Shout at the Devil

Shout at the Devil
Studio album by Mötley Crüe
Released September 26, 1983
Recorded April–July 1983
Studio Cherokee Studios, Hollywood, California
Genre Heavy metal, glam metal[1]
Length 34:47
Label Elektra
Producer Tom Werman
Mötley Crüe chronology
Too Fast for Love
(1981)Too Fast for Love1981		 Shout at the Devil
(1983)		 Theatre of Pain
(1985)Theatre of Pain1985
Alternative CD edition cover
Singles from Shout at the Devil
  1. "Shout at the Devil"
    Released: 1983 (promo)
  2. "Helter Skelter"
    Released: 1983 (promo)
  3. "Looks That Kill" / "Piece of Your Action"
    Released: January 4, 1984
  4. "Too Young to Fall in Love" / "Take Me to the Top"
    Released: April 30, 1984

Shout at the Devil is the second studio album by American heavy metal band Mötley Crüe, released on September 26, 1983. It was the band's breakthrough album, establishing Mötley Crüe as one of the top selling heavy metal acts of the 1980s. The singles "Looks That Kill" and "Too Young to Fall in Love" were moderate hits for the band.

Overview

Shout at the Devil was Mötley Crüe's breakthrough success, bringing them to international attention. The album's title and the band's use of a pentagram brought the band a great deal of controversy upon its 1983 release, as Christian and conservative groups claimed the band was encouraging their listeners to worship Satan.[2]

The album was a continuation of Mötley Crüe's participation in the early 1980s glam metal scene.

Reception

Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic[3]
Collector's Guide to Heavy Metal8/10[4]
Rolling Stone[5]
The Rolling Stone Album Guide[6]
The Village VoiceD[7]

In a contemporary review for The Village Voice, Robert Christgau panned Shout at the Devil and felt the band's commercial appeal lay in false braggadocio on an album that is poor "even by heavy metal standards".[7] Rolling Stone's J. D. Considine found their style of rock formulaic, innocuous, and unoriginal: "The whole point of bands like Motley Crue is to provide cheap thrills to jaded teens, and that's where the album ultimately disappoints."[5] In The Rolling Stone Album Guide (2004), he dismissed the music as "a distressingly mild-mannered distillation of Kiss and Aerosmith clichés".[6] The magazine would later rank the album 44th in their 2017 "100 Greatest Metal Albums of All Time", anyway.[8]

AllMusic's Barry Weber was more positive in a retrospective review; citing Shout… as their best album, which "displays Mötley Crüe's sleazy and notorious (yet quite entertaining) metal at its best."[3] Canadian journalist Martin Popoff considered Shout at the Devil inferior to Mötley's debut album, but found its music extremely addictive if unoriginal and called it "punk rocking lobotomy metal".[4] Adrian Begrand of PopMatters called the album a "timeless L.A. metal classic", which "people often forget how dark, how sleazy, how menacing ... really is". In his opinion, it contains the band's best singles and "remains to this day Mötley Crüe's finest hour".[9]

"Without this album, a lot of the great hair metal bands wouldn't have come about," observed Satchel of Steel Panther. "Theatre of Pain was more of their glam look, but Shout at the Devil was such a great record. It was fuckin' sick. They set the bar. People looked at that and said, 'Fuck, we gotta dress up cool, man.'[10]

Shout at the Devil peaked at No.17 on the Billboard 200.[11] The singles "Looks That Kill" and "Too Young to Fall in Love", peaked at No.54 and No.90 respectively on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1984, while "Shout at the Devil" peaked at No. 30 on the Mainstream Rock chart.[12] The album was awarded 4x Platinum (reaching the four million mark in shipments) on May 15, 1997.[13]

"When a band like us put out Shout at the Devil," Sixx observed in 2000, "and the label does zero marketing, zero publicity and takes zero trade adverts, and you sell five million records, then everybody starts patting themselves on the back. But it's Mötley Crüe that did that, not Elektra Records."[14]

Track listing

Side one
No.TitleLyricsMusicLength
1."In the Beginning"Nikki SixxGeoff Workman1:13
2."Shout at the Devil"SixxSixx3:16
3."Looks That Kill"SixxSixx4:07
4."Bastard"SixxSixx2:54
5."God Bless the Children of the Beast" (instrumental) Mick Mars1:33
6."Helter Skelter" (The Beatles cover)Lennon–McCartneyLennon–McCartney3:09
Side two
No.TitleLyricsMusicLength
7."Red Hot"SixxSixx, Mars, Vince Neil3:20
8."Too Young to Fall in Love"SixxSixx3:34
9."Knock 'Em Dead, Kid"SixxSixx, Neil3:40
10."Ten Seconds to Love"Sixx, NeilSixx4:17
11."Danger"SixxMars, Sixx, Neil3:51

2003 remastered edition

In 2003, the band re-issued their albums on their own label Mötley Records, including added bonus tracks from each album's specific era. The bonus tracks of the remastered edition of Shout at the Devil are mainly composed of demos, but include also the previously unreleased song "I Will Survive", which was recorded in the same sessions. The song "Black Widow", included in the Red, White & Crüe compilation, was also recorded and left off this album. The track "Hotter than Hell" was later renamed and re-recorded into "Louder Than Hell" on the Theatre of Pain album. This edition also sports a warning that the album may contain masked backwards messages. This is in reference to Sixx and Lee chanting "Jesus is Satan" as an underdub on the title track.[15]

2003 Remastered edition bonus tracks
No.TitleLyricsMusicLength
12."Shout at the Devil" (demo)SixxSixx3:18
13."Looks That Kill" (demo)SixxSixx5:06
14."Louder Than Hell" (demo)SixxSixx2:49
15."I Will Survive"SixxSixx, Mars3:19
16."Too Young to Fall in Love" (demo)SixxSixx3:03

A limited edition "Mini-LP" Compact Disc version of the album was released in the Japanese market, featuring the original cover that was previously available only on the vinyl LP release.

Personnel

Mötley Crüe

Additional musicians

Production

  • Tom Werman – producer
  • Geoff Workman – engineer
  • Doug Schwartz - assistant engineer
  • George Marino - mastering at Sterling Sound, New York
  • Bob Defrin - cover art

Charts

Certifications

Country Organization Year Sales
USA RIAA 1997 4x Platinum (+ 4,000,000)[13]
Canada CRIA 1989 3x Platinum (+ 300,000)[17]
Australia ARIA 1997 Gold (+ 35,000)[18]

References

  1. ↑ "THE BEST METAL ALBUMS FROM 40 SUBGENRES". Loudwire. Retrieved 2018-01-15.
  2. ↑ Jarriel, Tom (May 16, 1985). "The Devil Worshippers". 20/20.
  3. 1 2 Weber, Barry. "Mötley Crüe - Shout at the Devil review". AllMusic. Rovi Corporation. Retrieved December 7, 2014.
  4. 1 2 Popoff, Martin (November 1, 2005). The Collector's Guide to Heavy Metal: Volume 2: The Eighties. Burlington, Ontario, Canada: Collector's Guide Publishing. p. 232. ISBN 978-1-894959-31-5.
  5. 1 2 Considine, J. D. (February 16, 1984). "Shout At The Devil". Rolling Stone. New York. Retrieved August 22, 2013.
  6. 1 2 Considine, J. D. (2004). "Mötley Crüe". In Brackett, Nathan; Hoard, Christian. The New Rolling Stone Album Guide. New York City: Simon & Schuster. pp. 562–63. ISBN 978-0743201698. Archived from the original on December 27, 2010. Retrieved December 4, 2014.
  7. 1 2 Christgau, Robert (June 12, 1984). "Christgau's Consumer Guide: Turkey Shoot". The Village Voice. New York. Retrieved August 22, 2013.
  8. ↑ Grow, Kory (21 June 2017). "100 Greatest Metal Albums of All Time". Rolling Stone. Wenner Media LLC. Retrieved 21 June 2017.
  9. ↑ Begrand, Adrien (December 14, 2003). "Mötley Crüe: Shout at the Devil". PopMatters. Retrieved December 7, 2014.
  10. ↑ Satchel: "Hair Metal"; Classic Rock #138, November 2009, p59
  11. 1 2 "Shout at the Devil Billboard Albums". AllMusic. Rovi Corporation. Retrieved December 7, 2014.
  12. 1 2 3 4 "Shout at the Devil Billboard Singles". AllMusic. Rovi Corporation. Archived from the original on 25 November 2013. Retrieved December 7, 2014.
  13. 1 2 "RIAA Searchable Database: search for Motley Crue". Recording Industry Association of America. Archived from the original on September 24, 2015. Retrieved December 8, 2014.
  14. ↑ Ling, Dave (March 2000). "We are lüdicröus!". Classic Rock #12. p. 48.
  15. ↑ Lee, Tommy, Mick Mars, Vince Neil, Nikki Sixx and Neil Strauss. The Dirt: Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band, Regan Books, 2002. ISBN 0-06-039288-6
  16. ↑ "Top Albums/CDs - Volume 39, No. 26, March 03 1984". Library and Archives Canada. March 3, 1984. Retrieved December 8, 2014.
  17. ↑ "Gold Platinum Search for Motley Crue". Music Canada. Retrieved December 8, 2014.
  18. ↑ "ARIA Charts - Accreditations - 1997 Albums". Australian Recording Industry Association. Retrieved 2014-12-15.
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