Electric

I seem to have forgotten how to objectively review an album. But I still know what I like. And I like this. Sounds just like everything I've ever heard by The Cult but I don't think that's a bad thing. Plus they're from Bradford.

Wild Flower, Bad Fun, and Love Removal Machine were standouts on this album. Makes me want to ride a motorcycle on a dirt road, full-throttle!

Kick-ass. 4/5

Power rock. Super fun. The other album is better and I dont think theres a reason to have both on here

Ju ju hey hey Voodoo lady Don't mean maybe Black Magic Chile IYKYK

2/5

Gorgeous, luscious vocal work and great driving guitars. A solid contribution, you can almost feel the urge to wave a silk scarf around.

Below average. It can make you move your head in places, and the sound is raw enough to keep a bit of life in it, but there is almost no real emotion here. Just sometimes cool music that never goes further than that. The band leans into a hard, stripped back rock approach. The riffs are straightforward and the energy is physical, yet the songs stay on the surface. Once the initial push of a track fades, there is not much left to hold onto. It feels more like a collection of attitudes than a set of songs with lasting weight. The production matches the raw direction. It is dry and upfront, with little polish, which suits the harder tone but also exposes how thin some of the material is. Everything is clear, just not especially memorable. Electric has a few moments that work in a simple, head nodding way. The rest passes without leaving much behind.

This was a decent rock album. It wasn’t very kind ordinary. It just kind of sounded the same after a while. I can understand why they wanted to change their sound but it wasn’t a big change. They became MTV darlings with the next album. I did enjoy this album though.

I want to like them, but I just cannot get into The Cult. Some nice guitar work but overall the songs just won't stick with me.

You can’t convince me this isn’t a really awful Van Halen cover band who tried their hand at a couple originals. And they’re all way less talented than VH…this singer goes for it and just doesn’t have the sauce man it’s rough.

I had never listened to The Cult before, but in my mind, they were a completely different kind of band. 'Love Removal Machine' is a pretty good song, but otherwise, this is totally mediocre hard rock. Apparently, some people like that kind of stuff, too

That shit was kinda hard!

Bien.

A big doofus of an album, basic 4 on the floor rock which would have made commercial sense in 87 but coming off of of Love it’s a disappointment. Love removal machine and some of the other tracks can be pretty satisfying if you are in the mood, a bit like a pot noodle, but you can’t have 10 of them. Loses points for an embarrassing cover of Born to Be Wild that somehow makes it more boring. Why you would chose to cover a song that opens 89.6% of all shit pub band sets in the UK? I like the cult, Billy Duffy is cool as fuck but I can’t ignore the weaknesses of this album. 2.8

This album is great. Actually the first Cult album I ever heard. The cover of Born To Be Wild is pointless but the rest of the album is a total gem.

Surprisingly decent 80s rock'n'roll

I struggled through Electric wondering how it made the list, then I read so many reviews praising Love that I had to listen to that for context--night and day. Electric felt like generic 80's hair rock from start to finish, whereas Love felt very genuine. Love wasn't life changing, but it was an easy 3 or 4. Electric was pretty terrible. Save yourself some trouble, skip this one and listen to Love instead.

I was really upset by Electric when it came out. Not disappointed in the ordinary sense, not merely somebody who preferred the previous album and objected to a change of direction. I felt as though a band I loved had been taken away from me and returned in a form designed for somebody else. Nearly forty years later I can hear much more clearly what Rick Rubin achieved, and I can hear why the resulting record was so successful. I can also hear exactly what I thought had been sacrificed. If anything, hearing it properly again has made the loss easier to articulate. The Cult had come from a musical world that had not yet quite decided what it was called. Southern Death Cult, then Death Cult and eventually The Cult belonged to that loose positive-punk/post-punk ecology which also contained people like Sex Gang Children: psychedelic, ritualistic, theatrical, danceable, occasionally ridiculous, and still sufficiently unstable that nobody had yet written the job description. Calling Southern Death Cult a goth band retrospectively misses something important. They were not formed as members of an established genre. They were among the bands from which people would later infer and codify genres. The distinction matters because early Cult music sounds like people discovering what their band might be rather than trying to satisfy an already understood category. That is why, if somebody knows The Cult principally through Electric, I want to send them backwards to Dreamtime. “Spiritwalker” is a particularly good corrective. It contains rock, post-punk, psychedelia, ritual, rhythm and theatricality, but none of those things quite explains it. It is strange and physical at the same time. Love then takes that world and makes it larger without making it less peculiar. “She Sells Sanctuary” is enormous, but its size comes from atmosphere as much as force. The guitars create space rather than simply occupying it. Things shimmer behind other things. Rhythm, repetition and texture make it dance music without anybody having to turn it into a conventional dance record. Love has weather. That music also belongs in my memory to a cultural moment which disappeared remarkably quickly. There was a period in the mid-eighties when alternative music had not finished separating itself into clearly labelled tribes. At the Garage in Nottingham you could have one floor containing this strange, still-uncodified post-punk world where music could be odd and danceable at the same time, while elsewhere in the same building Graeme Park was playing house. Different musical futures were living under one roof. It did not yet feel necessary to decide which one belonged to you before walking through the door. Scenes eventually learn how to describe themselves and, once they do, they also learn how to behave. Le Phonographique in Leeds provides one of my favourite tiny examples. The dance floor was full of mirrored pillars, and the goth two-step made perfect practical sense in a room where extravagant lateral movement risked collision with the architecture. Because the pillars were mirrored, the solitary goth effectively danced with their own reflection as a partner, which is almost too perfect. Eventually the dance survived after the architectural reason for it had disappeared. A contingent response to one particular room became part of the vocabulary of a scene. That seems to me an interesting variation on David Byrne’s argument about environment shaping music: environment can shape the response to music, and the response can survive long after it has been robbed of its context. Something similar happens when scenes harden into genres. Things that once emerged because particular people were trying particular things in particular rooms become portable markers. They become reproducible. By the time of Electric, The Cult had moved from a world in which genre could be inferred from what bands were doing into one where genre could tell a band what to do. Rick Rubin could record a band frighteningly well. I have no argument with that. The drums on Electric are superbly captured. The kit spreads across the stereo field and individual cymbals have different colours, different attacks and different decays rather than becoming one general metallic wash. Ian Astbury has a magnificent voice for this music, and Billy Duffy is plainly a great guitarist. The record has weight without becoming sludge, clarity without sounding small, and physical presence almost everywhere. That is part of what makes my response complicated. Rubin is not some philistine vandal wandering into the studio and destroying something he does not understand. McCartney 3,2,1 shows another side of him beautifully: reverend, music geek and engineer simultaneously, completely at home behind a mixing desk, knowing which element to isolate and which question to ask. His reputation as a reducer can obscure how much he needs to understand before he reduces anything. He strips things back because he wants to know which elements are carrying the meaning. My problem with Electric is that his answer to “what is essential about The Cult?” is not mine. “Wild Flower” establishes the change almost immediately. Big riff, dry drums, Astbury in full swagger, everything pushed towards the front of the picture. “Lil’ Devil” takes it further until the lyrics are virtually R-A-W-K written across the back of a sleeveless denim jacket. The old atmosphere has not simply been cleared; ambiguity itself seems to have been treated as clutter. By “Electric Ocean” the new design brief is so comprehensible that five tracks into the album I realised I had heard virtually nothing remotely surprising. The Cult used to make me wonder what the hell they were doing. Now I knew. They lost the world and embraced the genre. That does not mean I object to genre markers. Every band uses them. The early Cult used plenty. The difference is that they once took those markers and made The Cult out of them. On Electric, increasingly, The Cult become the markers: riff, beat, leather, sex, devil, motorcycle, swagger. It is almost ISO-approved hard rock. Everything meets specification. This is also why the change reminds me of Generation X becoming Billy Idol. I liked Generation X. I did not like what Idol became. The problem was not that he became successful or even that the music became simpler. Broad-brush simplicity can start to feel like infantilism when something previously messy and contingent is redrawn in thicker lines: the gestures larger, the hooks broader, the image instantly readable from the other side of the room. Something that once required engagement has been reformatted so that nobody can possibly misunderstand what they are being sold. Electric gives me the same feeling. The Cult did not suddenly forget how to play. They became much easier to decode, and I experienced that increased legibility as loss. There are enough exceptions to stop the argument becoming lazy. “Bad Fun” is genuinely fun. Its quicker tempo and stop-time arrangements make the stripped-down language more playful, and for once the guitar is not merely supplying another slab of power chords and sustain. It proves that my objection is not to directness or simplicity in themselves. A small vocabulary can still produce character if the band does something interesting with it. Then “Love Removal Machine” arrives and makes the whole experience unexpectedly sad. It is more expansive than anything else on the record. The structure moves. The arrangement opens out. There is still something a little strange at the edges, and you can hear enough of Love in its architecture to realise that the transition did not necessarily require everything else to be thrown away. Here, briefly, is the record The Cult might have made: Rubin’s extraordinary ability to make a band sound immediate and physical applied to the strange Cult rather than replacing the strange Cult. I did not want another Love. Bands have to move. What saddens me is hearing evidence that there was another route available. They could have become harder without becoming flatter. They could have gained Rubin’s punch without losing all that atmosphere and uncertainty. “Love Removal Machine” demonstrates that possibility for a few minutes and then disappears. Its title is almost unbearably apt. “Love Removal Machine” is the song where you can still hear Love being removed. This is why I cannot accept the comforting description of Rubin merely “streamlining” them. Streamlining is what happens when drag is removed while the essential object remains. Here, I think something of the object itself disappeared. The remarkable thing is that the loss paid off. The new Cult made immediate sense to people for whom the previous band may have required too much decoding. They became aggressively alt-mainstream, comprehensible to a rock audience whose cultural ancestry ran through Led Zeppelin, AC/DC and Steppenwolf rather than through the strange 1977–84 post-punk detour which had permanently altered my own expectations. When Electric finished, autoplay went straight into Led Zeppelin’s “Good Times Bad Times”, and I almost laughed. Of course it did. The machine understood the reassignment perfectly. If I am being deliberately cruel, Electric is The Cult repackaged for people who did not get The Cult. Crueller still, by 1987 they had become the band for people who had somehow got through 1977–84 without being permanently altered by it. Those are not objective statements, nor are they intended to be. They describe how the cultural relocation felt from where I was standing. “Born to Be Wild” provides an oddly perfect ending to the argument. The album has spent so long moving towards that hard-rock archetype that the cover feels inevitable. Unfortunately, Rubin’s reductive instinct runs into diminishing returns when applied to a song which was already elemental. The Steppenwolf original contains more grime, psychedelia and oddness than the cultural shorthand of “Born to Be Wild” tends to remember. The Cult strip some of that away too until what remains approaches the memory of the song: bike, riff, attitude. Once again the execution is excellent. Once again there is less world. And that is ultimately why this remains a three-star record for me rather than something harsher. I can hear the five-star hard-rock album somebody else hears. Astbury sounds magnificent. Duffy is formidable. The drums alone reward close listening. Rubin knows exactly how to make this music hit. “Bad Fun” has wit, and “Love Removal Machine” is excellent. If what somebody wants is a really good hard-rock record, I can understand them loving Electric. But my past knows what was sacrificed to make it. I remember “Spiritwalker”. I remember Dreamtime. I remember Love. I remember “She Sells Sanctuary”. I remember a band that sounded as if it occupied its own peculiar space inside a culture which itself had not yet decided precisely what it was. I remember music that could be strange and danceable before the scenes hardened into uniforms, dance steps and genre descriptions. I remember The Cult sounding like a place I could enter rather than a category I could identify. Electric could almost be a five-star album. I deduct two stars for taking The Cult and flattening them. If all somebody knows is the hard-rock Cult, I want them to go backwards. Listen to Love. Better still, listen to Dreamtime. Hear the band before the world disappeared. Hear what we lost.

First time listening to this album. I do quite like The Cult so I like this album too even if it may be a bit cringe to others. Whatever, even the cover of Born To Be Wild rocks 3/5

Late 80s blues rock.

what an absolute waste of time. im pissed off that i even listened to this. the same copy and paste hard rock album. this only here cuz rick rubin had his wrinkly pasty fingers on it. you know its bad when rick rubin is only notable thing about your album

The same song over and over again and it isn't a good one

Weird this. Considering my tastes I should probably like it a bit more than I do. Also surprised it wasn't Love that made the list. Anyway. Solid if unspectacular.

Steven Tyler lookalike contest results in Billy Idol soundalike contest. This is actually pretty good! I'm not sure what the Cult aspect of this is. Are they like the Blue Oyster cult, in that they gravitate towards smoking cloves while driving south until the gas runs out and you walk the rest of the way into either enlightenment or permanent darkness? Or are we in a Jim Jones/Heaven's Gate scenario? I have on my finest velour sweatsuit and a vial full of cyanide. Are we boarding this Rocketship or what?? What do you mean I shouldn't have added the crushed velvet top hat with matching waistcoat? You think the Ethereal Emperor won't appreciate STYLE? Look everybody, Comrade 6 thinks the Ethereal one will disapprove of my resplendent headgear aboard the exalted FreeShip. Have you even read the 64 edicts? You're an idiot. Blast me away oh sweet vial, may I be awakened on the shores of Zelbard with a space maitai and some alien honies fanning me with foreign foliage. 3.5 HIGHLIGHTS: Beep Beep Blorp Bleeeeep

Every 40 year old dad garage band sounds like this.

Good solid hard rock. Not better than some which came before it or after but good example. No stand out songs, just hard competence

Панки, которые просто перепели настоящих монстров типа ac/dc , motorhead , Led Zeppelin. Я так понял из заслуга в том , что в свое время они смогли обратить внимание на забываемый настоящий hard. Небольшая заслуга для истории. Вторичный альбом, но коммерческим успешный, как сборник ремиксов великих.

This was fine lol. I'm sure it was important to the genre and continues to be but meh

It’s surprising how quickly I got bored with this album. Once I heard one or two songs, I basically heard them all. All in all not awful, just all too similar.

Solid rock album. Kinda enjoyed. Listen again.

80s ass slop

Meh

bueno

First listen

Bien. Un álbum de rock duro clásico. Sin ser heavy ni nada loco. No brilla por innovar. Me he guardado Love machine removal.

Yeah. I think I am solidly in the mainstream here. This had moments. And I can get into “80’s rock,” well executed, which this generally was, like a really good cover band/ bar band. But it seems it’s the earlier albums, not on the list, that are more interesting. And this certainly didn’t capture me enough for me to go seek them out. But I did enjoy more than 50% for what it was. 3 Boolean: 🤷‍♀️- null

hell yeah!

I LOVE Southern Death Cult, Death Cult, and the first two Cult albums, but this one has never been for me. Three stars because I'm blinded by my love for what came before this.

Ok album cover, on the verge of being bad. This album is pretty generic, it blends into exactly what I imagine when I think of rock. While some may think of this as a good thing, for me, it is boring. This clearly has some merit to it, but personally I would never listen to this again. Not much else to say. Given a 2 and not a 1 because its not bad at all, just not for me. It did feel a little short. Best Song: Love Removal Machine. Worst Song: Memphis Hip Shake.

What makes this album unique? The hard guitar riffs are present on every song, but The Cult does not experiment with changing any of the production. All of the song structures are repetitive and common. Sure, the vocals go well with the backing, but the lead singer sings the same notes over and over again, making replay ability low. The whole sound is stolen from AC/DC, so I can't grant even the littlest bit of creativity. Each song is tolerable, but no song stands out. This album suffers from adequacy.

Hard to take seriously but still fun for what it is. Less goth than Love and no big hit like She Sells Sanctuary but can't help by find something here that I like.

Fun

The Cult are kinda shite. The singer is really the only thing they have going for them. They have better albums than this one and those are also not that great. I get it tho, but you'd be better off listening to Danzing really if you like the idea of gothic hard rock/ heavy metal and also I have to say that their """"post-punk"""" albums aren't really post-punk for my taste (nor are they that good).

mja it's fine

This gave me some strong Greta Van Fleet vibes, though I guess it should be the other way around. The Cult don't seem to want to completely channel Led Zeppelin though, as they are also heavily influenced by the mid-to-late 80's metal sound. There is some T-Rex and Mott the Hoople mixed in here as well. I am admittedly not a fan of their cover of "Born to Be Wild," as I didn't think they added anything to the source material. Quite a few songs towards the middle of this album have the word "Electric" in them so it's very appropriate that the album also be called "Electric." This was a pretty good album and probably is the very definition of a "3," as I don't know if what is being done here is revolutionary. I can hear the effect of Rick Rubin on the band, as he is excellent at producing a band's ability to stick to their sound, while making the band's sound more palatable to the masses. My favorite tracks: Wildflower Lil' Devil Aphrodisiac Jacket Love Removal Machine Outlaw

This one will be in my "just ok" list. Not my favorite genre.

Not for me this, I feel thicker having listened to it

Having this album here is absolutely perplexing. The Cult's previous album is so much better and recognizable, while this one is quite boring. It feels like an aggregated version of every 80s hard rock band you can imagine, and I hate this. Rick Rubin is to blame as he was hired to rethink the band's sound and make it more pop. He did a good job with this, but that's how the band lost something and turned into just another rock band. I'm giving it a two because I like Ian Astbury's voice, but it's an otherwise listenable bad album.

Solid hair metal/thrash rock band. Cover some classics and include originals. It’s about what I’d expect from this genre, not what I’d seek out to listen to, but it has its place.

Classic 80s album

3/5. Very standard hard-rock fare, an album that’s fun enough while listening but that I probably won’t think of too often outside of this initial listen. Rick Ruben’s production does a solid job for this record as well, it all sounds very clear and crisp.

Listened before?: nope Wild Flower - 3/5 Peace Dog - 3/5 Lil' Devil - 3/5 Aphrodisiac Jacket - 4/5 Electric Ocean - 2/5 Bad Fun - 4/5 King Contrary Man - 1/5 Love Removal Machine - 4/5 Born to Be Wild - 2/5 Outlaw - 2/5 Memphis Hip Shake - 3/5 Average score: 2.8/5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️ instrumentally, there's all the makings for a decent rock band. however, i find it really difficult to get behind this vocalist 100% of the time. there were a few tracks that were fairly enjoyable, but often times that weird gargly yelling he does is harsh on the ears that being said, while i didn't enjoy this album as much as i had hoped, i didn't hate it enough to score it too harshly. i'd give this 2.5 stars if i could, but 3 stars will have to do

Average rock

This wasn't inspirational for other albums, this was just an amalgamation of other albums.

Big. Dumb. Rock. It's perfect for what it is. As with some of the other commenters, I think "Love" is the better album from these guys. But if you're just looking for fun, guitars, and "baby-baby-baby!" this is not a bad place to hang out for 39 minutes.

I was a big fan of the Cult before grunge killed rock in 1992. They weren't big in Australia but I had a Brit mate put me on to them. Every one of their first 5 albums had at least one great single, usually 2-3 other tracks might have got airplay on alternative radio stations. I never had this album (only had the follow up album Sonic Temple where "Fire Woman" definitely got airplay), but from this album I do remember hearing "Wild Flower", "Lil' Devil" and "Love Removal Machine". Decent band in it's era and probably better than the glam rock LA scene that was pervasive at the time from the USA. This album is pretty good if you want to look at late 80s rock - it's better than most bands in the cockrock LA scene at the time which is really what they were competing with. Would never be in my 1001 list though. As an album it falls flat as it's all too samey, it kind of grates and bores me but the 10th track and it ends poorly. Would be tempted to score 2 just on that feeling but 3 or 4 good songs and a touch of nostalgia bumps it up and I may as well round it up to 3. But it's no 1001 list album unless you missed it and was a fan of this type of rock at the time, or were curious about what grandpa listened to in the late 80s. Was about to revise my criticism of ending poorly because something piqued my interest right at the end. But it was just YT autoplay starting the intro to Overdose by ACDC. So what I said stands.

The Cult managed to find a pretty awesome guitar tone to go along with Ian Astbury’s vocals converting their glam goth earlier work into a pretty buzzy hard rock machine with more than a little nod to AC/DC while preserving those core influences. Rick Rubin’s production increased the sonic level quite a bit from the thoroughly enjoyable prior album, Love, creating some exceptional and catchy singles. This album has some A-List songs in Love Removal Machine and L’il Devil. The B-List is Wild Flowers, Aphrodisiac Jacket, Peace Dog and Memphis Hip Shake. The cover of Born To Be Wild is inexplicable and adds nothing. Its inclusion is a head scratcher. Overall enjoyable but honestly does not belong anywhere near this list. However, it’s also not Steely Dan which should be avoided at all costs. 3/5

Banger !

Nooooooooooo

Pretty okay

Gillar Love Removal Machine mycket! Men känns som att The Cult avlyssnas bäst via greatest hits.

Hade något, men få höjdpunkter.

Mid.

Det här lät märkligt mycket som Mustasch.

Too dad rock for me

Listenable but nothing special.

2.5, the songs just kinda all sound the same

Just generic rock really. I don’t know why you’d put this album on here instead of something which is actually good

Again, this just isn’t an album I HAD to listen to

Pretty standard 80’s hard rock. I didn’t notice anything remarkable. Born to be Wild didn’t need to be rebooted.

Under no circumstances did I need to hear this before I die, disagree. This is the beigest 80s hard rock you could have given me. It could have been made by anyone ever (particularly anyone with excruciating lyrics) and I felt my soul leave me as the cover of Born to Be Wild began to play…

Nope.

Lil' Devil decent, not sure about the rest (2.5)

All the songs are almost good but not

Standouts Wild Flower

I had to do a double take when I saw this album came out in 1987. Had I not known better, I would have placed this album in the latter years of glam rock. It really sounds a bit like something one would have heard after Detroit Rock City on the radio, tapped their foot to, and then promptly forgotten after the radio host moved to commercials. Electric, unfortunately, takes a detour through post punk to arrive at the sound of late 70s glam rock in a most unsatisfying way. I have seen some comparisons to Led Zeppelin and their ilk but it strikes me as well downstream of any of those influences. With that said, I did notice my head bobbing to "King Contrary Man" and "Outlaw" but did not feel anything for the big single tracks.

TL;DR: Fun and energetic but a little silly and ultimately inessential BEFORE: This doesn't have any of the three Cult songs I know but it does have a cover of Born To Be Wild. Expectations are muted. AFTER: OK I do actually know Wild Flower. I like Ian Astbury's voice - it reminds me a little bit of Jeffrey Lee Pierce. The guitar solos are uniformly fantastic - just the right balance of melodic and atonal / frenetic stuff and the clear production allows the music to shine. HIGHLIGHTS: Wildflower is catchy and energetic with a great solo although it reminds me of about 50 other classic rock songs. Aphrodisiac Jacket stand out for being a less meat-and-potatoes, with an effective descending guitar riff and off-kilter chorus. Electric Ocean reminds me of Aussie pub rock (in a good way) with an AC/DC groove and backing vocals reminiscent of Midnight Oil. Terrible lyrics aside, Love Removal Machine is a great song with some of the same energy as She Sells Sanctuary. Memphis Hip Shake is compellingly weird. LOWLIGHTS: The lyrics are a string of cliches. The music is engaging but much of it is very derivative. The cover of Born To Be Wild, with its weird background whispers and mangled chorus, is completely unwarranted. VERDICT: It's not revolutionary but it's plenty of fun. Probably doesn't belong on this list. 3 stars.

OK. Not a big fan, but they have AC/DC down without the Brian Johnson screech (Bon Scott whole different animal, RIP). Good for lifting weights and getting out some anger issues. “Wild Flower” would make a good running song. I have Sonic Temple” which is similar in texture, but it’s not on any rotation except when a song from that album randomly plays in shuffle mode. “Electric Ocean” has a decent beat. Rick Ruben produced, but that brings their best assets to the front without hiding the limitations: pedestrian guitar licks and solos, average vocals, very basic rhythm section. Hard to believe this rates being in anyone’s top 1001 albums. I was reading the user reviews in AllMusic, and most call it a great rock and roll album. I prefer Highway to Hell or Deep Purple in Japan any day. I can’t get into the lyrics either, mostly macho misogyny and bravado. In 1987, I was in the Marines, and even with that mindset, I didn’t find this very interesting, even if I mindlessly enjoyed it when someone or the radio played it. I was more interested in The Replacements and Husker Du. Oh my god, “Born to be Wild” just came on. This song really shows their weakness, especially the singer, who can’t even imitate John Kay much less put a spin on it, and the guitarist just phones it in. Why did Rubin let them put this on the album. I’ve heard bar bands do this much better. I just can’t. It gets worse with “Outlaw” where they can’t even keep the AC/DC pace. Guitar wise, the last song “Memphis Hip Shake” is the most interesting, but mainly because Duffy actually overdubs some more guitar work, but the vocals and lyrics are pointless. That’s over. Next please.

Why the heck this is chosen on this list and not Love, which is an easy 5 stars, I don't know? Anyway, after a string of albums with no overdrive, I think the Cult are getting a bonus point for only being about overdrive. Stupid as it is, especially compared to Love (I listened to the whole thing after this and there's nothing to compare to Black Angel, the album closer), sometimes you just want some rock.

Hadn’t heard of them before but found this really fun. Nothing groundbreaking and not sure how fully remembereable this will be, but adding it to the library anyway and enough for a weak 4 for me.

I found this to be pretty disappointing. I love she sells sanctuary but this just sounded so generic, other than the love removal one. Reading about it it seems that they went to rick rubin who changed their sound trying to mimic acdc. Well that makes sense with what I'm hearing. But it feels like a bunch of songs that were written with a different sound in mind. The cleaner guitars don't feel like they give the right grooves with these riffs. I'm quite intrigued to hear the abandoned manor session where they used the old sound on the same songs. Might still be a bit dull, but I am intrigued. I just put she sells sanctuary on. It makes this album feel like total crap. For disappointment alone it's a 2 from me.

Finally, some good music. I really like the Cult and their straddling of the lines between Alternative and Hard Rock has always been interesting to me. Why they chose Electric, over either of the two albums surrounding it god knows, but at least it gives a reason to visit this one. There's some real barnstormers and live staples of them here, the Born to be Wild cover I found to be surprisingly decent as well. The Cult is just a bad that seems to be able to pull off everything they try pretty well. Five stars, I haven't had a really good album in over two weeks.

I think highschool me wouldve loved this album. Sadly, I'm about 20 years older today.

Perfectly fine arena/pop metal album. Has a nice energy and does a good job of hitting catchy grooves. Very derivative, but good for what it is. Top tracks: Wild Flower, Peace Dog, King Contrary Man

It's not bad, but this is just cliche 80s rock. It doesn't do anything to differentiate itself from the music that has survived the test of time from this era. The solos are pretty solid, but still, nothing special. The cover also is not unique, so no idea why that's on the album. At first, I thought it was the original and had to double check, because it didn't seem right. And, honestly, reading the Wikipedia blurb, sounds like they were sellouts to try and continue to chase popularity. How very un-rock and roll of them. Favorite Song(s): Lil' Devil

Good fun

As hair metal goes, this was pretty enjoyable. Lost interest after a couple tracks though.

A fun and easy listen, can hear some AC/DC influence in there somewhere. Not as artsy as I would expect from the cult, but I really enjoyed this album

Electrowizard

De culto jaja. Na muy bueno, rock. La verdad que cumplió. Justo en la linea entre rock fuerte y rock molesto.

not bad

Eh, these guys were just kind of also-rans in the hair metal scene at the time as far as I know. I don't think they are essential listening at all. Normally, I like this genre of hard rock, but these guys just can't pull it off. It's competent enough musically, but it lacks the same sort of cool feel that makes AC/DC a great band. The lyrics are just straight shit("Peace Dog" sounds like incoherent babble that tries to sound meaningful), often even more so than other hard rock of the period(which is saying something). Riffs are very generic, though OK to listen to. However, I have one glaring question: Why is this album on the list? It's not anywhere close to the best example of the period's hard rock sound, and it utterly lacks merit in any other capacity. This album has the highest number of appearances of the word "generic" of any on this site, and it's pretty obvious why. This album is ranked #17 of 25 albums for 1987. Other 1987 albums rated by me: Bad(1/25)-4 Appetite for Destruction(2/25)-5 Document(4/25)-4 Sign o' The Times(5/25)-4 Strangeways, Here We Come(6/25)-4 Music for the Masses(7/25)-4 Trio(9/25)-3 Darklands(10/25)-4 You're Living All Over Me(13/25)-4 The New Tango(19/25)-2 Warehouse: Songs and Stories(21/25)-4 Opus Dei(24/25)-4 Scum(25/25)-5

I love this Album. But it makes no sense to have this album on the list instead of Love (they both should be actually)

Since time immemorial (about 50 years ago), the cross-section between Aerosmith, AC/DC and Led Zeppelin has provided immeasurably fertile ground for simple hard blues-infused rock all about how much a singer wants to fuck women. And here is yet another fruit of that ground, lifted somewhat by Ian Astbury’s vocals, but ultimately still the same 40 minutes of music, spread across 13 very similar tracks, as you’d expect from this. For me though, I’m not 15 years old trying to get myself geed up for a boy/girl party where I want to seem cool and I’m not a 45 year old trying to ride a Harley and pretend I could pick up women to get through a midlife crisis, so I’m quite happy to call it a one and done listen.

Love the rock

Sounds like the cash grab it is. Just empty, soulless, and reeking of late ‘80s hair metal. There is nothing memorable, artistic or creative here. Rick Rubin brings his unerring production sense to this, adding some undeniable hookiness to the pounding drums and guitar. That alone earns the additional star.

The Cult was the collective noun for Len Houmous’ first 14 wives. 4.5 3/11 Lil Devil

Nice rock

Oh boy. Hair "metal". Some competent guitar work here, but overwhelmed by the underwhelming package of shit its wrapped in.