Born Too Late

The third Saint Vitus album, 1986’s Born Too Late, marked the debut of a new vocalist: Scott “Wino” Weinrich, whose own band the Obsessed had split up. His vocals were grittier and more incantatory than those of his predecessor, Scott Reagers, and the lyrics on Born Too Late are less concerned with war and magic than with depression, substance abuse, and life on society’s margins (“Clear Windowpane,” “Dying Inside”). The title track is an anti-life anthem on a par with Alice Cooper’s “I’m Eighteen,” the Stooges’ “1969,” or any other paean to dropping out you can think of. The final lines of the second verse could serve as Saint Vitus’s motto: “They say my songs are much too slow/But they don’t know the things I know.” Saint Vitus were absolutely a band out of place and time in 1986 — metal was splitting into glam and thrash, and they were playing shows with punk bands. But heard today, this is a powerful statement of purpose.