The Top 40 Hair Metal Albums of All Time - 10-1

This might not be  genre most of you associate with me. It is one  I grew up with.Many of these albums I still hold dear today . When the 80s were ranging I was not listening to the Cure, I did not get my interest peaked in them til 1990. I listened to music heavier and darker than this in the 80s for sure, but this was the sound of chasing girls at the mall and smoking pot in my cousins car.  I choose 40 since many of these acts represent a time when this kind of music cracked the top 40 . It was a time when MTV began to dominate so image became every thing. Many of these band would put out album that were not metal at all, nor would I consider them metal bands. Granted most are on the low end of the heavy scale, with a few evolvoing into something heavier. I will make a Top 40 Glam Rock albums of all time to clearly contrast the difference, glam rock being more in the vein of Bowie and T-REX. Yes, some of these artists also crossed over into glam , but hair metal has a more cock rocking flair to it and is less androgynous.

These albums are  more about doing cocaine and getting pussy, devoid of any political correctness, none of this would fly in 2020. It would get a hastag for sure. Any this list should speak for itself, in some cases it might not be the most popular album or the album that broke the band through , but the album I feel has the best songs when it comes to hair metal. Remember that as some of these bands have better heavy metal albums, but we are talking about the best to tease your hair up and get a blow job to. So here are the top 10 hair metal albums of all time.


10-Ozzy Osbourne - "No Rest For the Wicked" 1988 

 He was headed in the hair metal direction on "Bark at the Moon" , but fully commits on this album . "Tattooed Dancer" being the most cock rocked out moment. But it's Ozzy and Zakk played with so much fire on this album that it overshadows this.


 


9-Cinderella -" Night Songs" 1986


 This album came out at the same time as "Look What the Cat Dragged in" and proved to be the better of the two albums. They did everything Poison did with more balls and darker.

 







8-Ratt -"Dancing Undercover" 1986

 Yeah, "Out of the Cellar" put them on the map. This album has higher energy and builds off what they are best at. It was actually a tougher call between this and "Invasion of Your Privacy".


 







7-LA Guns- "Cocked and Loaded" 1989


 More punch than sex action. These guys always felt more believable than many of the other bands trying to be tough bikers while looking like women. "Rip & Tear" is a fucking mean song too.


 







6-Lizzy Borden- "Visual Lies" 1987



 One of the most under rated bands from this era. He has a great voice and adds a darkside to his getting pussy songs.


 






5 -Skid Row- "Slave to the Grind" - 1991



 They avoid the sophomore slump by getting heavier. There is more to these song than just the big hooky choruses that ruled the first album and put more emphasis on metal than hair.



 






 4- Kiss - "Animalize" - 1984


 Hair metal for Kiss was ... well they are pretty much the godfathers of it as most bands on this list would not exsist without them. This album pretty much speaks for it self the best of their Desmond Child era albums.


 





3-Queensyrche- "Operation Mindcrime" 1988


 Ok, it's somewhat proggy hair metal. Most bands of their kind were not as ambitious and this albums is a piure masterpiece and could have been number one if not fur the next three albums.


 




2-Guns N Roses- Appetite For Destruction"1987


This album is number tow because I do not like "Paradise City' and the number one album I like
every song. But this is still a classic.

.




1-Motley Crue- "Shout at the Devil" 1983

Flawless front to back. They were still standing their ground as a heavy metal band and had an aire of danger to them.




 

Looking Back In Anger at Motley Crue's "Too Fast For Love"

We have already looked at two of the less glorious albums of the 80s . Now here is their debut full length. I am listening to the remastered version. If you know this album then you know it opens with one of the best songs ever written...which is "Live Wire". "Come On and Dance" is lyrically silly when it gets to the chorus. There is more cowbell. Riff wise it is cooler than "Public Enemy" that doesn't feel like it has held up over the years as well as well "Live Wire". Even though it's there first power ballad in "Merry Go Round".  "Take me to the Top" has the early punk attitude with enough of Mick's mean flashy guitar style and the verse riff is pretty ass kicking. Vince hit's some great falsetto accent notes through out this record this being one of the song's that stand out. However I think it is the guitar that makes this one.

"Piece of Your Action" highlights the fact that this is a very sex driven album. I like when Vince goes into a lower register on the verses. It gives the song more dynamics. Another song that drips with sex is "Starry Eyes" , I think this one is under rated and stands shoulder to shoulder with "Live Wire". The bass has more of a presence on this song. I think it is weird how on the original mix of the album the bass is buried amid the drums and the bass player was the main song writer, The title track is also a classic but doesn't make the bar set by the opener like "Starry Eyes" does, which I would put in my top 10 Motley Crue songs. I think what holds the title track back a little back is at times the vocals come across a little silly. T

The album ends with another power ballad, which I like better than say "Home Sweet Home" due to that fact it's a darker and feels more street wise. I'll round this album up to a 9.5 as I sure the hell played it endlessly as a kid so some of the songs I might be burned out on. There is a juvenile feel to some of the songs, but I think that is the point. Plus they were pretty young when they made this so it's still stands taller than 90 percent of other glam metal albums .

Looking Back In Anger at Motley Crue's "Theater of Pain"

I thought about reviewing "Shout at the Devil" and perhaps I might, but I am sure that is a flawless album without having to listen. This album faced the impossible task of following that one up. In fact at 7 years old I was faced with what a band selling looked like. At 7 I knew in my gut something was wrong here and they seemed more like Aerosmith. Giving this listen this a listen as an adult is this album as bad as I thought it was. "City Boy Blues" does have a good sleazy groove to it. It is not as heavy as anything on 'Shout at the Devil" and as far a my memory recalls going into this only one song on here is. It noted that Vince's voice is ragged out her probably from drinking and touring, as he can not go into the higher falsetto to hit the yodeling notes. At 7 "Smokin In the Boys Room " felt kinda cool, though I did not know it was a cover and originally written by the Brownsville Station in 1973. They did a decent job with it and it feels like Motley Crue.

"Louder Than Hell" is the only song that sounds like the band that wrote "Shout at the Devil". It fucking rocks, even though the guitars have more of a melodic touch to them . Vince also hits the note on the word loud coming out of the chorus, which I like just as much as an adult as I did at 7. What stayed the same when this albums is more rock n roll where there previous work in metal is they still retain a sense of danger. This can be felt on the verses of " Keep Your Eye On the Money". The lyrics are stupid and the chorus is full of cheese.  The piano line to "Home Sweet Home" is memorable. Vince's vocal line makes the song memorable, but I still hold to the fact this would be a great song for Journey and some pussy ass shit from Motley Crue. The only redeeming factor is Mick Mars' guitar solo, which is one of his best.

I forgot they get heavier again on "Tonight ( We Need a Lover) . You can hear Nikki Sixx's bass better on this song, though I am listening to the 2003 remaster of this album, so that might have helped. I like this song. They speed up for "Use it or Lose It" . This song is stupider than I remember. I do like the bridge going into the chorus. From this point on the album begins to go down hill. "Save Our Souls" might be better than the previous song, but doesn't measure up to what they are capable of. The acoustic guitar on "Raise Your Hands to Rock" took things in a more Mellancamp direction. The chorus is awkward coming out of this part. "Fight For Your Rights" finds the lyrics getting stupider. The synths going into the chorus are the kind of 80s cheese ball shit that made them loose their way. This might be the worst song on the album.

I will round this album down to a 7. Which going from a 10 to a 7 certainly makes this a let down. The cup half full thought would be 70 percent of this album works. It's the other 30 percent that finds them beginning to fall from grace. While they would try to excuse this in the movie by the band being fucked up, I think being fucked up should equate pretty quality stuff think about "Physical Graffiti" . I am pretty sure "Girls , Girls , Girls " was better than this. " Dr. Feelgood" might be on par, I guess there is one way to find out.

Film Review : "the Dirt"

Makes sense that this went to Netflix rather than theaters. Not as trans-formative for the actors as "Bohemian Rhapsody ". The movie measures up pretty much like Motley Crue measures up against Queen. Don't get me wrong Motley Crue was my favorite band after Kiss. But by the time I got to high school I was pretty much over them , and then the rest of my admiration for them got squeezed out by the over produced "Dr Feelgood" To this day still find them entertaining, and have gone to see them as recent as 13 years ago or so. This movie was based off the book of the same name. The book is written from the perspective of all four members of the band, with Tommy Lee and Nikki Sixx dominating the narrative.You would have thought Nikki already got most of this off his chest in the "Heroin Diaries" which touches on a great deal of the addiction subject matter. Nikki is the center figure of this story and it is his band.

Of the core membership all but Vince Neil felt pretty dead on with Mick Mars being the most convincing followed by Tommy Lee. The guy who plays Ozzy was ok unless you were looking at him dead on them the resemblance faltered. The biggest cast member missing would have been Pamela Anderson, though no Vanity either. David Lee Roth and Slash caricatures were involved, there could been more cross over with Quiet Riot. While some of the "Too Fast For Love" album is featured in songs being written or performed if you went into this knowing nothing you would assume "Shout at the Devil" was their first album. If these band movies keep getting pumped out  then the formula of this is how we started the band, here is where things got rough to we have reunited and everything is great.

Having grown up watching the rise of this band, I have a different perspective on hos the time shifts occurred The theme is sex, drugs and rock n roll.. If you are doing a film about a rock band I think that those things are a must . It was entertaining enough for me to watch it all the way through in one night.  How good of a movie is it lines up with how how good of a band are Motley Crue. Mick Mars in this movie is the best acted . In real life he was  the most talented member of the band . I don't think this movie is going to win over any new fans, but it's fun.

The Sound of Me Before You

Music is obviously important to me . I commit an average of 12 hours a week just writing about it for this blog, not to mention the others . Music is the fuel of my soul. So for me to share music with someone , what I am really saying is these are the pieces of me that I don’t have words for as they are an amalgamation of my thoughts and emotions relating to sonic vibrations. Music can always take me back to a place in time. When I first hear a song. Due to my heavy drugs use earlier in life I have large blank spots of time not accounted for , this makes my sense of the past somewhat hazy when it comes to recalling specifics. So I tend to organize these by thinking about the music I was listening to at the time. So these would be songs from the first ten years of my life. This is not a weekly playlist but a 4 part sonic scrap book you dear reader are being a voyeur for. While I have organized it in terms of the year these songs are released . The story they tell is somewhat loose. But if I had to make a soundtrack to my life I think these songs would work well. This is me giving these songs as token to someone of what was inside me before they knew me. This is what my life sounded like before I met them.





Welcome to my Nightmare





Fool to Cry




Fun It




 Mother





Ashes to Ashes




A World Without Heroes "






Something in the Water Does not Compute





Mr. Roboto





Shout At the Devil




 the Fire Still Burns 

Sixx A.M :"Prayers For the Damned"

I still like the "Motley Crue" album with John Corabi on it and growing up the Crue was one of my favorite bands, though we parted ways when Dr. Feelgood came out and I still think that album is a little too happy for me. So I shameless will review this album even though I don't listen to much modern radio oriented rock, when I do it seems to be written with a team of marketing consultants who have done test studies and demographic research. Studies have proven to Nikki Sixx that Muse and Shinedown are safe bets when writing music that will make it onto today's limited rock radio. Granted middle of the road mainstream rock with harder leanings is a narrower path.There is not middle ground when it comes to metal, you are either heavier than Lamb of God or you are not. Sure Ghost slipped through the cracks, but their window dressing allows them to be more of an oddity. If they played in jeans and t-shirts rather than hooded robes not so much.  When I heard this band's first album back in 2008, it seemed more original. Some of these songs are well written and catchy, "Sick" the first one to be catchy enough to compete with "Life is Beautiful". There is a similar dynamic at work on the title track.

For what this is they are certainly doing it well and I buy it way more from these guys than I do Avenged Sevenfold. The heavy is heavy handed. They back off their version of the more balls to the wall rock for the not quite a ballad emoting of "Better Man". James Michael's voice certainly gets the job done, their first album was the only one I have really given a fuck about , and he doesn't really have any new tricks in his bag , though he might be smoother and slickers shooting for radio play rather taking risks as a singer.They get a little heavier on "Can't Stop", it's a more energetic performance than james normally gives.The turnaround after the chorus is a silly to me and it almost borders on nu-metal. I wasn't expecting a song titled "When We Were Gods " to be a whiny ballad even if it has a darker undercoating. The very fact that James can try to sing in a Muse like styling proves he has some pipes and this song does get heavier, so it's a dark whiny power ballad. Sixx lays down more of groove than he has in sometime on "Belly of the Beast" which is both bluesy and electronic.It's actually one of the album's best songs. The continue to try to play their version of metal on "Everything Went to Hell" which is more in the Avenged Sevenfold realm of the genre.The band knows which side of the iTunes chart their bread is buttered on as they lean more towards hard rock on this album than they did even on the first.


 The Last song, isn't bad it just didn't grab me and sounded like 30 Seconds to Mars jamming with Muse. It's pretentious, but that is what they were going for and has way more ambition in this song than Motley Crue does in their entire discography, though they do not rock as hard as anything from the first two Crue albums, not matter how many layers of processed guitar they slather on this mix. Of course this album sounds great and is masterfully produced, their singer is a producer. I'll give this one an 8, because it's on point and well executed, not always my thing due to the fact my idea of what is heavy has the bar raised a lot higher than this.

 

8.8

Top Ten Metal Love Songs

Some of these might straddle the fence between metal and hard rock, but love songs are always more sensitive, which is why there are so few in real metal, and the harder the song the broader the definition of romance.

 10 - Starry Eyes- by Motley Crue
 9 - Flesh Eater by- Lizzy Borden


8 - Thrills in the Night -by Kiss
 
 7 - 120 Days by Genitorturers


 6 - Welcome Home by Coheed and Cambria

 5 - Magdalena by A Perfect Circle

 4- Soul on Fire- Danzig


 3 -"Sleeping in the Fire" by Wasp


2 - Love You to Death by Type O negative


 1 - Here Come the Tears- Judas Priest