| Feel the Steel is the second album by hard rock/glam metal band Steel Panther, and their debut major label release. The tracks "Fat Girl", "Stripper Girl" and "Hell's On Fire" are re-recordings from the 2003 debut album Hole Patrol while "Death To All But Metal" is a re-recording from their 2004 contribution to the Metal Sludge compilation Hey That's What I Call Sludge! Vol. 1. Unlike the debut album and their Metal Sludge compilation tracks, Feel The Steel is composed entirely of songs, lacking any spoken word comedy skits present on earlier releases. The video for "Death To All But Metal" features comedian Sarah Silverman. The album debuted on #123 and peaked at #98 on the Billboard 200 chart and peaked at #1 on the Billboard Top Comedy Albums chart.
The album was released June 8, 2009 in the UK, October 6 in North America and December 11 in Australia.
Initial critical response to Feel the Steel was mixed. According to Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album has received a score of 57, based on four reviews. Negative reviews found the album unfunny by taking the jokes too far. Jason Lymangrover of Allmusic wrote that "Steel Panther's ability to create songs that sound like they came from 1987 is commendable. That's about as close to clever as it gets, though. As David St. Hubbins said, "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever," and Saenz's locker-room humor wears thin quickly." The NME wrote a review stating "only those with a retarded grasp of comedy would want to sit at home and listen to fifth-rate, crass glam-metal parodies with titles such as ‘Asian Hooker’ and ‘Stripper Girl’. An exercise in taking a joke way too far."
More favorable reviews came found the album more entertaining. Sophie Bruce of the BBC stated "Quite simply, Feel The Steel is an utter feelgood masterpiece." The Independant wrote that "it's essentially Spinal Tap/Bad News brought forward five years to the coked-up cock-rock era, complete with titles such as "Eatin' Ain't Cheatin'" and dangerous levels of dumb-ass homophobia, sexism, racism and sizeism. The songs are at times terrifyingly authentic. Is it new? Don't be stupid. Is it funny? Hell yeah." Steve Lampiris from TheLineOfBestFit.com gave a very positive review, stating that "If only every album released this year could start with “Fuck the Goo Goo Dolls/ They can suck my balls,” then 2009 would be, like, the greatest year ever." and "‘Panther’ and ‘Party All Day’ will be stuck in your head for a week, guaranteed." RevelationZ Magazine gave a positive review, while addressing the albums lack of vatiation in lyrical theme by stating "They can still be fun dealing with other topics than sex." However, in the end praised the bands musical writings/ability whilst claiming that it should not be thought of as a parody act. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply. |
