Psycho Café

Last updated • 2 min readFrom Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia

Psycho Café
BangTangoPsychoCafe.png
Studio album by
ReleasedMay 29, 1989
Genre
Length41:21
Label MCA [1]
Producer Howard Benson
Bang Tango chronology
Live Injection
(1989)
Psycho Café
(1989)
Dancin' on Coals
(1991)

Psycho Café is the first full-length album by American rock band Bang Tango. [2] [3] It was released in 1989. Psycho Café peaked at number 58 on the Billboard 200 chart in 1989. [4]

Contents

The music video for "Someone Like You" was a staple of early 1990s MTV. The album was reissued on CD by Rock Candy Records in September 2022.

Critical reception

Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic Star full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar empty.svg [5]
The Encyclopedia of Popular Music Star full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar empty.svgStar empty.svg [1]

The Colorado Springs Gazette-Telegraph concluded that "the subject matter is often infantile, and Joe Leste's voice has the tendency to wear one's nerves thin in anything more than small doses, but the instrumental aspect of the record is very good." [6]

AllMusic wrote that "this excellent album demonstrates that not all bands that were part of L.A. glam metal in the late '80s/early '90s played mindless fluff." [5] The Encyclopedia of Popular Music called Psycho Cafe "a refreshingly honest, but slightly offbeat, hard rock album." [1]

Accolades

"Someone Like You" was featured at number 9 in LA Weekly's "The 10 Greatest One-Hit Wonders of the Hair Metal Era" list. [7]

Psycho Café landed at number 37 on Rolling Stone's 50 Greatest Hair Metal Albums of All Time list. [8]

Bang Tango came in at number 36 on VH1's Hair Metal 100 Countdown list, which cited Psycho Café as "taking hair metal in a direction that, in large part, led to the genre's undoing." It also stated that had the album come out a year later, it would have been more lumped in with the alternative metal at the time. [9]

Track listing

All songs written and composed by Joe Leste, Tigg Ketler, Mark Knight, Kyle Kyle and Kyle Stevens

  1. "Attack of Life" – 4:18
  2. "Someone like You" – 4:20
  3. "Wrap My Wings" – 4:44
  4. "Breaking up a Heart of Stone" – 4:55
  5. "Shotgun Man" – 3:20
  6. "Don't Stop Now" – 3:26
  7. "Love Injection" – 4:31
  8. "Just for You" – 4:06
  9. "Do What You're Told" – 3:21
  10. "Sweet Little Razor" – 4:20

Personnel

Bang Tango

Production

Charts

Chart (1989)Peak
position
US Billboard 200 [10] 58

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References

  1. 1 2 3 Larkin, Colin (2006). The Encyclopedia of Popular Music. Vol. 1. MUZE. p. 403.
  2. Encyclopedia of Heavy Metal Music. Greenwood Press. 2009. p. 32.
  3. "Bang Tango | Biography & History". AllMusic.
  4. "Bang Tango Psycho Cafe Chart History". Billboard. Archived from the original on May 21, 2018. Retrieved March 16, 2018.
  5. 1 2 "Psycho Cafe - Bang Tango | Songs, Reviews, Credits | AllMusic" via www.allmusic.com.
  6. Caudle, Todd (June 2, 1989). "Psycho Cafe Bang Tango". Colorado Springs Gazette-Telegraph. p. D3.
  7. Wake, Matt (November 7, 2017). "The 10 Greatest One-Hit Wonders of the Hair Metal Era". L.A. Weekly. Retrieved May 22, 2018.
  8. "50 Greatest Hair Metal Albums of All Time". Rolling Stone. Retrieved February 26, 2018.
  9. "The Hair Metal 100: Ranking the '80s Greatest Glam Bands, Part 4". VH1 News. Archived from the original on September 26, 2015. Retrieved May 22, 2018.
  10. "Bad Tango Chart History (Billboard 200)". Billboard. Retrieved June 30, 2024.