80s Metal

Last night I watched a show on VH1 Classic called "Metal Mania".

Did metal in the 80s really suck that badly? I remember there being a lot of bad metal in those days - the likes of Whitesnake and Poison and Ratt and Krokus (or "Crockus" as I liked to call them, and I never could get over the idea that the front man was really the guy from Air Supply). But gee whiz.

I think the world owes Metallica something. Whether you like Metallica or not, they rose up and hammered a wooden stake into the heart of that ridiculous glam metal that covered the landscape in the 1980s like so much spilled Dippity-Doo. I don't personally like the direction Metallica took after ...And Justice For All, but that's okay, they don't need my approval and I don't need their music. But it's hard for me to watch a video from the 1980s of some glammed-up prancing pretty-boy band all smeared with lipstick and hair oil and not think "Oh thank God for Metallica!" You almost want to see Hetfield come striding into the video and swing his guitar into an elaborately coiffed head with a toothy roar of genuine emotion. Take that, you mincing poser!

It's scary to think where American metal might have ended up without Kill 'Em All, Ride The Lightning and Master of Puppets. There would be lots of elaborately coiffed hair, to be sure, and excessively tight Zubaz, and lipstick, and plenty of that guitar-as-phallus business, something I personally can't seem to get enough of... European metal would probably have evolved more or less as it did (especially since Anthrax, Testament and the like would have emigrated), but it would have been sealed off from America by a hermetic membrane of hair gel, mascara, crappy riffs, and extreme superficiality. So while fans outside the United States would be enjoying bands like Carcass, Mercyful Fate, Bathory and Opeth, fans inside the United States would be buying Poison reunion tour albums and Twisted Sister greatest-hits compilations and (ach, say it aint so!) Bullet Boys Unplugged.