Album Review: Dee Snider - For The Love Of Metal

I'm going to admit something; other than "We're Not Gonna Take It", I don't know that I've ever heard a Twisted Sister song. For being as big as they were, and for sticking it out forty years, Twisted Sister has never made a dent in my consciousness. Perhaps that's because they had already stopped making new music, and had become a touring novelty act, by the time I was getting into metal, but they exist out in the periphery where I know about them, but they were never within a stone's throw of relevant to me. So it was with a yawn I met Dee Snider's solo career, which got off to a whimper with his modern alternative rock album, which was so forgettable I can't remember the title of it.

This time out, Jamey Jasta wants to resurrect Snider's spot in the metal pantheon by providing him with a modern album that is metal to the core. It can't be any worse, right?

For one thing, the album delivers on its title, and it is a classic heavy metal record. Snider and Jasta promise an album of 'anthemic' tracks, and they are, if you define the term in the style of the 80s, when Twisted Sister was at their peak. The songs are anthemic in the sense that they have vocal lines in the choruses a crowd can shout along with. They aren't exactly melodic in the way I would rather hear, but they have some old-fashioned metal charm.

Snider's voice, being put at the center of the proceedings, is certainly strong enough to hang with the modern production. Unlike singers today, he is able to blend aggression with enough melody that he straddles the line between barking and singing. That allows the music to be heavy without ever losing touch with accessible songwriting. It's actually a trick that has been lost to time, as most of the vocalists capable of doing such a thing prefer to bifurcate their vocals, and go both ultra guttural and ultra melodic.

Songs like "American Made", which are able to establish a heavy groove, are exactly the kind of modern metal Snider is perfectly suited for. You can think about it as if Five Finger Death Punch made music that wasn't played by and for people without souls. The guitars are thick and saturated, filling the sonic space like a wall of sound, with just enough room for Snider to push through. They were going for heavy metal, and without venturing out of the mainstream, this is about as heavy as you can get. It actually reminds me, instrumentally, of the album Light The Torch put out earlier in the year (a fitting comparison, as Howard Jones make a cameo here). It's modern and crushing, but still has enough rock to balance out the metal.

Frankly, this album shows what a disaster Snider's last outing was. Not only was the record not very good, but it was so obviously contrived to play to an audience neither Snider nor his fans are a part of that it couldn't possibly work. It was a cynical ploy to cross over, and it failed. This record is a more pure evolution of where Snider's music could have gone, if he was still writing songs today. This is a modern, updated take on Snider's career, which is exactly what it should be.

I have to imagine that Twisted Sister fans will be overjoyed by this album, because it delivers Dee Snider as they want to hear him. And for the rest of us who don't have a nostalgic attachment to him, "For The Love Of Metal" is still an excellent foray into the mainstream nexus of rock and metal. This is the best record I've ever heard Jasta have any part in, and it makes a strong case for Dee Snider still having a voice that resonates with today's listeners. This record is surprisingly good.