Is there anything of artistic value in the hair metal genre?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6M4_Ommfvv0
>implying this isn't art
>>63786983
that album
first single I ever bought - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BO1Nae_EBvQ
on a serious note, young 'uns piss and moan about nirvana but take them out fo context... nirvana blew all this hair-care faggotry out of the water over night.
grown men sporting perms and stilettos found themeselves suddenly unemployable
>>63786983
Just picked that up on vinyl today. Been on a 80s collection binge recently.
Depending on how liberal you want to use the "hair metal" tag: Def Leppard, GNR, Roth-era Van Halen, T Rex, and Alice Cooper are okay. The first two Motley Crue albums, from when they were actually street punks from Los Angeles who played small underground clubs actually aren't that bad either.
>>63787875
I would add Ratt to the list, they had some pretty good guitar work on Out of the Cellar, later stuff got kinda shitty.
I'd rather listen to pop metal than grunge any day.
Van Halen, GnR, Def Leppard, Scorpions, '80s Ozzy, Ratt, Accept. Don't care about Poison, Bon Jovi, or Crue, though. And fuck Kiss.
But a lot of the miscellenous one hit wonder radio-metal back in metal's heyday was a lot better than all the Candlebox/Bush/etc shit during the Alternative era.
>>63788039
Actually, I kinda even take that back... or go further with it. I'd rather have even Poison or Crue on at a bar than Bush or Silverchair.
>>63787986
Daily reminder that Ratt somehow got Milton Berle to act in one of their videos.
>>63787986
I like Ratt. I'm not sure why.
>>63788116
His nephew was Ratt's manager.
>>63787017
>not Pyromania
>>63788039
>and fuck Kiss
I fully agree and could never stand them. I can't put my finger on why, but I cringe whenever I hear it.
>>63788128
I think that's a common response to them. Also not sure why.
>>63788268
I think it's just that their music is basically a musical cardboard cutout. It's just nothing.
>>63787788
What else did you pick up?
>>63788314
I think you are right, they are like the Nickelback of the 80s.
>>63788128
>>63788281
You can't not like this song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0u8teXR8VE4
>>63788353
Kiss are notoriously cynical about their band's intention. They're pretty much there to sell key chains and posters.
>>63788369
It's just fun as fuck.
Makes me want to hook up with some trashy metal slut at a dive bar. In a good way, somehow.
Honestly, a lot of 80s pop metal was just fucking fun and even kind of romantic in a way.
>>63788369
I also always like this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ox5Bh7NFD-M
b-but one-armed drummer
>>63788466
I don't know if it's cool or ironic to like this stuff, but I really do.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Haypxj24_Uw
>>63788039
>bush, silverchair, candlebox
But that's post grunge
>>63788325
Went to a great record store in Rockford IL, and picked up:
Def Leopard - Hysteria
Van Halen - Van Halen (completed my pre Hagar collection)
Ratt - Out of the Cellar
Ratt - Invasion of Your Privacy
Ratt - Dancing Undercover
David Lee Roth - Eat em and Smile
Also picked up some other 80s non hair metal shit.
The Police - Syncronicity
The Police - Ghost in the Machine
Huey Lewis and the News - Sports (I know, but it was $1)
Inxs - Kick
All in VG/VG+ condition for $4 except Hysteria which was $14
>>63788557
>>63788466
This sorta shit is nice to listen to once in a while while getting drunk but if you listen to it all the time it gets fucking annoying (they used to play stuff like Twisted Sister all the time on the radio at my last job). But there's a certain real almost romantic charm to it, I agree.
>>63788557
I think the appeal of this kind of music is just immediate and primal in a really unadultured way. It's beyond cool or ironic.
It's a lot like professional wrestling (similar aesthetics too)... in that it is blatantly goofy and dumb and hypermasculine and at first the appeal might seem ironic but then you just realize that you're just having fun unashamedly and like the energy of it all.
holy shit i remember listening to everything in this thread when i was like 13
i can't hate it,nor do i regret that time
>>63788613
I can get behind that.
>>63788605
I got real sick of it to the point I eBayed all my CDs in lots of all my 80s metal. I'm coming back around and wanting to listen to it again, so I have been collecting it on the cheap on vinyl. It's perfect on vinyl for that one off listen when you are in the mood, but not something I want on my phone to listen to while at work in the lab.
>>63788353
>Kiss
>80s
They were already a joke by that time.
Bon Jovi was my first gig. Still dig their first 5 albums. It's just pop music, but it's fucking great pop music with guitars and harmonies and all that good stuff.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcfTN_IhR24
>>63788708
I've felt like they have always been a joke.
>>63788674
I know what you mean. I can listen to just about any 80's hair band, but not for too long. GnR being the major exception.
>>63788623
You and me both.
>>63788708
>>63788747
Exactly. That's why they're great.
>>63788605
>there's a certain real almost romantic charm to it, I agree.
I find it extremely romantic sounding, honestly. There's such an urgency that evokes young people from broken homes, living in smaller working class American suburbs in the mid-80s, and the pent-up romantic dreams they have of distant horizons of heroism and glory and sexual abandon, and of course most of them were going to end up in working class jobs someday, and now these songs are still playing on repeat in bars across Iowa and Wisconsin
>>63788755
I can stomach GnR the least. Axl Rose has the most annoying voice. In retrospect I really don't know how I listened to them as much as I did.
>>63788788
I tried to get into it also, but Axl's vocals just kill it for me.
>>63788788
>>63788846
Eh, you get used to it. Like Bob Dylan or John Lydon.
>>63788747
Kiss are pretty important to rock history but you'd have to understand the 70s-80s rock scene in depth. Especially in that they did a lot to advance the art of stage shows. Their influence lives on in costumecore bands like Gwar, Slipknot, Necrogoblicon, etc.
>>63788870
But I used to love the band and grew tired of his voice over the years. I'm the exact opposite that you say.
>>63788888
Interesting.
>>63788879
Yeah, the particular costume aesthetic are Kiss's one relevant contribution to metal, undoubtedly - even to Black Metal. It's almost a shame their music wasn't any good because I guess the image concept was pretty solid.
>>63788778
Alright, where did this copypaste come from?
>>63788935
Just typed it out right now. Trying to get across the feeling the music has for me. That's one side of it for me.
>>63788879
Judas Priest, who admittedly weren't nuts about Kiss, did admit they learned a few things from them about how to have bigger live shows.
>>63788039
>But a lot of the miscellenous one hit wonder radio-metal back in metal's heyday
Such as Turn Up The Radio?
>>63788985
>tfw you really should have suspected
As far as big '80s radio metal, then there's all the NWOBHM and stuff like Dio etc.
And I mean, Judas Priest are the best as far as that kind of romanticism of far-off horizons and driving until you burn through the fuel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtuoFv4dcwM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoDbAd4fYBA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhY9GOhFwN4
>>63789037
Forgot pic
Rob Halford was the best. Possibly my favorite figure in metal ever. The true spirit of it imo.
>>63787875
When most people shit on hair metal, they're really talking about 87-90 by which point the genre was already past its prime and had been neutered into safe pop rock for little girls. The real hair metal was the stuff from the Metal Health period and it died after 85.
Priest in their early days wore the typical British glam wardrobe with lots of flowing robes and satin jumpsuits, but Rob felt that that didn't really fit their music and besides, by 1978 the glam look was going out of style.
During the 78 tour, they just wore simple black outfits with leather belts and their trademark leather-and-studs look was adopted for the next tour after that.
I always found Priest really Mad Max
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zr6rChjsWgs
And the homoeroticism only adds to that.
Hysteria is a masterpiece of production if not anything else.
>>63789266
Turbo was ripped apart by the metal community however the 86 tour was Priest's most successful ever.
>>63789275
I think Def Leppard can be pretty fucking incredible at their best, desu.
>>63789106
The rock scene did really kind of go into the shitcan after 85. In fact pop really went downhill as well. Aside from Madonna, there was pretty much nothing of note in the late 80s.
Leppard were a quite fine NWOBM band on their first two records before Amerifats got ahold of them and turned them into MTV pop rubbish for children.
>>63789307
Yeah, it had that kind of Mad Max-y, vaguely synth-y 'turbo' aesthetic to it.
I remember the songs growing on people as they became metal radio staples.
Personally I think it was actually the best realization of their whole post-apocalyptic turbo/car aesthetic idea.
>>63789307
I mean, really. How do you go from Beyond The Realms of Death to Parental Guidance?
>>63788101
Have you listened to Silverchair´s two last albums or even Neon Ballroom there´s no hairmetal that stands to that. If you talk about their early stuff I can accept that tho.
>>63789474
I couldn't imagine that possibly being the case, at least for me. But I genuinely love a lot of pop metal and find post-grunge excruciating. I'm always ready to be convinced, though (but pretty sure I won't be).
"When MTV came along, it got hard for a lot of us, especially us older guys who came up before the video era. We were forced to do something we were totally opposed to do in order to compete. It became more of a Bon Jovi world and less of a Led Zeppelin world."
-- Ronnie Dio
Look What The Cat Dragged in is actually quite interesting because they recorded it on the cheap and it has a very raw sound with none of the horrible laboratory slick 80s production (thanks, Mutt Lange)
>>63789571
It's interesting because back then Mtv suddenly meant artists having to be sexy or at least more 'spectacular', whereas now with youtube and social media it's more about appealing to a cute, people-pleasing 'wow, did you see that?' meme sensibility.
"The record industry has always worked the same way. If one's good, then a hundred's even better. So you had the W bands. The Warrants, the Wingers, the Whitesnakes, the White Lions. And it became so processed and so...refined that it became almost pablum. And then it got even worse because now every metal band starts doing acoustic numbers. Thanks, Tesla. MTV had this unwritten rule back then that if you didn't do an unplugged set, you weren't serious artists. That's real extreme. I'd like to see Tracy Chapman or Paul Simon plug into two stacks of Marshall amps and ride the lightning."
-- Dee Snider
>>63789571
>>63789634
Yes but Dio still wasn't stupid which is why he kept adding more and more hunky 25 year olds to his band unlike Black Sabbath who kept hiring their middle-aged contemporaries from the 60s-70s who may have been good musicians, but didn't have too much sex appeal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuDxo-fbW9c
"Is there anything of value?" Well, the music of course!
>>63787875
Too Fast For Love is pretty raw and more "bar band" than Shout At The Devil's polished arena rock sound. KK Downing loved SATD and while certainly a good hard rock album is just a little overlooked because it's not as heavy as other 83 releases like Bark At The Moon, Born Again, and Piece of Mind.
>>63789048
Rob Halford has always said "We're synonymous with driving music." and he's a big car enthusiast despite not having a driver's license until he was 38.
Whoa. Clicking through 80s metal playlists on youtube and seeing the endless stream of blonde guys, I'm realizing metal was probably actual Anglo and Saxon dudes' last moment really prominently featured moment in pop culture. You don't see that type much anymore.
Interesting that it all did have a really urgent, tragic, 'late' vibe to it all, and was steeped in like literal Germanic warrior and medievalist imagery. Wagner's last moment I guess. Kind of sad.
>>63789923
You can really see and hear it.
"I admire metal for its energy, drive, and obsessiveness, but I cannot stand its delusions of grandeur."
>>63790077
Ah, the predictable opinion of insufferable 'critic-face' types like that guy.
Because 'delusions of grandeur are so problematic and anti-social, oh deary me!".
Jealous little critic nerd shits.
As David Lee Roth said, "critics like Elvis Costello because critics look like Elvis Costello"
>>63790077
>>63790128
>implying he's wrong
Clearly you don't know many metalheads. They're the single most insufferable faggots in existence.
>>63790219
...Who cares? Why does everyone have to be little coffee-sipping pussies who are sensitive to everything around them all the time?
Why can't kids be kids anymore?
And I disagree, punks are a zillion times worse than metalheads. Metalheads can have a kind of forthright, decent, honor about them. Punks are insincere, insecure garbage who think they're rebels but then try to whine about other people express themselves.
Honestly? No, it's vapid pop. I *like* it, but I ain't about to say it has any actual artistic merit.
I can say more or less the same about Grunge, except that I don't like it, but artistically they're on the same level.
>>63790077
Master of Puppets [Elektra, 1986]
"I feel a distinct generation gap between myself and this music. Not because my weary bones can't take its power and speed, but because I was born too early to have had my dendrites rewired by progressive radio. I will admit that the speed and momentum of this band can be impressive. The problem being that the image metal conjurs up is that of Arnold Schwarzenegger as Conan the Barbarian, all flowing hair and huge pecs. That's certainly not my idea of heroes and I no more have the right to feel heroic after listening to this album than I do the 1812 Overture. B-"
>>63790342
There it is, folks.
The school of resentment.
The music is cheesy but it's also strangely sincere. None of these dudes set out to change the world with their music - these bands formed because all these dudes just wanted to party, get rich, and get laid. And a lot of them did. There's zero pretension.
>>63788967
Hi, Scaruffi.
>>63791032
That's why I find them much more forgivable than post-grunge, which postured as this fake loser, 'authentic' thing but was much more contorted in its hypocrisy than this shit. This stuff I think when all is said and done was much realer.
