensory Audio Theater" These guys held up better over the years than Stabbing Westward and when you put this album on aside from some of the sequencing. When this album came out it took me a minute to get into it. "Touched" was their calling card and compared to what some other bands were doing it didn't seem all that heavy, but the songwriting proved to be good for girl friend metal.