They sound like Toto, Journey or Asia. As we alluded to in our aforementioned first article, Hair Metal and Glam are often derided and chided as genres that are less than. Well, if the article did one thing, its drawn many fellow Hair/Glam loving brothers and sisters out of the woodwork, and for that, were thankful. Wildside is still one of my faves simply because it was so much heavier than all the bands at that time and darker too. Of course, there definitely were more than six '90s "glam" albums that deserve a second chance, so you're more than welcome to post further suggestions in the comments below. Gotta do some digging there. . That said, there is another piece to this entire feedback puzzle, and thats the comments that went something like, You forgot this album, or, How could you leave out this or that one? So, we listened, and we took a great many of your suggestions to heart, and Ive added some of them to this latest edition. After the release of his article, Daly was invariably peppered with comments from various people suggesting other albums so Vinyl Writer Music issued a Part II titledThe Road to The Roxy: 10 Underrated Glam & Hair Metal Era Albums Part II. Its like Dee Snider said, Were Not Gonna Take It, and for Hair-Metalheads, we wouldnt have it any other way. As "glam" or "hair metal" almost became dirty words in the early '90s music industry, a lot of bands who got labeled as such in the past (rightly or not) tried hard to disassociate themselves from the label by diversifying their sound. Dangerous Toys - Dangerous Toys (1989) Their first album Steel the Light borders on metal in an 80s Judas Priest-ish kind of way, and has one of the best pre-choruses ever written on the albums eponymous song. The Triple-Axe Attack, as they were known by, exemplified power guitar with great riffs and a lead singer that had a raspy, yet seemingly effortless, powerful voice. This is a band that was supremely talented but simply didnt hang around long enough to really make any waves. When I wrote Return to the Sunset Strip: 10 Underrated Glam & Hair Metal-Era Albums, I didnt really know what to expect. Totally with you on many of your other suggestions. Some remain underrated despite having done moderately well in their day, while others have been lost to near complete obscurity. Very slick production, the epitome of pop metal. Powerful, but still memorable. Shotgun Messiah - s/t & Second Coming They changed their name to Shotgun Messiah, fired their singer and eventually went industrial metal. One that I hoped to see on lists is Leatherwolf. Not quite as big a seller as "Lean Into It," "Mr. Big" is the debut from a band that should have ruled the world. 1. A shameless throwback or the start of a hair metal revival? Life, Sex & Death had it all: a bunch of Cheap Trick-on-steroids songs, the muscle of a major label behind them and a homeless guy on vocals. The albums got better after their sales peak - Dog Eat Dog, and especially Ultraphobic. i hung around with Joker in the old days and went to High school with the guitarist.I hope they do come back. Bon Jovi 7800 Fahrenheit (1985) This album should be the focal point for Jani Lane's legacy, NOT Cherry Pie. That Beau Nasty is kicking my ass right now! However, that doesn't mean that there was no glam-labeled music being released at the time. Sure, we all know and love Cherry Pie, but Dog Eat Dog is where its at. Tyketto - Dont Come Easy Theme: The Road to The Roxy: 10 Underrated Glam & Hair Metal-Era Albums Part II, Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window), Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window), Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window), Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window), Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window), Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window), Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window), My fingers feel possessed on the EC-1000! The hairspray and makeup came off, and Lane's songwriting simply shined. First off, Extreme wasn't all that big on the glam thing despite being labeled as such for most of their active years, and this labeling can be even more baffling nowadays when the first Extreme song that comes to your average Joe's mind ends up being "More Than Words" in the vast majority of cases. This, their best album contains the song "Metal Health" which is, according to Kevin DuBrow, the original FU song. Joker's high-level songwriting is at times poppier than other selections on this list, dropping some huge sing-along choruses. Like Hericane Alice, one can only imagine that Wildside would have been an absolutely huge success had their debut hit the streets a few years prioreven more so considering the good fortune that was lining up in their favor prior to the album's release. Super interesting comments. Underrated hair metal songs. Britny Fox is the only band to return from part one, and while they may have been the big winners last time around, not so much this time. http://. They should have been huge! Thanks! Britny Fox were doing lines of coke off of Elton Johns piano while in the studio making Bite Down Hard. Now, this is a weird entry in many ways. All rights reserved. 03. And yeah, anyone unfamiliar, Divebomb has reissued some GOLD in this realm, so pick them up while you still can: I know I'm not alone in crossing my fingers that the band will agree to have their recordings properly reissued on CD at some point! And while the album's lyrical content never really departed from the usual glam topics, the sheer power and utter lack of compromise found on songs such as "Monkey Busyness", "Slave to the Grind", and "Wasted Time" managed to win audiences over on their own, propelling the album to the top spot on the Billboard 200 chart. Thanks for the excellent comment! Way too oversaturated with keyboards,but still catchy as hell. There are tons and tons of other glam/hair metal bands that never quite received their due (hell, I'd argue that bands like Lynch Mob and Vain still deserve a little more love). I still dont really know what makes something good or bad, and I really dont think I am qualified to tell you what you should like or dislike. Coverdale & Co. best selling album. You remember Great White, right? Vain was less poppy than most cock rock bands, and they just had a serious vibe in their sound. I wasnt a fan at all. Now, beyond that, what it also did was elicit plenty of comments and responses. Never could get into Enuff Znuff, but I do dig that one song they had on the Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer soundtrack. Underrated metal albums. Damn good stuff in 1 & 2. - Next to Under the Influence by Wildside, this is the best debut album not called Appetite for Destruction. Yes the vocals are an acquired taste, but, hell, I got used to Scott Jeffreys once, and I was able to get used to Steve Hayman after that. If you're old enough to have been reading guitar magazines in the early-'90s, you probably at least recognize the name Gary Hoey, and may recall having seen him in a good number of advertisements, if nothing else. Doro True At Heart (1991) Speaking of late-stage Hair Metal, this record is about as late as it gets in that regard. I can't tell if they're still active or not, but Wildside does have a Facebook page that's touting a remastered re-release of Under the Influence this year, and I'll be all over that if it becomes a reality. I believe that they wrote songs that way because they LIKED pretty rock ballads. Perma-pouting Hollywood fluffballs Pretty Boy Floyd made Motley Crue sound like Napalm Death and Ratt look like, well, Napalm Death. Blending the best of 80's AOR rock with just the right amount of hair metal, the album features some of the era's best rock songs and two of the best power ballads of the late 80's/early 90's. . Original Scorpions albums sound A-OK so can't see why yaow'd bovver wiv reworkings. Swingin Thing - Desperate Living. During that time, he has been Deputy Editor on Kerrang! A demo produced by Metallicas Kirk Hammett was followed by a self-titled debut album full of dirtier-than-a-used-hypodermic tracks like Doghouse, Too Much T-Bone and semi-immortal single Half The Way Valley. The Toys could have been worthy successors to Guns N Roses, but this album pretty well fell flat in 1989. He seems to be singing about an octave and a half lower on the first one, and the overall energy on Lettin Loose is far greater. Now, let's begin. Previously, we alluded to the massive screw job that Britny Fox received in being bumped off KISS Hot In The Shade Tour, which subsequently led to an avalanche of garbage raining down onto them for the next few years. More straight hard rock, than pop metal. Well, in the wake of the Hot In The Shade screw-job, the band still managed to book a nice tour of well-paying gigs and were set to depart, when Dean The Diva Davidson decided to split and make a go of it on his own. It's also worth noting that their early tracks as Young Gunns were equally awesome, and the B-sides from Under the Influence are pretty incredible (to the point of being significantly better than some of the album tracks, not that it would've made a difference in the end, sadly). Poison's first two usually get more recognition, but this is their finest moment. Even the ballads have balls. Their take on nu metal at the time brought the machine gun precision of a band like Fear Factory, but also a . It now enjoys a cult following among fans of hair. Femme Fatale simply wasnt meant to be, it seems. No genre has been as mocked and reviled as much as hair metal, but for a few years in the 80s when it was still called glam metal it bestrode the world like a Spandex and fishnet-clad colossus, twirling its drumsticks at it surveyed all before it. 04. Dont do drugs, kids. For every Axl Rose or Nikki Sixx, there were hundreds of also-rans, buffoons and no-hopers who crashed and burned before they had a chance to leave any lasting mark. Q5 had two albums that would simply destroy you. The album that gave "hair" to the hair metal genre. Most people will recall this as The record that came out after The Final Countdown, or The record that came out after John Norum left the band. For many reasons, this is a pretty sad state of affairs, as this record is really, honestly nearly as good as The Final Countdown, if not, dare I say itbetter. You can hear every instrument, all clean, all cristaline. Best Moment: The ambient breakdown in the title track, which leads to a gut-punch guitar solo whose final note resonates for almost 30 seconds. Black N Blue Nasty Nasty (1986) This is an album that was completely buried by the Alt-Rock and Grunge craze that was sweeping the nation in the early 90s. I suspect I am going to get flack for this, but despite what you might think, this all-female Hair Metal masterpiece is supremely underrated.