By Stephen Kasenda
EVERY MOTHER’S NIGHTMARE “Wake Up Screaming” (1993)
"Wake Up Screaming" was the second release by Every Mother's Nightmare The record has an intriguing cover portraying a baby surrounded by poisonous snakes – looks more like a thrash album than a glam one. Almost everybody played grunge in 1993, but EMN didn't want to tune down their guitar and still insisted on throwing some swaggering sleaze riffs with raspy screams - unsticking themselves from the trend.
"House of Pain" and "Closet Down The Hall" are entertaining openers, each with a gloomy nuance and thumping beat. EMN wrote some good power ballads here such as "I Needed You", "Already Gone", "I Hate Myself", and the magnificent "If I Had My Way". Surprisingly, there are a lot of addictive headcrusher tracks here as well from "Tobacco Road" and "Cryin' Shame" to midtempo commercial rocker, "Slip and Fall".
Unfortunately, the sound production is awfully horrible - you have to crank up to an extremely loud volume to enjoy, yet the drums still sound distant and buried. But overall, I will say this is a very good album judging by the year of its release: a good vocal, a great guitar, a jawdropping album!
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