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

tesla and europe are not hair bands, hell many of the if not ALL of the bands in your ;list are not hair metal, may be a few are but i very much dislike that genre label of "HAIR"

they are all kick a$$ rock bands with a few exceptions.

 

I stand corrected. So the answer is NO ONE was putting out good hair metal after Nirvana. Seriously. You’d have to look to the soundtrack to the film “Rockstar” for something that late.

 

How did you skip it?

 

No one is, but Rush certainly isn't!

 

Honestly in terms of popularity, as soon as "Smells like Teen Spirit" hit, hair metal was done. In an instant. Like the death of disco, it was instant. I think it's fair to say not one of the bands on your list made a significant artistic impact after Nirvana exploded (which was a little while after the album was released). I was thinking Queensryche when I read the title of the thread, but they were more prog-metal. I was 16 when I first saw the Nirvana video and I remembered thinking how cool it was. Pearl Jam and Soundgarden blew up shortly after and next thing you know my buddies and I were going to goodwill to buy flannel shirts to look like our heroes. I chose "Skid Row' because that Monkey Business album was pretty good, but they weren't cool anymore.

 

Grunge was just a copy of earlier hard- and noise-rock. They had smart videos and stuff, but unless you were a child at the time grunge really wasn't a big deal though it was one of the reasons for the death of hair metal.

To me, hair metal was the last really new genre in pop/rock music. After that the music died and since then it has been almost entirely about videos, commercials and marketing / psychology.

 

I think Rush is a rock band.....that adapted to the HairMetal scene.

 

Hell, think about it: how could Santana get such a bestseller (Supernatural) ? It wasn't remotely among his best albums. The music itself didn't matter that much anymore.

 

My perception (only in 6th-7th grade at the time) was that Hair metal was already dying well before Nirvana hit. The biggest thing in 5th grade was Posion, then in 6th grade it was Color Me Badd. I'm sure that wasn't the case among exclusive rock/metal fans but as a pop music juggernaut it wasn't there anymore. Rock fans were already cast adrift before Nirvana showed up, and that to me was their impact more than some sea-change from hair metal. They were quickly eclipsed by Pearl Jam and Metallica, but it put rock music back as the dominant trend again.

My choice, not on the poll, is Aerosmith. As a kid in those times I perceived no difference between the pop-metal of groups like Poison or Cinderella, in terms of their look and sound and how they were packaged on MTV and radio, vs. legacy hard rock acts like Aerosmith, or Van Halen, or Def Leppard, and Aerosmith was as big as ever after Nirvana and grunge came on the scene.

 

The thread is about Hair Metal bands, not non-HM bands who "adapted". There are plenty who "adapted" in that period.

Crud, REM were a rock band who did just fine in the Hair Metal era - should we vote for them in this thread, too?

 

Changed the channel, I mean.

 

Even though Cinderella and Tesla should not be considered Hair Metal there not, I voted for them, Great White also should not be considered Hair Metal, and don't let the album cover for Cinderellas Night Songs fool you into believing that there a Hair Metal band. Long Cold Winter is hardly a cheesey Hair Metal fest or anything from Tesla or Great White for that matter. These bands are hard blues rock bands and good ones at that.

 

That is crazy talk. There is a pretty big new wave of hair metal resurgence happening right now and for the last several years. Of course, it will never be topping charts like it was 30 years ago but there are tons of good, current hair metal bands out there. The first album I usually suggest is Generation Wild by Crashdiet.

 

From the list Tesla, but, Y&T beats 'em all to me.

 

Dokken '94
What Price
Shadows Of Life
Long Way Home
The Maze
Nothing Left To Say
Lesser Of Two Evils
Inside Looking Out
Sweet Chains
Too High To Fly

Dysfunctional
Inside Looking Out (remix)
Hole In My Head (new song)
The Maze (remix)
Too High To Fly (remix/extended intro)
Nothing Left To Say
Shadows Of Life (remix)
Long Way Home (remix)
Sweet Chains
Lesser Of Two Evils
What Price
From The Beginning (new song)

I think that covers it...
Overall I prefer the '94 mixes as they are raw and in your face. Mick has a particularly good drum sound. The two most radical changes are Too High To Fly which has a minute added to it on Dysfunctional of George's intro and Long Way Home which has some Diary of a Madman style chanting in the middle break.

 

i'm glad i'm not the only one who is baffled by folks calling grunge something new at the time ...

 

I'd say Bon Jovi did. They're still huge and never really have had a drop off since Slippery When Wet. Def Leppard wasn't really a 'glam/hair' band though they did dabble in it, but their origins come much earlier. Mötley Crüe are a decent candidate.

 

Guns ‘n Roses. I know many don’t consider them Hair Metal but songs such as Paradise City and November Rain sure embody elements of that “genre” to my ears. And they certainly had long teased hair, misogynistic lyrics and a singer with your classic hair metal high-pitched squeal. Obviously they didn’t do much after Illusions but they remained kinda popular through the early to mid 90s grunge years.

 

And I think the two have more or less nothing to do with one another. Nothing.

 

PS - there is no such thing as "hair metal"
The term is HEAVY METAL.

 

thank you. I might try to find the 1994 version

 

Many of those bands in that list never sniffed the term heavy metal.

 

Because he paired up with a lot of "hot" performers at the time (like Rob Thomas), plus his label promoted it on the back of the "Latin explosion" of '99.

Think I'll go listen to Lotus now!

 

I believe I spent most of my time during the grunge era with The Black Crowes.

 

Rush did nothing at all that resembled the glam metal scene. If anything they went more in a more new wave direction in the early eighties to almost a jazz fusion sound by the late 80’s. The grunge scene certainly influenced them to get much harder again by the time Counterparts came out in ‘93.