Best Hair Metal albums of all time-25-21

Before I begin the countdown I just have a few more rules. Live albums and anthologies are not eligible for the list, just studio LPs and EPs. A band can have more than one album on the list. So here we go.


25-Poison-Look what the cat dragged in (1986)
This may be at the top of some people's lists. The playing is very basic, but this is an influential album in this style.


24-Smash Alley-Too late to say no (2007)
Chicago's Smash Alley were active back in the hair metal hey day, but this wasn't released until just a few years ago. Very solid hair metal with strong riffs. If they have left the two ballads off then I may have had the album even higher on the list.


23-Witch-The hex is on (1984)
This EP was very rough and raw. These guys had a sound somewhere between early Motley Crue and WASP.


22-LA Guns-s/t (1988)
This is short and to the point. Nothing fancy, but just slick hair metal.


21-TKO-In your face (1984)
Such an underrated band. I liked all their albums, but this was the best one.

Numbers 20-16 coming Friday.

Liberty n' Justice-Light it up

Retroactive
2010

Bass player/songwriter returns with a variety of supporting musicians to help him with his Christian hard rock album including current/former members of Def Leppard, Warrant, Stryper, Dokken, Firehouse, LA Guns and others. However one listen has me thinking of the Love Boat. You get a hodge podge of people that all did something kind of known in the past, but here they are kind of thrown together with so-so writing and not much direction. That's how much of this plays out. I read the credits to see who was coming next, but even normally good performers like Phil Lewis and Robert Mason sound less than inspired. I can't blame too much because most of the material is about as drab as it gets with plenty of warmed over riffs too. Many of the tracks are bland and they manage to seem twice as long as they really are. Out of fourteen tracks there were only two real standouts. The surprise one was "Wrestling with God" with Pete Loran and Steve Brown of Trixter plus Bumblefoot from G-n-R. Nothing wrong with Bumblefoot, but Trixter were one of the absolute worst abominations to unleash their no-talent, hair-sprayed selves on the hard rock world. However here they are part of a fairly catchy song with some striking hooks. Not bad at all. Now before I even removed this disc from it's sleeve I knew the song I was most interested in was "Drunk Dead Gorgeous" Marq Torien of the Bulletboys and Chris Holmes formerly of WASP. My interest was due to the fact that I am a huge WASP fan. Not that Holmes was ever great, but he was good and he played on most of WASP's best albums. He doesn't disappoint here either as the rhythms sound similar to WASP around the time of say "Inside the electric circus". However it's Torien who really sells this song. It's not the best written song, but he gets in there with voice, elevates the energy level and pulls everything he can from it. Fine track and performances indeed. Not a good album at all, but it was worth a listen just for that one song.

Some more mini-reviews

I am still making it through that stack of older CDs that I picked up a few weeks ago. I am finding that some are gems, some are not and the rest fall at different levels in between. So here are five more that I listened to this past week.

Budgie-Power Supply (1980)
It was the 80's and Budgie had changed guitarists yet this was probably their best album in six years at that point. A much heavier, more raw album than they had done in some time. This one gets overlooked far too often because too many people assume this was after their prime.

Survivor-Vital Signs (1984)
Almost every song sound like something that someone would pick to have played at their wedding. I like some AOR and the vocals are strong, but this is just so sappy that I can only take it in small doses. Plus the fact that so many songs here were overplayed on the radio back in 84-85.

Cycle sluts from hell (1991)
This is a mixed bag overall and I actually bought this on cassette when it came out. Some of the songs are joke songs and they work, but then they try to be sort of serious and those songs are just alright. It would have been stronger as just a total joke album.

MSG-Save yourself (1989)
I liked when Robin McAuley sang for MSG, he had a good voice and was a nice fit. This album is decent, but it's a just a bit retrained at times. It really seemed like they needed for the music to just explode a little more and the album could have used that extra energy.

LA Guns-Cocked and loaded (1989)
I think I wore out a copy of this on cassette back then. It's still good, but not nearly as explosive as I remember it being. I think this band's biggest problem was that even when they rocked they had problems really defining their own sound.

The Budgie CD was the only one I had not heard before. The Survivor CD was about like I remembered it being, the LA Guns and Cycle Sluts were not as good as I remember them being and the MSG one may have been a little better than I remember it being years ago. There you go, I may post some more of these as I eventually make it through the rest of the pile.