Review: Wildside

wild
Various Artists
“Wildside: “A Tribute to Motley Crue””
(Artillery Music / AMC)

If for no other reason, for Gravity Check covering ‘Home Sweet Home’.  Now THAT’S how you are supposed to approach a cover.  They almost make the rest of this stinker worth sitting through.  Exiled make ‘Wildside’ sound like a junior high talent show hopeful.  Psychic Mafia’s vocalist tries way too hard and accomplishes nothing on “Looks That Kill”, and takes 2nd place at the junior high talent show.  Hookers & 8 Balls (who kick ass just for having that name) throw some vocal distortion on the verses of ‘Kickstart My Heart’ and then demonstrate how they can’t sing together at all on the choruses.  But compared to the dredge that comprises this disk, they sound awesome here.  Needulhed sounds like bad karaoke garage band, while someone tries to dial a transistor radio into a microphone, as there is all this bizarre ‘noise’ (I think is intentional) that does a good enough job of distracting you from noticing the rest of this is horrible.  Brazen almost make a decent power metal thrust of ‘Red Hot’.  Bearable.  Chain Link Faith spent about $80 bucks recording their version of ‘Live Wire’.  Why bother?   Picture Perfect does a non-offensive version of ‘On With The Show’, too bad, as this song should have some passion (being one of Motley Crue’’s rare and better moments of actual personal depth).  Eyeball gets points for their punky enthusiasm, with under produced, yet undeniably punctuated vocals that dare you to fuck with this.  Proving, you can get credibility without slick production, but you gotta have the nuts to back it up.  Two and a half for Ten (Gravity Check and Eyeball, and Hookers & 8 Balls get a half credit for the name alone) isn’t a passing ratio for a compilation.  I will give credit for the songs chosen, next time get some real bands to play them.