Post by Erik Rupp on Dec 11, 2010 18:19:04 GMT -5
After the poor sales results with their previous "Pop-Rock" oriented album (Down for the Count - a decent album), Y&T toughened up a little bit for Contagious.
Contagious darned near broke Y&T big-time, and things were looking good for the band... until Geffen shifted their promotional money from Y&T to some new band (at that time) called Guns 'N' Roses. Ahhh, what could have been. But as it is, Contagious is an infectious album filled with great riffs and catchy melodies, and it stands as one of Y&T's better albums.
The album blends the classic Y&T style (think Earthshaker/Black Tiger/Mean Streak) with a little Bon Jovi and Van Halen, leading to some fairly impressive results. The title track is, as many have stated, one of the better songs in their entire catalog, and other standout tracks include "L.A. Rocks," "Armed And Dangerous" (which sounds like Mean Streak era Y&T), "Rhythm Or Not," and "Bodily Harm." The only things keeping this from being an absolute classic are the lack of originality in the songwriting ("The Kid Goes Crazy," was HEAVILY influenced by Van Halen's "Hot For Teacher, and a couple of the other songs that lean too far toward generic Hard Rock with Pop hooks), and a snare drum sound that is a little too overprocessed (not a lot, but a little). Otherwise, Contagious stands as a very good example of Melodic Metal from the late 80's.
Yeah, it sounds like a mid to late 80's Hard Rock album, but a good mid to late 80's Hard Rock album. While the band was still a little too slick (both in the production sounds and the songwriting), they still managed to crank out a solid, and very entertaining, album that holds up fairly well today.
4/5