179. Twisted Sister / Come Out And Play. 1985. 3/5.

Twisted Sister’s career, from its very early beginnings, had been a wild ride. Despite their immense popularity back home in New York and surrounding areas through the 1970’s and early 1980’s, they struggled to find a way to gai a recording contract, despite selling out a show at the New York Palladium in 19878 without an album, a contract or any kind of radio airplay. Their loyal fan base continued to go and watch them play. Despite this, it would take another four years before they finally secured a recording contract, and that had to be from overseas, a small recording outlet called Secret Records in the UK that had specialised in punk releases to that point in time. Their debut album was called “Under the Blade” and saw the band finally able to promote themselves with a record deal. Secret Records went bust soon after, but Atlantic Records, one of the labels that had rejected the band four years earlier, now decided to take a punt. The band’s first album for the label, “You Can’t Stop Rock ‘n’ Roll”, which went to #14 in the UK while charting for the first time in their native US, and on the back of this success the band began to be promoted more heavily by their record company.
Then had come “Stay Hungry”, the band’s third album, and one that exploded all over the world. Thought the success of the singles “We’re Not Gonna Take It” and “I Wanna Rock”, the band’s profile grew exponentially. Indeed, it was the videos for those two tracks, that ended up getting enormous exposure and rotation on MTV that really drove the popularity of the band and the album. This popularity also piqued the interest of the PMRC who stuck their unwanted noses into the band's music, which resulted in lead singer and songwriter Dee Snider having to front Senate hearings in the US related to these matters, alongside Frank Zappa and John Denver, in September 1985.
With an album that had created such success for the band, having toured extensively to sold out houses as a result, the next critical assignment for the band was to create an album that continued to draw on that success and continue to push the band forward. After the disappointment the band had felt with Tom Werman producing the previous album, here they went for a proven winner in Dieter Dierks, who was Scorpions long time producer and at the helm for all of their successful 1980’s releases. One wonders if, in their minds, they had Quiet Riot in their thoughts as they sat down to create this new album. Quiet Riot of course had famously become the first heavy metal band to have a US #1 album with “Metal Health” and then had had a follow up album in “Condition Critical” that had seen a massive drop off in sales and popular response. Twisted Sister’s equally popular third album would now be followed by their fourth, “Come Out and Play”, and the desire to continue their upward trend of their first three albums, rather than the massive up and quick decline of Quiet Riot’s third and fourth albums, must have been something that at least had crossed Dee Snider’s mind as he was producing what would be a defining album in the band’s history.

Have any of you seen the wonderful 1979 classic film “The Warriors”? If not, you should. The opening to the album pays homage to the most iconic scene of that film, where David Patrick Kelly’s character Luthor calls out to the hiding gang members “Warriors! Come out to play!”, before breaking into the opening title track. Is it terrible that that is the most memorable part of the album for me? Whoops! Spoiler alert! Ignore that. Let’s move on. The opening song blazes with a great speed once it punches into action, driven by AJ Pero’s drums and the guitars from Eddie Ojeda and Jay Jay French. It is arguably the fastest and heaviest song Twisted Sister ever produced, and it is a marvellous way to open the album. Honestly, if you listen to this song carefully, you can hear the influence of what became the earliest works of Blind Guardian, musically and in some ways vocally. Big call, but see if I’m wrong.
The second song on the album is its biggest mistake, and one I will ever truly understand. It is the cover versions of the Shangri-La's most identifiable song “Leader of the Pack”. The band had often covered this song in their club days in the late 1970’s, and following on from the success of Motley Crue covering “Smoking in the Boys Room” on their recent album “Theater of Pain”, Dee Snider pushed the band to do something similar here. He said in his 2012 autobiography ‘Shut Up and Give Me the Mic: A Twisted Memoir’, "I was positive this was the track that would break down any barriers left for Twisted Sister and bring us to the level of Springsteen, Prince and Madonna. I believed that we were the band that could bring metal to the mainstream. I was convinced that this would appeal to everybody, including the parents of our fans who knew the original from when they were growing up". Opinions are divided on the song and its placement on this album. Released as the first single from the album, the fans voted with their feet and stormed away from it. Next comes “You Want What We Got”, which was also the second single from the album. It is a much more straight up hard rock track, far more like what the band had produced on previous albums, and was far more representative of what the band was like. The chugging guitars and hard hitting drums profile what Twisted Sister are, in a much better light. This is followed by the rock and roll anthems that Twisted Sister liked to employ in the music and on their albums, the type of songs they can play live and have suitable crowd interaction throughout. Titled appropriately “I Believe in Rock ‘n’ Roll”, the lyrics are what you would expect from such a song, and musically it hits all the right notes required, the solid rhythm from Pero and Mark Mendoza holding the line through the song and giving Dee the chance to fist pump and encourage the listener along the way. The first side of the album concludes with “The Fire Still Burns”, one that does draw its inspiration from the previous album, in particular the song “The Price”, and again draws on anthemic roots to bring the emotion and dare I say it fire to the song. Structurally Dee Snider, who once again is the sole composer of the tracks on the album (apart from the cover), is looking to engage his youthful audience and give them songs that they can feel a part of. The question to be asked is – do they succeed on a level that makes this a good album?
The second side opens with “Be Chrool to Your Scuel”, the song rooted in old school rock and roll, and involving former shock rock ambassador Alice Cooper on co-lead vocals. Alice had been on sabbatical when this was recorded, having gone sober and tried some other things away from music. The honky tonk piano and horns in the song gives the track that sense of nostalgia for the 50’s and 60’s, and was supposed to be the second single released from the album except that MTV refused to play the video they had filmed for the track. Whoops. And hey look, it is a fun track I guess, and the harkening back to those days mirrors what the band did with “Leader of the Pack”. The question I still ask is, was that necessary?
The band then offer us their version of the power ballad in “I Believe in You”, a term that should give you a very fair indication of my thoughts on the song as a whole. Seriously, this overstays its welcome by minutes. It is the longest song on the album and feels longer as the style of the track stretches it out to eternity. “Out on the Streets” settles into its mid-tempo rhythm, offers a similar riff throughout the song and vocals that also settle into that rhythm rather than creating the unique which is what Dee is best known for. “Lookin’ Out for #1” has more energy to its performance, though lyrically we are still standing on the stage and looking for the crowd to sing along with us. And of course these style of songs are fine, even great, but perhaps this album is just over proliferated with them, and that’s what makes it a difficult listen on occasions. We want songs with some colours and differentiation. Which is what we get from the closing track on the album “Kill or Be Killed”. Yes it is still of a similar format, but Dee stands astride the stage crying out to the masses, Eddie solo’s like his life depends on it, and the band actually sound engaged here for one of the few times on the album. On that positive side, this song is a great way to conclude the album.

Like almost every human in existence in the 1980’s, I first came across Twisted Sister through the video for their single “We’re Not Gonna Take It” from their “Stay Hungry” album. This was unavoidable in Australia through 1984 and into 1985. It was catchy, everyone enjoyed the video, and the chorus got stuck in your head. Flash forward now to the first half of 1986, and my enlightenment of the genre of heavy metal music has kicked off in full swing. Sometime during this time in the early months of the year, I had noticed that Twisted Sister were back on our screens with another music video. This one though was of a song that I already knew from an earlier age, one I eventually worked out was a cover song, “Leader of the Pack”. And, it was okay, but I wondered why Twisted Sister was doing a cover song when they were so capable of writing great songs like I now knew from that previous album. It didn’t do much for me. And even the single that had Alice Cooper singing on it as well... that just wasn’t the same as what they had produced on that other album. And that was it, my initial reaction to what I heard of this album. Because I didn’t actually hear this album, or get a copy of this album, until some years later. But the first reviews had not been great.
Into the next decade, and I did come across this album. Indeed it was one of the hundred or so cassettes I bought on my first trip to Bali in 1991, the albums I felt I would never succumb to paying full price for back at home, but I was happy to spend a dollar on in Bali to at least hear what it had to offer. And when I got home, that’s what I did. And I reckon, even then, I had been expecting “Stay Hungry”, and what I got was not that. And I knew that the band had split up which should have been a warning marker. But I was still expecting the unadulterated brilliance that I still find from that previous album, and I didn’t find it. And with so many other albums to listen to in that stash of cassettes I moved onwards, and “Come Out and Play” was left in the darkness.
How many times have I revisited this album in the years since? ’Not many' would be the answer to that question. The odd occasion when I have gone on a Twisted Sister binge. But that has been the only true reason to go there again. Which, as I have explained on other episode, is one of the main reasons I began this podcast. To revisit albums that I own that don’t get a chance to come out and be listened to in this age where too much music is never enough. Which is what I have done, as explained here. And it hasn’t been an unhappy experience. I still don’t get the whole “Leader of the Pack” thing, I have always felt that that was a mistake. And "Be Chrool to Your Scuel", I don’t think that works. But there is enough good music and good moments here to make this worth a listen. It isn’t amazing but it isn’t the bottom of the barrel either. THAT would unfortunately come a couple of years later, one that spelled the end of the band at that particular point in time. But for now, it is about taking what you can from the bottom of the can of baked beans and being thankful that there is at least at that time still something worth salvaging.