Back in 1984, I was discovering heavy metal music thanks to MTV
\nand groups like Twisted Sister and AC\/DC. It was a wonderful time
\nto be discovering new groups like Magellan sailing the open seas;
\nmy buddy and I were soon banging our heads to new groups almost
\nevery day.<\/p>\n
One of the bands I got into around this time was Ratt, thanks to
\nthe video for their song “Round And Round”. Within short time, I
\nhad dropped eight bucks and bought their album
\nOut Of The Cellar<\/i>, and was perfectly happy with it… until
\nI discovered it wasn’t their first album! Horrors!<\/p>\n
It would be some time before I got around to buying
\nRatt<\/i>, their six-song EP that helped them land a contract
\nwith Atlantic Records. This mini-album (which apparently is hard to
\nfind these days) shows off a group that has not yet developed the
\nconfidence and sound that would propel them to stardom, but they’re
\nclose.<\/p>\n
For starters, a poor mix doesn’t help matters much. Often, the
\nguitars of Robbin Crosby and Warren DiMartini are buried in the
\nmix, and Juan Croucier’s bass takes the forefront. This ends up
\nhurting tracks like “Sweet Cheater” and “You Think You’re Tough,”
\ntracks that could have used the extra muscle to convince me right
\nout of the box that these guys had muscle. If there is a God in
\nheaven, he’ll make sure that Liam Sternberg never tries to produce
\na metal band again.<\/p>\n
But even with a better mix, vocalist Stephen Pearcy hadn’t quite
\ndeveloped the powerful sneering vocals that would become his
\ntrademark. He’s not lightweight on tracks like “U Got It,” but he
\njust doesn’t have the oomph behind them that would be better
\ndeveloped on
\nOut Of The Cellar<\/i>. That sneer
\nis<\/i> there, by the way, on the original version of “Back For
\nMore”.<\/p>\n
Of the six tracks here, only “Back For More” is worth serious
\nattention, and that’s mainly out of curiosity to hear how the track
\noriginally sounded before becoming a hit off of
\nOut Of The Cellar<\/i>. (So far, I believe this is the only track
\nthat Ratt ever re-recorded for one of their major label releases.
\nCorrections to this would be appreciated from the audience.) Other
\ntracks like “Tell The World” don’t paint a convincing enough
\nportrait for Ratt, and as for the cover of “Walkin’ The Dog”…
\nwell, frankly, I can’t stand that song ever since hearing a
\nterribly butchered version when I was a kid on
\nThe Mickey Mouse Club<\/i> album. If I never hear that friggin’
\nsong again, I will die a happy man.<\/p>\n
\nRatt<\/i> is the kind of album that the diehard fan either owns
\nor is searching out to finish their collection. For the casual fan,
\nthis really isn’t required owning or listening, since it’s kind of
\nan incomplete picture of who the band would become in one short
\nyear.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27913,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[6287],"rating":[5619],"class_list":["post-39302","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-ratt","rating-rating-c"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/39302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/39302\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=39302"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=39302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}