Shout at the Devil (40th Anniversary)

Shout at the Devil is Mötley Crüe's second album, from 1983. They had formed in Los Angeles in 1981 and came up very fast on the strength of how they looked and how they behaved on stage; this record put them in the American top twenty and went four times platinum, and it is remembered as one of the albums that decided what hard rock and heavy metal would be for the rest of the decade. 1983 was the height of the Satanic Panic. The original sleeve, a black inverted pentagram, caused exactly the trouble one would expect, and when the album was issued on CD the artwork was replaced with a photograph of the band. The anniversary CD restores it: a card sleeve reproducing the LP jacket at CD size, the first time the pentagram artwork has been used for a release anywhere in the world. The eleven songs are as they were. "Looks That Kill" and "Too Young to Fall in Love", whose videos are part of what MTV was in those years; the title track; the loose, fast "Knock 'Em Dead, Kid" and "Red Hot"; a violent reading of the Beatles' "Helter Skelter"; and the near-instrumental "God Bless the Children of the Beast". Three configurations reached the shops: this CD, a limited picture-disc LP and a super deluxe box set. BMG released them on 27 October 2023.