Stick It Live
Slaughter

Produced by: Dana Strum and Mark Slaughter
Record Company: Chrysalis 1990

The Band: MARK SLAUGHTER: the voice, clean guitar, keyboards...DANA STRUM: bass guitar, vocals...TIM KELLY: lead guitar, vocals...BLAS ELIAS: drums, percussion, vocals

A short, but sweet live cd, featuring 5 songs from the highly successful Stick It To Ya release.  This was a very smart move for the band, giving the fans something else to snatch up, after having two big hit songs, the anthem, Up All Night, and the acoustic guitar driven ballad, Fly To the Angels.  For Slaughter fans, this release is a definite must, especially for those that have not had the opportunity to see the band live in concert.  The production on this is slick and well done, the overall sound is quite good, and the band stretches out each song about a minute longer than what's on the studio release.  However with only 5 songs on here, this is like a teaser, making you want to see the band live, but what is on here is excellently performed, showing that they are able to reproduce the sound on the record in concert.  Alot of bands are unable to do that.  The song selection was fairly good, the two already mentioned hits are on here, as well as three other rockers, Burnin' Bridges opens it up, a mainstream rocker that sounds good in concert, followed by one of my Slaughter favorites, Eye to Eye, which just kicks ass from the opening guitar riff.   Vocalist Mark Slaughter stirs up the crowd a bit with this song, and the crowd reacts well. Maybe its one of their favorites too?  This is followed up with the heart tugging ballad, Fly to the Angels, and then the instantly recognizable opening to the killer Up All Night, which thunders live, and is another of my Slaughter favorites, so of course I liked this one.  The opening guitar solo by Tim Kelly fits the song perfectly and gets you all ready for the main riff to kick in.  The last song on the release, Loaded Gun, is another of those OK pop metal songs that are kind of standard fare, but sound great in concert. 

My only true complaint with this cd is that I think there should have been one more song, maybe a cover song thrown on the end of it, or one of their higher tempo ballads (the gorgeous Spend My Life or You Are the One come to mind), better yet they should have tagged both on, made it a full live release instead of something that qualifies as an EP.  All Slaughter fanatics already have this and love it, but the rest of the metal world might not have picked this short little disc up.  If you are into live releases, you will definitely enjoy this, since Slaughter delivers their tunes at top notch quality even in concert. 

Rating: 6.5/10   Reviewed by: RainbowFlame

Stick It To Ya
Slaughter

Produced and Arranged by: Dana Strum & Mark Slaughter
Record Company: Chrysalis 1990

The Band: MARK SLAUGHTER: the voice, clean guitar, keyboards...DANA STRUM: bass guitar, vocals...TIM KELLY: lead guitar, vocals...BLAS ELIAS: drums, percussion, vocals

Every glam metal fan in the world probably has this release.  In the early EARLY 90's, there were a few releases almost EVERY metal fan had, there was Motely Crue's Dr Feelgood, Warrant's Cherry Pie, and then you had Slaughter's Stick It To Ya.   This is a completely feel good cd, which cd's like this are great to have in any metal collection.  The music has enough of a hard rock feel to it, to give you that nice rush of energy, but its not so heavy that you feel like you are being beaten over the head with a very heavy object.  It all kicks off with Eye to Eye, a song that reminds me of some of Firehouse's material, probably why I enjoy listening to it so much.   Burnin' Bridges is a mainstream sounding hard rocker, just standard pop metal stuff.  Up All Night, is something else entirely however, it is a very distinctive song, with that feel good, sing-a-long as loud as you can, crank the stereo up, move to the music feel to it.  The next song, Spend My Life, is very close to my heart, the uptempo ballad, and the beat of the song is very appealing to me.  Thinking of June is a gentle acoustic instrumental, that leads into She Wants More, a typical metal pop song.  Fly to the Angels is the song Slaughter is known best for.

Overall its an excellent cd, the production is good, and you never get the feeling that it was over produced, which is good.  Most of the songs can easily be said to be some of the better releases from the glam metal period, while other border on being good to a few that are average.  This band was one of the best loved metal outfits at the beginning of the 1990s, and is one that still endures today. 

Rating: 7.5/10.0  Reviewed by: RainbowFlame