Loook back at 1987/Look ahead to 1988

Hope you have enjoyed or at least tolerated my top ten albums of 1987 as well as the other awards I wrote on. That's going to wrap up 1987 and it was quite a good year come to think of it. There was largely quality and quantity as more bands were still popping up and major labels were continuing to pull metal bands in. Headbangers Ball was becoming a staple for metal fans and lesser known bands were getting some decent exposure as well. It looked metal was on the rise and it would seem that 1988 was going to be a great year. So what happened? Well, since my top ten albums for 1988 is almost a year away, I don't want to say too much. Yet I will say that it turned out to be a bit of a weak year for metal overall. There were more big name bands that released albums in 1988 than in 1987, but that didn't matter. It's not so much that there were a great deal of bad albums in 1988, but there were plenty of weak and average ones for sure. I also think that this was the year where major labels started to get a little out of control with signing just anyone to a deal. That also hurt the independent metal labels as they lost artists to the major labels because they couldn't compete with them. I remember reading an article in the summer of 1988 talking about the decline of attendance at arena shows for metal bands so far in 1988. They mentioned how acts like AC/DC, Van Halen, Scorpions, Maiden and Priest were having trouble filling arenas for the first time in the decade. It was true and if it hadn't have been for the popularity (I am not saying quality) of some releases later in the year then metal may have begun to really dip in 1988 instead of in 91-92. That's enough for now though, I will save more thoughts and random rants for next year.

***If you have suggestions on how I could improve the awards for when I do 1988 next December then let me know now.