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Skid Row > B-Side Ourselves > Reviews
Skid Row - B-Side Ourselves

Fun little EP - 70%

OlympicSharpshooter, September 21st, 2005

While this EP is no Garage Days Re-Revisited, it’s a decent little set of cool covers that is a worthy addition to the golden age Skid Row catalogue. The sound is remarkably consistent (excepting the live cut of course) given that it’s apparently from a bunch of different singles from throughout their career; interestingly, the tracks don't stick out as being from a specific recording session as one would expect b-sides to share the same mixing as the album they were recorded to promote.

The best thing here is definitely "Delivering the Goods", which has less to do with Skid Row's interpretation than with the fact that it's "Delivering the Goods". That said, the performance is a solid, muscular one (albeit not as crisp as the inhumanly awesome Unleashed version), and it is an absolute pleasure to hear Rob and Baz belting out such a classic tune together. You'd think that getting out there and shrieking this sucker out would convince Priest that they should never, ever have dropped it from their sets but... that's another bitch. Baz is maybe a little too gruff for the song and its sometimes difficult to tell who's singing when they trade lines, but again, its an excellent cover.

The Rush cover is given a killer update by the boys, retaining the bluesy groove of the classic version but delivered with some of that Grind-ing heaviness and a big infusion of attitude by a man who can sing no other way. The Hendrix cover also has some smoking guitar-work (much cleaner than Hendrix's but retaining the powerful emotion), although it retains the mellow beauty of the original "Little Wings". What a lovely track that is, certainly amongst the best Jimi ever recorded and done very well by Skid Row here.

The remaining two tracks (err... the first two rather) are less successful, "Psycho Therapy" an example of the sort of song Skid Row had already massively improved upon with their superb "Riot Act" and highlighted only by a nifty gruff vocal from Bach in the latter half. The KISS song is awesome compared to any KISS song ever recorded (possible exception: "Black Diamond"), but merely good by most other scales.

So, overall what you get is a handful of good songs done good, and great proof of the band's stellar chops. This is absolutely a safe buy, and the copy I've got was obtained for the princely sum of $0.88. You don't need it, but you'll be happy to have it.