Band:	W.A.S.P.
Album:	The Sting
Style:	Heavy metal
Release date:	2000
A review by:	ScreamingSteelUS

01. Helldorado
02. Electric Circus
03. Chainsaw Charlie
04. Wild Child
05. L.O.V.E. Machine
06. Animal (Fuck Like A Beast)
07. Sleeping In The Fire
08. Damnation Angels
09. Dirty Balls
10. The Real Me
11. I Wanna Be Somebody
12. Blind In Texas

I don't often buy live albums. The only reason I own The Sting is because it came in a two-fer with Helldorado. Why did I buy Helldorado? I was naïve in those days, unaware that W.A.S.P. could release such a terrible album. The Sting, perhaps even more so than Helldorado, showcases the band at its worst.

To some extent, my distaste for this recording stems from the set list. This 12-song set features three tracks from Helldorado, an album which I despise, while The Crimson Idol and The Headless Children are hardly represented at all. I recognize that a lot of W.A.S.P. fans equally despise Still Not Black Enough and Kill, Fuck, Die, and that looking for a grim, serious, emotional set list hot on the heels of Helldorado's release would be wishful thinking at best. I also recognize that I am probably in the minority when I say that "classics" like "Blind In Texas" and "Wild Child" lack any solid pull with me, and I'd gladly do without "Animal" if it meant more along the lines of "Breathe" or "Killahead." What truly sinks The Sting, however, is the unforgivably shoddy performance.

Blackie clearly lacks the confidence to affect the self-aggrandizing, devil-may-care swagger that hair metal demands even more than technical acumen; his raw, shaking voice cracks and fails him on occasion, disappearing into the sluggish fuzz. The glam songs feel even less convincing live than on the albums. In the middle of "Helldorado," it even sounds as though Blackie is choking. At any given moment, at least one of the guitarists is struggling to remember how to play the song, and sometimes both; the members all seem to be on different wavelengths throughout the majority of the show. Ironically, "Damnation Angels," one of the Helldorado tracks, features possibly the best performance this album has to offer.

"Inside The Electric Circus," of all songs, transitions roughly into possibly the worst version of "Chainsaw Charlie (Murders In The New Morgue)" I've ever heard. Truncated by three minutes, lacking the musical wisdom of Bob Kulick and Frankie Banali, and played with a complete lack of enthusiasm, "Chainsaw Charlie" starts off terribly and only gets worse, with stray notes flying everywhere. At least it comes out of The Sting looking better than "Sleeping (In The Fire)", one of W.A.S.P.'s great dark tracks from the early days. The song starts with every member playing at his own tempo, in his own rhythm, and steadily degenerates into an out-of-tune monstrosity of a once-beautiful song.

The tracklist is, at best, passable. The recording itself is thin, bland, and devoid of impact. The songs trail on endlessly, desperately searching for a way to end. The vocals are powerless, unconvincing, grating, and sometimes completely absent. The guitars are noisy, imprecise, forgetful, and unsteady. The bass and drums, while on the top of the technical mountain here, cannot make up for the missteps of the band's louder half, and occasionally slip out of their sockets to add to the disgusting mess of sonic chaos that W.A.S.P. became onstage that night. Generally, I have a lot of love for W.A.S.P., but ridiculous releases like The Sting tend to frustrate me greatly by spitting in the face of the band's brilliant potential and unappreciated works of excellence.