Skid Row - The Atlantic Years 1989-1996 (Remastered) (2021)

An LP and CD boxset collection of five Skid Row albums between 1989 and 1996. Included are Skid Row’s Multi-million selling worldwide charting 1st Three studio albums (Skid Row, Slave to the Grind and Subhuman Race) plus the B-Side Ourselves EP and for Japan-only Live EP Subhuman Beings On Tour!!. All newly remastered!

New Jersey’s Skid Row exploded into public view in January 1989 with the release of signature tune Youth Gone Wild. The single barely charted, but the self-titled album that spawned it would sell over six million copies worldwide.

The back-story to the fairy tale? Skid Row’s founding guitarist Dave Sabo had been friends with Jon Bon Jovi since childhood, when the pair had promised each other that the first of them to enjoy success with their bands would help the other do the same.

Hence barely two years after forming, Skid Row had management with the Doc McGhee stable, an Atlantic Records recording contract, and were opening for Bon Jovi, Motley Crue and Aerosmith – then headlining arenas themselves. It was more than good connections, of course. Sabo’s energetic band had hit paydirt with livewire frontman Sebastian Bach.

Despite containing consecutive Billboard Top 10 hits in power ballads 18 And Life and I Remember You, Skid Row (9/10) was produced by heavy metal specialist Michael Wagener so often sounded like mid-’80s Judas Priest (notably Big Guns, Midnight Tornado).

In 1991, Quicksand Jesus and In A Darkened Room aside, second album Slave To The Grind (8/10) ignored commercial options and turned even heavier – an approach typified by Get The Fuck Out and Riot Act, which today sound like Appetite For Destruction out-takes.

Really, the first two albums are all you need here, but 1992’s five-song EP B-Side Ourselves (6/10) is a fun, if faithful, set of covers. Those are the Ramones’ Psycho Therapy, Hendrix’s Little Wing (oddly brought forward in the running order, whereas the original had it last), Kiss tune C’mon And Love Me, a live version of Priest’s Delivering The Goods (featuring Rob Halford) and Rush’s first album thrasher What You’re Doing.

Come the third album, Subhuman Race (4/10) – released in 1995 after a hiatus to avoid the grunge tsunami – the bubble had burst and the fifth and final Atlantic release, the seven-song live EP Subhuman Beings On Tour (5/10) was originally for Japan-only.

Subsequently, in 1996, the band grew tired of a singer seemingly unable to avoid poking hornets’ nests on stage and in interviews, so ended the fairy tale by replacing him. Now... go back to the first two albums, play and repeat.

Disc 1 - Skid Row
1. Big Guns
2. Sweet Little Sister
3. Can't Stand The Heartache
4. Piece Of Me
5. 18 And Life
6. Rattlesnake Shake
7. Youth Gone Wild
8. Here I Am
9. Makin' A Mess
10. I Remember You
11. Midnight / Tornado

Disc 2 - Slave To The Grind
1. Monkey Business
2. Slave To The Grind
3. The Threat
4. Quicksand Jesus
5. Psycho Love
6. Get The Fuck Out
7. Livin' On A Chain Gang
8. Creepshow
9. In A Darkened Room
10. Riot Act
11. Mudkicker
12. Wasted Time

Disc 3 - B-Side Ourselves
1. Psycho Therapy
2. C’mon And Love Me
3. Delivering The Goods
4. What You’re Doing
5. Little Wing

Disc 4 - Subhuman Race
1. My Enemy
2. Firesign
3. Bonehead
4. Beat Yourself Blind
5. Eileen
6. Remains To Be Seen
7. Subhuman Race
8. Frozen
9. Into Another
10. Face Against My Soul
11. Medicine Jar
12. Breakin' Down
13. Iron Will

Disc 5 - Subhuman Beings On Tour!!
1. Slave To The Grind
2. Delivering The Goods
3. Beat Yourself Blind
4. Psycho Therapy
5. Riot Act
6. Monkey Business