Revolution

Revolution is the fourth album, on which Slaughter kept its high notes and hooks while stepping into lower-slung guitar and psychedelic color. Released on CMC International in 1997, and as its retro, dreamlike sleeve suggests, it takes in an experimental feel beyond the usual hard-rock frame. Dana Strum and Mark Slaughter co-produced, and it is also the last studio album on which Tim Kelly played guitar. The opener “American Pie” is not the Don McLean cover but a band original, with a floating ’70s-glam feel reminiscent of T. Rex. A cover of Joe Walsh’s “Rocky Mountain Way,” the six-minute-plus “Heaven It Cries,” the trippy “Heat of the Moment,” the classic ballad “You're My Everything,” the short instrumental “Guck,” and the Eastern-tinged “Ad-Majorem-Dei-Gloriam” give the songs a wide swing. That range shows off the band’s dexterity and playfulness. A record that digested the late-1990s changes in its own way and pushed adventurousness to the front.