Poll: Hair Metal during/after "Grunge" takeover - who still carried the flame?

I think Firehouse was the last 'new' band at the time to emerge with 80s style pop metal hits in the 90s.

 

and slaughter

 

Even some grunge bands suffered during the grunge wave after some success. Paw - Dragline (1993) in A&M had some popular songs but sales and radio play dropped a lot for their 2nd album Death To Traitors (1995). Stompbox - Stress (1994) in Epic for good reviews and some radio play but never got popular.

 

Part of the problem for hair bands were three coincident events:

1. alternative was in
2. many hair bands were creatively exhausted or unsure of how to respond
3. the move way from vinyl completely, to cds encouraged bands to "fill up" their records

It seems these three trends really worked against hair acts - just at the time when they needed to put out tight, quality albums, the times pushed many of them into making overlong records, without the creativity to justify it. Motley Crue (12songs/60min), Damn Yankees Don't Tread (12/53), Kiss Carnival of Souls (12/60), Tesla Bust a Nut (14/69), Great White Psycho City ( 10/61), etc.

 

What kind of clothes a band wears shouldn't determine how we categorize their music with different genre tags. A genre tag should describe how the music sounds to a blind man.

 

Harem Scarem from Canada

What about Harem Scarem from Canada?

 

I think the two bands that most successfully weathered grunge, artistically if not commercially, are Warrant and Motley Crue. I think KISS made a great effort as well with Carnival of Souls.

 

Not to mention Alive III, which was a hit in 1993.

 

carnival of souls wasn't a hit and the band didn't even want to release it. that album is pretty much looked over by the band in its catalog

 

To be honest, I don't think any of them carried the flame. Many of them tried but failed due to the record labels turning their backs on them. I think many of them could have carried it if they were allowed to.

That's just my opinion anyway.

 

Which has nothing to do with the fact that I consider it an artistic success.

 

Saigon Kick were on the Eddie Trunk show today and Eddie said he thought that Saigon Kick were the bridge between 80's hair metal and 90's alternative rock which imo is spot on. I always thought Saigon Kick were more in line with Jane's Addiction and Alice In Chains than a lot of those 80's glam metal bands. Their ballad Love Is On The Way ended up being the noose around their necks just like what happened to Extreme as well.

 

Don't forget Steelheart had a hit around the same time as Firehouse first hit (Don't treat me bad) with 'I'll never let you go' . Those were probably the last 'hit' singles by 'hair' bands around that time, but I agree that the grunge/alternative take-over didn't happen overnight and was gradual. Several bands still had popular singles/albums through '92 (Skid Row, Mr. Big, Extreme, Ugly Kid Joe, Saigon Kick, Damn Yankees, Jackyl) and the more established hard rock / hair bands still had big album sales through '93 (Kiss, Def Leppard, G n R, Alice Cooper, Coverdale/Page, Scorpions, Aerosmith, AC/DC).

Anyway, imo the most underrated 'hair' albums of the mid to late-90's:

Dokken - Dysfunctional
Warrant - Undertow
Extreme - Waiting for the Punchline
Ratt - Ratt
Slaughter - Back to Reality
Skid Row - Subhuman Race
UKJ - Menace to sobriety

 

.... oh , Tesla - Bust a nut !

 

Besides Harem Scarem from Canada there was Slik Toxic and Sven Gali.
Slik Toxic - Doin' The Nasty on EMI from 1992 went gold in Canada and won the Juno for best rock album. "Helluvatime" won best metal video.
Sven Gali - Under The Influence on BMG also 1992 went gold and had singles on heavy Much Music rotation especially 'Under The Influence.' Inwire from 1995 was produced by Kelly Gray from Queensryche with guest appearances from Candlebox and Blind Melon members but they changed their sound to grunge and it bombed then they broke up.

 

Out of ALL the Bands (listed), while I was/am a fan of most of them, NONE really had what I consider a huge impact on 90's music. Most (Def Leppard-Slang) tried to "change/adapt" to the new style and failed for the most part.

Of the ones listed my favorite is Extreme. Came out in 89 right before the grunge hit with a fresh funk/metal/acoustic sound, and VERY catchy lyrics. 92's (III) was probably their most intense.

Stryper (not a HUGE fan) has put out some of it's BEST works in the past 10 years with several releases. Never preachy, but generally positive thought provoking lyrics.

Tesla. another of my favorites, kinda crashed and burned out in the early 90's (with "Bust a Nut"). IMO, they NEVER again came close to their EPIC debut (Mechanical Resonance)

 

Bon Jovi and Def Leppard

 

I personally don't think any of those bands did anything as good as their stuff in the 80s during the 90s. I think maybe Slaughter is the only group that stayed true to their roots.

I wasn't a big fan of the self-titled Motley Crue album didn't like the skid row album didn't like what warrant was doing Etc. They all changed their Style and I just never got on board and stopped listening to new music all together. Carnival of Souls I only ended up liking a decade or so later.

By 1996 I was basically listening to Black and death metal and I thought that this style of music of the 80s was done for but actually found out later that in Sweden and elsewhere in Europe new bands playing this style and I loved it. Bands like crazy lixx, crashdiet , dynasty ...

The last few Europe and Stryper albums are great too.

 

I would like to carry the flame to grunge and set light to all of it.

 

I was a fan, but do think it was joke when they wore makeup. I don't mean Alice Copper or Kiss makeup, I mean eyeliner, lipstick kinda crap!

 

I had friends that liked it. I just couldn't see it. But each to their own.

 

Warrant just kept getting better as they went. I love Dirty Rotten Filthy Stinking Rich and Cherry Pie, but you can't deny the quality of such albums as Dog Eat Dog and Ultraphobic. Warrant adapted to the change of climate pretty well. In fact Warrant Live 86-96 is one of my favorite Warrant albums as it contains a good mix of "hair metal" stuff with their more grungy stuff.

Poison also put out quality stuff. Although, Native Tongue was a commercial flop it contained some pretty solid tunes. Until You Suffer (Fire and Ice) is one of my favorite Poison songs.

Def Leppard is another one who put out pretty decent stuff at the time as well. Adrenalize had some pretty cool stuff and so did Euphoria. I think the song Promises can stand on its own with anything from Pyromania or Hysteria.

 

Aerosmith

 

Many of the hair metal bands tried to incorporate grunge into their sound, with varying degrees of success. Musically, Motley Crue's s/t was the most successful one I have heard. But it's not carrying the torch for hair metal when you get a new singer and make a grunge album.

Bon Jovi, to me, did the best job of it. Instead of going grunge, he stayed with a more pop-rock sound , just matured a bit from the cartoony hair metal of Slippery and New Jersey. He kept doing the power ballads, which is certainly carrying the torch to me.

Poison tried to do something a little different with a new guitarist and Native Tongue. It's not grunge, but it's more that sound than Flesh and Blood was. To me, they only came back to their pop metal roots when that one didn't do what they'd hoped.

 

I was a senior in high school when "All She Wrote" and "Love of a Lifetime" were big, 91-92. That was their first album. The second one had a couple of small hits. I consider Firehouse to be the last 'new' hair metal band to make a success of it. They really were about 3 years too late.