Skid Row
get harder and heavier on their sophomore effort, matching
Sebastian Bach
's gritty, streetwise rants to lean, driving riffs that manage to back up all the attitudinal posturing. Largely missing are the bits of
pop-metal
fluff that filled out
; in their place are tales from the dark side about drugs, corruption, and the like, with
Bach
affecting a tough, threatening persona most of the time. The furious noise kicked up behind
is usually more threatening than his overwrought vocal delivery, but
Slave to the Grind
is powerful enough that it doesn't really matter.
"Monkey Business,"
"Get the Fuck Out,"
and the thrashy title track crush most anything on the debut, and
power ballads
like
"Quicksand Jesus"
and
"Wasted Time"
are far less generic than their
counterparts. Many observers were surprised when
became the first
heavy metal
album to debut at number one on the
Billboard
charts, but it really was one of the best -- and heaviest -- examples of mainstream
hard rock
/
in the genre's
MTV
heyday. ~ Steve Huey