Slave to the Grind

Slave to the Grind is the second studio album by American heavy metal band Skid Row, released on June 11, 1991, by Atlantic Records. The album displayed a harsher sound than its predecessor and lyrics that avoided hard rock cliches. Slave to the Grind is the first heavy metal album to chart at number one on the Billboard 200 in the Nielsen SoundScan era, selling 134,000 copies in its opening week. The album was certified 2× platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in 1998 for shipping two million copies in the United States. It produced five singles: "Monkey Business", "Slave to the Grind", "Wasted Time", "In a Darkened Room" and "Quicksand Jesus". Skid Row promoted the album opening for Guns N' Roses in 1991 and as a headliner the following year. Composition and recording Skid Row wrote most of Slave to the Grind in a New Jersey studio and demoed the tracks with Michael Wagener, who produced their previous album. Recording began in late 1990 and took place at two studios: New River in Fort Lauderdale, Florida and Scream in Studio City, California. Slave to the Grind marked the band's move toward a heavier sound, with the title track verging on speed metal, but the album also includes power ballads and a few lighter tracks. Some sources still classified the album as glam metal, despite its heavier sound. The lyrics were more complex, criticizing modern ways of life, authority, politics, drugs, and organized religion, among other topics. Wagener said the demoing and pre-production went well, and the title track was recorded and mixed in an hour, and was placed on the album without being remixed. During a February 2017 interview for the Backspin segment of Yahoo! Music, vocalist Sebastian Bach revealed that the version of the title track included in the finished album is actually the original demo the band recorded during pre-production with producer Michael Wagener. The band recorded a proper version during the album sessions, but were unable to match the intensity of the demo, and therefore opted to use the latter instead. Cover art Sebastian Bach's father, David Bierk, painted the cover art, which is actually a long mural, continued inside the album's booklet. Although it is set in the medieval era, it depicts people using modern technological gadgets. The cover was inspired by Caravaggio's Burial of St. Lucy from 1608 and shows John F. Kennedy in the crowd.