Twisted Sister
Club Daze Volume II: Live in the Bars
Spitfire
This is the second installment of the history of Twisted Sister circa 1979, BM. That is, “Before MTV,” which made ‘em the definition of “huge” for a few years. My first brush with Twisted Sister was as a sophomore in college, sometime in late 1982, when an upperclassman explained that he was really liked that punk band, Twisted Sister. Um, yeah… A couple of years later, a frat brother re-introduced me to the metal band Twisted Sister – then I got it. The live tracks on this album give me strange vibes, visually, Twisted Sister was a mix of The Rocky Horror Show and the weird Tubes photo essay I saw in Playboy twenty-five years ago. Musically, they’re a 1970’s original metal band, hands down. Just listening to “Follow Me” and “Under The Blade,” the mix of nothing but metal guitars and Dee Snider’s demonic yodeling nails it. It’s unpolished, but really tight, and obviously the band put on a great show, judging from the crowd’s response between songs.
The songs on this album, though they’re aged, sound really fresh up against whatever else I’ve been into. The new recordings on the album, “New Say Never” and “Blastin’ Fast & Loud,” though recorded this year (they’ve been re-recorded with the old line up, too, a reunion of sorts), were apparently slated for the Stay Hungry album, but never made it, are, well, kind of “1980s” compared to the raw energy of this live performances of, say, “Plastic Money” and “Under The Blade.” I must hand it to this band, they saved some choice recordings to make clear their relevance in this new century. This is an excellent recording and deserves several hundred loud listens.
Spitfire Records: http://www.spitfirerecords.com • Twisted Sister: http://www.twistedsister.com
