The following Mötley Crüe Shout at the Devil album review by Chris Auman was published in Used Records & Tapes #1 [RoosterCow Press]
Hurtin’ Crüe
I used to hate the Crüe back in the day. Hated them. Hated their look, their attitude, and especially the horrible, godawful music they made. I could not understand how anybody could like them. Unfortunately for me, the majority of my small group of high school friends (and rural Illinois in general) were into metal and really into the Crüe. But my friends weren’t cool metal dudes with long hair, jean jackets, muscle cars, and the whiff of moral turpitude (they wished!). Their hair was as long as they were allowed to grow it, one or two may have had a jacket made of some denim-like material, and I guess a 1970 Plymouth Duster counts as a muscle car—but anyway, my point is this: I hated the Crüe. Hated them.
In the ‘80s, I had my own favorite double umlaut band: Hüsker Dü. They were more abrasive, smarter, angrier, and more real than the
Crüe could ever hope to be. They weren’t posers. None of them wore lipstick or hair-spray like the Crüe. Two of the Hüskers were gay, but they played against stereotypes and didn’t play dress up like the metal boys did. That irony was surely lost on the legions of homophobic hair metal bands and their fans of the time.
Mötley Crüe Shout at the Devil
Shout at the Devil was the follow up to the Crüe’s debut, Too Fast for Love—a rough recording with even more annoying vocals, lower production values, and lots of cowbell. Shout got as high as 17 on the Billboard 200 chart with “Looks That Kill.” “Too Young to Fall in Love” also broke the Billboard Hot 100 in 1984. This record was a shrewd move on the Crüe’s part because they didn’t sing about the devil much before, nor have they since.
It paid dividends for them at the time, however, because anything with even a hint of devil worship sold like hot cakes fresh from Satan’s oven. As for the actual music on the album; the drumming is horrible, Mick Mars on guitar ain’t all that, you can’t really hear much of Nikki Sixx’s bass, and Vince Neil’s voice and the production on the record are both as thin as one of Tommy Lee’s Zildjian crash cymbals.
Don’t get me wrong, I love me some good metal, but the glam stuff just never washed with me. Give me some Maiden, Sabbath, Metallica, sure. Cinderella, Poison, Crüe, you can have it, düde.
Drink Mötley Brüe
I made a version of the fake ad below to piss off a metal friend of mine in 1985. He was not amused. It’s a little heavy handed. I get that now.
