Customer Reviews

Stay Hungry (25th Anniversary Edition)

5 star:		(54)
4 star:		(19)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

Stay Hungry is pretty much the best Heavy Metal album of 1984. You have your room shaking heavy crunchers like "Burn in Hell" and "S.M.F.", you have your catchy rockers like "We're Not Gonna Take It" and "I Wanna Rock", your fast paced "Stay Hungry", and your 2 1/2 minute ballad "The Price." All that, and you still have four other great tracks.

Some people will tell you Heavy Metal is stupid. Some people will tell you Twisted Sister is stupid. Well, some PEOPLE are stupid. They don't understand it; so don't let them get you down. Just crank it up and make 'em deaf.

"Stay Hungry" is a great album and should be in any Metalhead's collection.

Here's a post from Rhino Records regarding the remaster of "Stay Hungry". This explains the poor quality of this release and also the fact that Rhino has corrected the problem. It sucks that the bad copies made it out to the public in the first place but kudos for their fast action after catching the mistake.

[...]

"IMPORTANT NOTE: Some customers may have purchased a copy of the Twisted Sister - Stay Hungry 25th Anniversary Edition with lower than normal audio levels on Disc 1. The error was corrected as soon as it was discovered, however some defective copies were shipped to online shoppers and retail stores. If the edition you purchased has a defective Disc 1 and you would like a replacement, please email Dr. Rhino (Dr.Rhino@rhino.com) with TWISTED SISTER as the subject line for further instructions."

There you have it. For those of you that directed your anger at the band, they had nothing to do with this issue so you might want to re-think who to be mad at. Just swap your defective copy and hopefully all will be well. Peace.

PS - Disc 2 is excellent and worth the price of admission in my opinion! It's great to hear the demo versions and outtakes. Keep in mind that they aren't complete songs as they were just demos from the "Stay Hungry" sessions but they are very cool just the same. And the new song, "30", is great!

To me, listening to TS's Stay Hungry is similar to eating that midday Snickers,low on substance and completely unnecessary. Yet, somehow it's 100% self-satisfying!

I defy anyone to name a better group than Twisted Sister. They defined youth rebellion, angst, and tortured lives well in advance of all these fools today. Dee Snider was brilliant and always ready with the Shakespeare-worthy lyrics about the difficulty of life in these United States. If I could, I'd give it a million stars. Brilliance I say, brilliance!

Many a Metal fan in the 1980s would tell anyone who would listen that all Glam Metal was for poseurs and any one of hundreds of different synonyms for homosexual. Glam Metal was for poodle haired cross dressers more interested in make up and picking up chicks than making music with any redeeming value whatsoever. By and large, this was true. Witness for example the excesses of Motley Crue, the effete foppery of Poison, the commercialised Pop/Rock of Bon Jovi, and the failings of any one of a number of other bands, like Faster Pussycat, Tiger Tailz, LA Guns, Bang Tango, Great White, Ratt, ad infinitum.

Occasionally though, a Glam Metal band managed to produce an album masculine enough to appeal to True Metal fans. WASP managed it with two or three albums, and Motley Crue almost achieved it with the rough and ready "Girls Girls Girls". "Stay Hungry" by Twisted Sister was another of these albums, and by far and away the most successful.

Pre-dating the decadence of the LA Glam Metal scene by a good few years, Twisted Sister moulded the hard rocking theatrics of Kiss and Alice Cooper to their own shape. While many bands forgot to learn the basics, like playing instruments and writing songs, with Twisted Sister, the music always came first. The outrageous image was merely a marketing tool. Iron Maiden were also wearing multi-coloured Spandex in 1984, and no one was questioning their musical validity.

"Stay Hungry" will always be best remembered for the two huge singles it spawned, and their hilarious accompanying videos. `We're Not Gonna Take It' and `I Wanna Rock' are both lowest common denominator shout along anthems of simplistic teen rebellion at it's basest level, but damn it, they are just so addictive, and the fun factor negates their obvious commercial intentions.

If you look past the singles though, the rest of the album is reasonably dark. You thought Glam Metal was all about partying and chicks and lightweight throwaway Rock n Roll? Think again. Some of the riffs would have done Judas Priest proud at the time. And while some blame Glam Metal for the eventual decline of the solo because the guitar players were not technically proficient enough, don't point fingers at Twisted Sister- try Mick Marrs and CC De Ville.

The most obvious starting point is the creepy double shot of `Horror-Teria'. First up, `Captain Howdy' explores the psyche of a deranged child killer, not unlike Freddy Krueger. "You think you're going home to your own little bed/ But that's impossible, you can't sleep when you're dead". Captain Howdy was caught and tried for his crimes, but wasn't convicted, so a lynch mob formed and meted out `Street Justice'. "Now before you shake your head/ Think if it was your child instead". While not the deepest, most meaningful pair of songs ever, would any of Twisted Sister's contemporaries have stopped thinking about their dicks long enough to produce songs like these?

`Burn In Hell', `The Beast', `Don't Let Me Down' and `The Price also have negative lyrical themes, exploring where things and people fit in the world. `Burn In Hell' and `The Beast' would not seem out of place on a traditional Metal album, while `The Price' is an Ozzy-esque power ballad.

Although not the heaviest album ever, look carefully in the hidden corners of many a Metal fan's collection and you might just find the familiar picture of Dee Snider feasting on a bone. "Stay Hungry" was perhaps the greatest entry-level Metal album of the early 1980s, and deservedly so.

What's the 4-1-1?
Twisted Sister labored day in and day out for more than a decade on the New York City club circuit before becoming a household name. When they originally formed in 1972 by guitarist Jay Jay French, the group was a glam cover band in the vein of the New York Dolls. It wasn't until 1976 that wild frontman Dee Snider hooked up with the group. It was Dee that become the chief original songwriter and got Twisted Sister going toward their path of rock stardom.

The group's first studio album Under the Blade was a hit by any standard, but it did cause quite a stir in the rock music underground. Atlantic Record released their follow-up album in 1983, You Can't Stop Rock and Roll to mixed reviews. Some say it might have been Quiet Riot's breakout into the pop charts that gave Twisted Sister and bands like them a chance to be heard. In 1984, the group released their third album Stay Hungry. And the rest, they say...is history!

Often overlooked is the albums title track "Stay Hungry." The song has such a great heavy metal feel and bounce to it as Dee Snider wails away vocally, and his twin guitar attack of Jay Jay French and Eddie Ojeda back him up with a wall of power chords. You know it, you love it, and most of you youngsters think it's a song for a nasal decongestant; it's the rock anthem "We're Not Gonna Take It." This is the one that got Twisted Sister noticed; for good and bad reasons.

Senator Al Gore's wife Tipper singled out the video for this song for its violent content and the impact it would have on America's youth. Mind you, this video was so cartoonish that if you actually threw someone out a window because of it, you have more problems than listening to Twisted Sister. The controversy only worked in the groups favor, as the album started flying off the shelves. It just goes to show that all publicity is good publicity.

"Burn in Hell" never makes the Twisted Sister best of albums, but it's actually on of their coolest tracks. The tone is very dark and evil as you are taken into the bowels of hell. Once inside, the guitars ring out in a metal fury and summon the flames of Hades. I was actually introduced to this song when it appeared in Pee Wee's Big Adventure (yeah, I didn't believe it either). "Horror-Teria" eventually went on to spawn Snider's feature film Strangeland years later. The two-part track is just as twisted as the movie (okay, the movie was much more so).

Twisted Sister showed they were no slouches when it came to the anthem department with the inclusion of "I Wanna Rock." This is another song that has bleed so much into our pop-culture that a version of it was used in the SpongeBob Squarepants Movie (sung lovingly by Dee himself). "The Price" was a heavy metal ballad tried and true. It's not too sappy, but it's heartfelt at the same time. Thunderous riffs run rampant on "The Beast." When the axes are subdued, drummer A.J. Pero takes over. Now what I can't understand is, everyone knows what "S.M.F." stands for after listening to it, but it was We're Not Gonna Take It" that Tipper had a problem with.

Twisted Sister went on to release several more albums, but none lived up to Stay Hungry. In reality, Twisted Sister wasn't the biggest hard rock act in the world, but they did make their mark on the scene for a few years. The group called it quits in the late eighties. Jay Jay French went on to manage Sevendust and Snider worked any gig he could get. He formed three groups, Desperado, Widowmaker, and S.M.F. (a TS cover band), and hosted his own radio talk show as well as the syndicated program the House of Hair. Twisted Sister has since reunited and has decided to hit to nostalgia circuit. They've been crossing the country for the past few years and continue to keep the pace. Why? Because you wanna rock!

The Verdict
It's not the greatest rock album of all-time, but you can't discuss the history of rock and metal without mentioning it.

This is such a fun album. I just broke it out again today after not listening to "Stay Hungry" for a few years. This is just a really solid rock album, and every track sizzles with early 80's metal angst. I remember being a Pre-Teen when this came out and watching the video for "We're Not Gonna Take It" and being blown away. I ran right out and picked up the cassette of this album. I have to say that this album really set the trend for hair metal bands of the 80's who would produce maybe one really good album and then disappear; Slaughter, Firehouse, Winger etc. But Twister Sister led the way, and with songs like "I Wanna Rock", "Burn in Hell" and "Horror-Teria" they really tapped into a "new" sound that quite a few of me and my friends at the time were looking for, and couldn't get enough of. If you enjoy 80's metal, then you have to have a copy of this disk. It's a shame that the band became too cartoony, and losing all of their anger, to be taken seriously with the follow up album "Come Out and Play" because it's obvious there is talent here, just not enough to overcome "Leader of the Pack".

Pop-Metal has a deservedly bad reputation amongst serious metalheads, but that doesn't mean that there isn't any good stuff out there, with Twisted Sister's "Stay Hungry" being some of the best. "Stay Hungry" is relatively early in the pop-metal cycle, so they haven't taken it too far yet and washed away all the heaviness in a sea of overproduction. This ain't gonna crush anyone's skull, but it's not Bon Jovi or Poison either, not by a long shot. In short, it's pop, but it's still metal too, no doubt.

At only nine tracks, "Stay Hungry" is relatively short and sweet, with no obvious filler. This isn't a terribly complicated album, instead relying on a few catchy riffs and memorable vocal lines. The band isn't likley to wow anyone with their chops, but they're tight and efficient and play with greater intensity than most of their peers. Snider, however, is the standout. He might not have the sorta range and technical ability found with some other metal singers, but he's a perfect fit here, creating an always effective mixture of melody and aggression. Also, I must admit to being amused by sometimes the good-naturedly juvenile lyrics.

"Stay Hungry" is not exactly overloaded in variety: it has a few particularly poppy, anthemic numbers (We're Not Gonna Take It, I Wanna Rock), some faster, more metallic tracks, (Stay Hungry, SMF, Don't Let Me Down), some brooding, moodier songs (The Beast, Burn in Hell) and the obligatory ballad. (The Price) Again, everything here is definitely listenable, and there are enough true highlights to maintain interest from beginning to end. The two most famous tracks, "We're Not Gonna Take It" and "I Wanna Rock" and perhaps most likely to grate against more hardline metalheads, but I enjoy them both immensely. They ain't got a lotta sophistication, but they provide the sorta anthemic fun I look for on occasion. That said, I still tend to prefer the darker, more metallic material which makes "The Beast" my easy favorite, followed by the similar "Burn in Hell", both of which are metal classics. These two have the most powerful, varied vocal performances from Snider, and the instrumentalists kick it up too, with some moodier, more dynamic songwriting.

I dunno how much more there is to say about "Stay Hungry". It's just a lotta fun. Some people don't think that metal should be fun, ever, so I guess they should look elsewhere. But if you can take it a bit less seriously every now and then and want some melody and straight forwardness, you can't go wrong with "Stay Hungry".

I suppose Stay Hungry made mainstream success over Under the Blade partly because not as many people are interested in Twisted Sister's ultimate rawness.

Stay Hungry was my first Twisted Sister album, and it never disappointed me. Like many, my favorite on this one was "We're Not Gonna Take It", followed closely by the title track "Stay Hungry", "Burn in Hell", and "The Price".

I don't listen to this album as much now as I did the first two months I had it, because I soon got Under the Blade, You Can't Stop Rock N Roll, and Love is for Suckers. I still greatly enjoy reminiscing back to the elementary school days when I'd be listening to this all the time at max volume on my CD player.

Yup, Stay Hungry is still at the top, though from the looks of it, more people are starting to acknowledge twisted Sister's other albums through this one.

Well, I think this is a great heavy metal album and I bet everyone should love this kind of music. At least, this album worth any new metal ... albums. This is the rating for each song:

1. Stay Hungry: Great opener and great title song. Makes you feel the
fury and you want you to explode. Great solo. Rating: 4.5/5

2. We're Not Gonna Take It: This is like one of the popular songs for
this band. It is a rebel song with some comical lyrics. Rating 5/5

3. Burn In Hell: You'll be burning in hell if you don't get this album soon.
Strong riffs and brilliant solo. Rating: 5/5

4. Horro-Teria: A track made of two songs and they are excellent. It talks about killers
who target children as their victims. Rating: 4.5/5

5. I Wanna Rock: You might had heard it on the "Road Trip" movie and it is an
energetic song and I think this song can never fade. 4.5/5

6. The Price: My personal favorite track on the album. It is tha calmest song on
the album. I enjoyed the chorus part. Rating: 5/5

7. Don't Let Me Down: I'll let you down if you don't hear this song. It is a must listen.
Enjoyable solo. Rating: 5/5

8. The Beast: "It's the nature of the beast" a powerful and aggressive metal music and
everyone should like it. Rating 5/5.

9. S.M.F: Brilliant finish for an incredible performance and a great solo in the middle.
Funny lyrics though and played perfectly. Rating 4.5/5

God I love solos and this album is rich in solos and you won't regret buying this product. I think this band is much better than the likes of Linkin Park and Staind. These guys used to mean business. 80's Metal is great.