LBUMS
Skid Row blew through town recently on one of those 80s-revival tours, headlining over Winger and Warrant, and I felt, like most people do in these circumstances, that the Skids deserve better. Sure, in their early days they scored big, lighter-waving, I-justbought-my-first-mansion-in-cash glammetal hits, but by their double-platinum ferocious second album, 1991’s Slave To The Grind, they had settled into a piledriving arena-thrash sound that was miles away from the hair-care bunch. Losing their Adonis frontman Sebastian Bach somewhere in the 90s was certainly a blow to their momentum, as was a spotty discography and a revolving door of singers. You can blame grunge too, if you want. But there is an alternative timeline out there where nobody blew it, where Skid Row soared through fallow times with thunder and grace, and that timeline would’ve also ended up with Maybe in that one Bach would still be doing the throat-shedding screams, but winner and former H.e.a.t man Erik Grönwall does such a phenomenal job filling those very large shoes that you hardly notice. He may not look the part, but he sure as fuck sounds like a six-foot, leatherlunged God Of Rock. That’s the good news.
