Stephen
"Wake Up Screaming" was the second release of Every Mother's Nightmare with an intriguing cover portraying a baby surrounded by poisonous snakes which looked more of 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 to throw some swaggering sleaze riffs with raspy scream, unsticking themselves from the trend.
"House of Pain" and "Closet Down The Hall" were an entertaining opener 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 lotta 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 an extreme loud volume to enjoy and still the drums sound kinda felt 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 jawdropper album!