W.A.S.P. — The Headless Children (review)

W.A.S.P. — The Headless Children album cover Album · 1989 · Heavy Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
4/5 ·
Stephen
"The Headless Children" is the fourth album by American heavy metal act, W.A.S.P which was released in 1989, and this is their best selling record to date as well as the last album to feature guitarist Chris Holmes before he rejoined the camp again in 1997. Musically, W.A.S.P is another example of how they stayed true to the roots and consistently brought the original slab of heavy metal to the masses while many had gone in a different direction playing pop-sliced commercial metal.

While Blackie Lawless is no doubt a very talented songwriter and I also admire his raunchy spine-chilling voice, it's also the prominent play of Chris Holmes that contributed a lot to this album, and I also won't ignore the important presence of Frankie Banali's tight drumming. Honestly, the first four tracks are just okay to my ears, including The Who's cover, "The Real Me", which is quite decent, but when "Mean Man" strikes like thunder, I was amazed with the blistering riffs and the brilliant solos. This is clearly their best offering beside the other two superb tracks, "Maneater" and "Rebel In The F.D.G". The commercial ballad of "Forever Free" is also quite nice and I like how they speed up the tempo in the midst of the song.

I kinda agree with the consensus of W.A.S.P's hardcore fans that this is one hell of an album, but to merely give this a perfect five stars is a bit too much for me since this album suffered with quite amount of average tracks and many songs are in the repetitive arrangement structure, making some of them sounded the same. Thanks to the sound enhancement and bonus tracks of "Locomotive Breath", "War Cry", and the live version of "L.O.V.E Machine" that was included in the reissue version, I'm confident to give this a four stars.
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