The album opens with the near speed-metal title track. "Stay Hungry" is a great, fast-paced rocker. Drummer A.J. Pero keeps a solid beat, and Dee sounds great here. The twin leads during the solo are also a nice touch, as Jay Jay French and Eddie Ojeda trade guitar licks. A metal classic, easily the best song on the album. The band is known by the general public for "We're Not Gonna Take It". The Slade-like party anthem ages decently, but after to 10,000th listen, I don't know how much more I can take of it (pun intended). You've heard it before likely, so it is what it is, a decent 80's metal-lite tune.
"Burn In Hell" shows the band's earlier edge, before they adopted a poppier sound with cartoon aesthetics. The heaviest song on the album, it is the most traditional metal song on the album. A heavy riff dominates the song, with Dee singing some occult and creepy lyrics that would later get the band in trouble with Tipper Gore's PRMC. Dee's speech at the PRMC meetings is the stuff of metal legend, but the song remains a decent tune, fairly complex musically with some great lyrics. "Horror-Teria" is divided into two parts, "Captain Howdy" and "Street Justice". "Captain Howdy" capitalizes on the boom in horror movies during the early 1980s, and seems to tell the tale of a psycho killer named Captain Howdy. The main riff is heavy and the drumming from Pero is excellent, but it is a fairly lame song, despite some high nostalgia points. "Street Justice" seems to continue to story of Captain Howdy, telling of his capture, getting off on a technicality, and then being brought to justice by an angry mob. The most punk-like song on the album, fairly basic and bare-bones really, with Dee's vocals low in the mix and Mark Mendoza's bass barely audible. Not a bad tune, but the production is a little on the weak side.
Side 2 opens with the 80's classic "I Wanna Rock". Another Slade-influenced tune, the song takes a distinctive American turn compared to Slade. A great party anthem, but nothing complex musically and lyrically speaking. Then again, people don't usually listen to Twisted Sister for philosophical insights, and that's fine. A very good song, with some killer drumming (I can't explain how solid Pero's drumming is, fantastic). "The Price" is an attempt at a power ballad (every 80's album had one).Not the band's strong suit, but not a horrible song. The problem is that Dee's voice is much better suited to in-your-face rock anthems as opposed to slower songs. A decent song.
"Don't Let Me Down" is another almost speed-metal song. Very fast and raw-sounding, it reminds me of earlier albums such as the underrated "Under The Blade" from 1982. A great song, it shows the band before they became a little too commercial-sounding for many rock fans. An interesting note about the song is the twin solos (also on Burn In Hell), with Jay Jay and Eddie trading off solos (the speakers that you will hear each guitarist's solos are even listed in the linear notes). "The Beast" is a pretty heavy song, seemingly about another monster or killer named the beast. Dee sounds devilish on the track, I actually like his voice a lot on these heavier songs, very gritty and dark. A good song, one of the heavier songs recorded by the band. S.M.F. is a love letter to heavy metal and its place on the outskirts of society. A great anthem, it basically gives the finger to society's judgement of metal, in a musically statement. A great closer.
"Stay Hungry" is a great album. If you look beyond "We're Not Gonna Take It", you can find a lot to like here. Twisted Sister has always been a band of scrappy misfits, a true underdog of a band. They may not play like Rush, sing like Judas Priest, or solo like Van Halen, but they have a lot of spunk and spirit, and that's what rock and roll should really be about.
Rating-9/10
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