Stephen
Sandra Dee arrived late to the scene, 1989, where glam has reaching its maturity and the scene was over-populated by countless bands to fight for a slot in local radios or MTV. 'Visions of Pain' is a collection of old recordings from 89-92 where in this disc, you can find the first half is from their 89-90 era with singer Chris Kamykowski and the second one is from the 1991-1992 era with Lance Thomason behind the mic. Musically, they're playing gritty hard rock with a notable influence of dark and furious heavy metal and a decent amount of sleaze, and on the later days, they began to incorporate alternative/grunge to couple of songs.
"Pretty Child" and "Cassandra" shown Chris' sensational capability of handling the vocal part, some good guitar works, but overall, these two songs aren't very convincing start for them as I started to worry that their songwriting skill wasn't good enough. My hesitancy started to manifest as the chaotic "Take You Higher" and "Heading Home" can't lift the album high, though the vocal and guitar part are still nicely done. "Peace, Pot, and Politics" is the only acceptable song in the first half.
Onto the second half, "Going Down" and "Inside Yourself" are much better and make up a good hard rock tunes, but really don't understand how the band cited "Visions of Pain" as their most fave track as this is actually the worst song in this album. "Cold" is a grungy filler and a disaster, but luckily "Nothing" puts them back on track and another personal favorite. The production is also fair and understandable for vintage recordings as with most Eonian releases. It's just sad to see, with big talents on their shoulder, Sandra Dee's debut was swarmed with too many fillers. Grab this if you're a collector of obscure glam, otherwise, many better releases are available on Eonian's site.