{"id":8590,"date":"2012-01-13T07:00:58","date_gmt":"2012-01-13T11:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/southeastofheaven.com\/?p=8590"},"modified":"2022-01-06T19:43:23","modified_gmt":"2022-01-07T00:43:23","slug":"the-album-by-album-challenge-motley-crue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/?p=8590","title":{"rendered":"The Album By Album Challenge: Motley Crue Pt. 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Happy New Year Fartheads and welcome to another “Album by Album Challenge.” For those that are new here, the “Album by Album Challenge” is where I take a bands entire discography and listen to every album in order of release from front to back. As I do this, I write a review of the albums and offer my thoughts on each of them. In some cases, I have learned that I really enjoyed a lot of things that I overlooked by a certain band. In other cases, I learned just how much crap one band can release to the masses. This time around I took it upon myself to face the challenge of listening to the Motley Crue catalog and I must say, it was one of the most painful challenges I have done yet. I can’t even being to describe just how much crappy music this band has put out but I’ll digress for now. This was a long one of 11 albums (two versions of “Too Fast For Love”) so I have split it into two parts. Hope you enjoy this one and hey, at least YOU didn’t have to listen to all of these yourself. You’re welcome.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Motley Crue – Too Fast For Love (Leathur Records)<\/strong>
\n Release Date<\/strong>: 1981
\nThe Good<\/strong>: Live Wire, Public Enemy #1, Take Me To The Top, Merry Go Round, Piece of Your Action, Too Fast For Love
\nThe Bad<\/strong>: Toast of The Town
\nThe Indifferent<\/strong>: Starry Eyes, On With The Show<\/p>\n

What a fucking killer album. This is the version of their debut that self released on the bands own “Leathur Records” imprint and the difference between this version and the Elektra records version is like night and day. The songs are raw, gritty and so much fucking fun to listen to. Vince as a singer really kills on this one and I also love it that Nikki Sixx’s bass is more prominent in the mix. Hearing this album really showed me a few things. First off, Vince was a killer singer and Nikki is really not a bad bass player at all. The album is more glam ROCK as opposed to metal. “Live Wire” is pretty much the closest thing to metal on this album. This version of the album also has slightly different performances and arrangements than the Elektra version we all came to know. “Too Fast For Love” has a whole slow intro that we never heard before which in my opinion was really stupid and I’m glad that it got omitted later. Songs like “Public Enemy #1” and “Take Me To The Top” have so much more punch to them. “Live Wire” also has this REALLY annoying clapping in between the stops towards the end of the song which I have no fucking clue why they would do something so dumb. “Starry Eyes” and “On With The Show” are two extremely forgettable songs but the only real stinker on this album was “Stick To Your Guns” which eventually was also left off of the future Elektra version. Other than that stinker and other little things, this is a solid debut album and one I really enjoyed listening to.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Motley Crue – Too Fast For Love (Elektra Records)<\/strong>
\nRelease Date<\/strong>: December 15, 1982
\nThe Good<\/strong>: Live Wire, Public Enemy #1, Take Me To The Top, Merry Go Round, Piece of Your Action, Too Fast For Love
\nThe Bad:
\nThe Indifferent<\/strong>: Starry Eyes, On With The Show<\/p>\n

The big difference here from the Leathur Records version more polished production (still pretty raw sounding), a different sound order and some different performances.\u00a0 Motley Crue pretty much re-recorded the whole album.\u00a0 I’m glad they removed those annoying “claps” in “Live Wire” and removed the slow intro to “Too Fast For Love.”\u00a0 Those were very smart moves but aside from those changes, it was hard to hear a lot of differences there.\u00a0 Overall, I still like the track order and the performances on the Leathur Records version much better.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Motley Crue – Shout At The Devil<\/strong>
\n Release Date<\/strong>: September 26 1983
\nThe Good<\/strong>: In The Beginning, Shout At The Devil, Looks That Kill, Helter Skelter, Red Hot, Too Young To Fall In Love, Knock ‘Em Dead Kid, Danger
\nThe Bad<\/strong>: Bastard, Ten Seconds To Love,
\nThe Indifferent<\/strong>: God Bless The Children of the Beast<\/p>\n

The difference between “Shout at the Devil” and “Too Fast For Love” is like night and day.\u00a0 This album is without a doubt the album that put Motley Crue on the Heavy Metal map.\u00a0 As much as I loved “Too Fast For Love”, I can see why they ignore that album as once they put out Shout at the Devil, they found a formula.\u00a0 Listening to this album in full was a cool experience.\u00a0 Crue really had some awesome moments on this album.\u00a0 Even as corny as the spoken intro “In The Beginning” is, it sets the tone and “Shout at the Devil” is a kick in the face.\u00a0 I actually like the songs on this album but the vibe is totally ruined by corny sex fueled lyrics of “Ten Seconds To Love” and the atrocious “Bastard.”\u00a0 What a horrible couple of songs.\u00a0 “Red Hot” is a killer track but it’s the album closer “Danger” that I found to be a really amazing tune.\u00a0 I never paid much attention to this one before but I’d have to say that it’s without a doubt one of their best songs.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Motley Crue – Theater of Pain<\/strong>
\n Release Date<\/strong>: June 21, 1985
\nThe Good<\/strong>: City Boy Blues, Smokin’ In The Boys Room, Louder Than Hell, Keep Your Eye On The Money, Home Sweet Home, Use It or Lose It, Save Our Souls, Raise Your Hands To Rock,
\nThe Bad:<\/strong>
\n The Indifferent<\/strong>: Tonight (We Need A Lover),<\/p>\n

This has to be one of the worst sounding albums ever.\u00a0 Coming off the heels of the bombastic and thumpy “Shout at the Devil” album, this album sounds weak and thin.\u00a0 Content wise, this album surprised me.\u00a0 At one time this was my least favorite but this one has a lot of good songs on it.\u00a0 It’s not as “metal” as “Shout…” but I’m starting to see that Crue in some ways was really struggling with their identity.\u00a0 In some ways, it’s a cool thing because as of this album, their sound seemed to change drastically on each album.\u00a0 “City Boy Blues” and “Louder Than Hell” are killer tunes that are really unique in their own right and “Save Our Souls” just well could be Crue’s own “doom metal” song.\u00a0 I could totally hear this one being covered by some doom metal band and not having to change it much.\u00a0 “Raise Your Hands To Rock” could be a Tesla and\/or Cinderella song while “Fight For Your Right” is definitely anthem Glam Metal.\u00a0 “Theater of Pain” really surprised me in both it’s versatility and it’s just a really good album.\u00a0 It’s just too bad the production makes it painful to listen to.\u00a0 These songs are way better than they sound.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Motley Crue – Girls, Girls, Girls<\/strong>
\n Release Date<\/strong>: May 15, 1987
\nThe Good<\/strong>: Wild Side,
\nThe Bad<\/strong>: Girls Girls Girls, Bad Boy Boogie, Nona, Sumthin’ For Nuthin’, You’re All I Need, Jailhouse Rock
\nThe Indifferent<\/strong>: Dancing On Glass, All In The Name of…,<\/p>\n

“Wild Side” isn’t just one of Crue’s best songs but one of my favorite hard rock\/metal songs.\u00a0 It offers up so much promise for this album.\u00a0 The song is so dark, heavy and awesome but the rest of the album doesn’t come close to even following through.\u00a0 Instead it’s a lot of fluff, horrible sexual innuendos and just piss poor songs.\u00a0 Even the songs that were just “OK” were just barely “ok” missing the suck margin by just a smidgeon.\u00a0 They were trying to hard to play up their “bad boy” image that it just turned out ridiculous.\u00a0 Crappy ballads like “Nona” and “You’re All I Need” were just terrible but didn’t kill the album as bad as craptastic songs like “Sumthin’ For Nuthin'”, “Bad Boy Boogie” and their total raping of “Jailhouse Rock.”\u00a0 This album is a fine example of how as a kid, I was totally blinded by the larger than life image and juvenile lyrics.\u00a0 All those years later, the smoke has cleared and what’s left is a really shitty album with ONE great song on it.\u00a0 Ugggh.\u00a0 I’m dreading moving forward from here.<\/p>\n

PART II Coming Soon<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Happy New Year Fartheads and welcome to another “Album by Album Challenge.” For those that are new here, the “Album by Album Challenge” is where I take a bands entire discography and listen to every album in order of release from front to back. As I do this, I write a review of the albums and offer my thoughts on each of them. In some cases, I have learned that I really enjoyed a lot of things that I overlooked […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[711,277],"tags":[271,710],"class_list":["post-8590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-album-by-album-challenge","category-music-news","tag-motley-crue","tag-motley-crue-album-review"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8590"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8590\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19559,"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8590\/revisions\/19559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}