971. Twisted Sister / Stay Hungry. 1984. 5/5

As one of the longest overnight sensations in the music industry, Twisted Sister had fought tooth and nail to get themselves a recording contract and then a distribution that would allow them to get their music out to the world. While their eventual debut album had finally found the light of day, it was the follow up, “You Can’t Stop Rock ‘n’ Roll” that really showed the kind of music the band could produce, and the talent that they band contained. Though they were still struggling to have an impact in their home country of the US, their success in the UK and Europe gave them the encouragement to find that next step.
The subsequent recording of the album became somewhat of a battleground. The band had brought in producer Tom Werman to head the album, on the basis of his success with bands such as Blue Oyster Cult and Motley Crue. During the writing and recording process, Werman apparently brought to the studio four songs by the band Saxon, and was pushing them on the band. This led to conflict with lead singer and songwriter Dee Snider, who took this as Werner wanting to replace one or several of his songs with Saxon cover songs. In an article by Jason Fisher on The Gauntlet website in 2009, guitarist Jay Jay French said, "We lost two songs on the album because of all this. We lost "Blastin' Fast and Loud" and "Never Say Never" as concessions to Tom so that he'd stop bugging us to do covers of Saxon songs. He wanted us to do 4 or 5 Saxon covers. Tom would deny he ever said that but he did. Dee was insulted as he was a song writer. That created problems and no one got along." In response in the same article, Werner was quoted saying. "I did bring them three or four songs from Saxon" stated Tom, "not wanting them to cover them, but just suggesting to them they listen to these songs because I loved them. That is my job. I didn't tell them that they were going to record them. Did they end up recording any, no. If I had the authority to pick songs as Dee has said I did, why didn't I force it on them?"

The title track “Stay Hungry” is, in my opinion, one of the greatest opening tracks on an album of all time. It grabs you from the start, the pounding drums and rhythm line, with Dee immediately grabbing you with his recruiting call, announcing the lines of the song in a demand that you sing along with gusto. It’s a fantastic song, an anthem in every sense of the word, and for me is still the outstanding song of Twisted Sister’s career. Whenever I made a mixed tape, or now whenever I make a playlist, this song is almost always a part of it. This is followed by the song that got everyone in, “We’re Not Gonna Take It”, that still evokes a chorus of singing whenever it gets played, especially in my house. I loved the video and song when it was released, and my kids still love it today, forty years later, so it shows how entertaining it is generationally. From here we move in to “Burn in Hell”, where the star of the show is the chorus, with the chanting between the main lines in the background taking centre stage, such as ‘HEAR no evil, don’t you SEE no evil, don’t you LAY no evil down on ME!” Still great after all these years.
The two parter song that makes up “Horror-Teria (The Beginning)” is terrific for completely different reasons. “Captain Howdy” is the slow, almost chanting track that reeks of doom, the forbidden and gleeful trappings of Captain Howdy himself, which then morphs into the faster paced and harder rock of “Street Justice”, for the vigilantes to take justice into their own hands. You will probably either love or hate this dual barrelled song. I think it’s great and follows up the hard core start to the album perfectly.
The second side of the album opens up with the second single, the hard core “I Wanna Rock”, which gets the adrenaline running to the right levels once again, another great anthem to sing along to. And while the following track “The Price” can be considered to be a power ballad, it has the right amount of grunt and emotion in it, perfectly sung by Dee, that it doesn’t feel like it is intruding upon the party. I enjoy the sing-along aspects of “Don’t Bring Me Down” as well, all played at a good pace and filled with the right paraphrases. “The Beast” slows itself down in much the same way as “Captain Howdy” does, which just possibly comes at the wrong time of the album for such a change in momentum. It’s a small thing, but by the time we reach this section of the road I am looking for a continuation of the speed, rather than what is effectively just putting the brakes on instead. This is rectified by the closing track “S.M.F.” which charges at you and is then finished abruptly, concluding what is still a terrific forty minutes of hard rock.
Perhaps this album is rooted in the 1980’s, but that is not to say it has overly dated. In fact, I really think for what is effectively a glam metal album it is as fresh now as it was when it was released. Let the kids laugh at the video clips, then expose them to songs such as “Stay Hungry”, “Burn in Hell”, and “S.M.F.” and I reckon you’ll have them hooked. If you are one of the doubters, or one of the haters, then that is fine. Everyone’s musical tastes and desires are flavoured differently. But much like Quiet Riot’s “Metal Health” album, which had a similar success to this album the previous year, is thrown into the same basket in the modern age, of an album that is pigeonholed in the times and is unrelatable in the modern age, "Stay Hungry” is far more than that.

Every single person who grew up in my generation of the 1980’s, those that spent those middle years in high school and witness the birth of MTV as a phenomenon along with the other music video shows, were exposed to the wonderful film clips for those two hard rock anthems, “We’re Not Gonna Take It” and “I Wanna Rock” by Twisted Sister. Some of the in-jokes of the videos may have passed over the head of those that didn’t also see the movie “National Lampoon’s Animal House”, but they were memorable all the same. Many of those people will have gone out and bought the album on the strength of those videos, and those that did will not doubt discover, just as I did, that there was much more to the band and the album “Stay Hungry” than just the outfits and humour that are the initial perspective.
As per the usual path, this album came to me by way of my heavy metal music dealer, courtesy of a cassette that also had Motley Crue’s “Shout at the Devil” on the other side. A fun way to spend 90 minutes. And while those two singles had drawn me in to wanting the album, and were generally the only two songs everyone else at school knew, it was the rest of the album that I enjoyed much more. “Burn in Hell” and “Horror Terria”, especially the fast pace and fist pumping second section “Street Justice” were favorites for me, along with “Don’t Let Me Down” and “S.M.F”. But, as already outlined, the title track to me was the piece de resistance.
I can still put this on at any time and enjoy it still. I’ve had it going over recent days and sung along with every song. And it is one of those albums that reminds of those days when it was released, for me my middle years in high school, and things my friends and I used to do. I listen to “The Price”, and I’m transported back to athletics carnivals and school camps and the such, all where this song was played at the time and now acts as that time machine.
For Twisted Sister, this album was the high water mark of their career. After all the hard work they had put in to get to this point, it seemed to fall away very quickly on the other side of the peak. That story will no doubt come up down the track on another episode. But for now, let’s bathe in the glory that is the best that the band had to offer.