hair metal

maxi

maxi

Well-known member
who else is a fan?

I didn't think I was but I rewatched one my favourite films The Wrestler and realised this time that the soundtrack is amazing. listening to the soundtrack on repeat now.

this is my highlight so far and I was shocked to discover it's from 1999! it's extremely 80s. quite a few of these bands actually seem to have been more active in the 90s than 80s which is strange

I was listening to that Slaughter song thinking, 'this is the most masculine music ever made'. pure cock rock. but then I realised this is hair metal and all these bands look like this:
61f33eca6024ead36beb397760b1dd50.jpg


but it's weird, it's like a fusion of extreme masculine stereotypes and extreme feminine stereotypes. You can hear that in this classic hair metal ballad by the band Cinderella. I don't think I've ever heard a voice that is simultaneously gravelly but also in falsetto. a unique fusion:

An article about the band Tuff:
images


what was going on here? and also please post your favourite hair metal classics
 
V

version

Well-known member
I had a bunch of mates who were really into this stuff in the 2000s. You'd go round and they were always listening to Motley Crue, Guns 'n' Roses, Extreme, Hanoi Rocks. They were really into Manic Street Preachers too and all dressed like they were in these bands: sunglasses, leather jackets, bandanas, long hair, make-up, etc. They had bands of their own, but they never really went anywhere. Was always fun to hang out with them though. They used to sit around in a couple of people's houses, banging pills. There was a guy who'd sit there playing an unplugged bass with pupils like saucers.


 
M

martin

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The bloke bottom right in that Tuff pic looks like the 'Emo Dad' meme :)

Hanoi Rocks were cool - total New York Dolls rip-off, but they did it well. Their drummer Razzle, who died in a carcrash with the Motley Crue singer, also played with anarcho-punks The Apostles for a short while. And all the hot girls liked them.

Dunno if it counts as hair metal, but thought The Cult were ace during their 'Electric'/cock-rock phase.
 
Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Think I said this elsewhere but I saw Michael Rother from Neu! the other week and a lot of his riffs in that sounded like hair metal, I'm guessing before-the-fact
 
mixed_biscuits

mixed_biscuits

_________________________
maxi said:
that fusion of hypermasculine and hyperfeminine
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The hair metallers were pictures of health and, seeing as the male includes a female component, of hybrid vigour: their muscles were as sleek and shapely as any man's, their hair as long and lustrous as any woman's and the excesses of their lifestyles were like the whetstone to sharpen their blade yet further. Compared to the sad sack grungers hiding their pipe cleaner pallid forms under shapeless clothes, strumming their shambolic discordant music with its self-pitying strangulated utterances.
 
luka

luka

Well-known member
when they still had a presence in the culture they disgusted me, i was appaled, it seemed so regressive and aggressively dumb but its one of those things that become more and more charming the more distance we get from it. by some point in the 2000s it became appealing. its so cartoonish, rock reduced to the essentials, everything blown out of proportion, nothing boring lik subtlety or nuance. a bit like lex luger cartoon trap in that sense. c=
 
luka

luka

Well-known member

Reagan Rock and The Cold War.

A particular strain of American rock music which is peculiar to the Cold War. Overblown, belligerent, sweaty without being dirty, a kind of stage sweat. Not sexual. a counterpart to Soviet noble prole propaganda posters. Muscular. Virile. Stanley Kowalski types with big hair. The dignity of...
www.dissensus.com
 
G

germaphobian

Well-known member
mixed_biscuits said:
The hair metallers were pictures of health and, seeing as the male includes a female component, of hybrid vigour: their muscles were as sleek and shapely as any man's, their hair as long and lustrous as any woman's and the excesses of their lifestyles were like the whetstone to sharpen their blade yet further. Compared to the sad sack grungers hiding their pipe cleaner pallid forms under shapeless clothes, strumming their shambolic discordant music with its self-pitying strangulated utterances.
Click to expand...

Grunge decays your body, true. You can see it very well in case of Lane Staley who started as a cock-rocker, but then, due to changes in popular taste and being from Seattle, switched to grunge:

 
V

version

Well-known member
Doubt there are any overt links between the two, perhaps the odd engineer or promoter, but it's intriguing to stick this stuff alongside rave and compare the vibrant, cartoonish colours and aesthetics. Pink and green neon, unbridled hedonism. Interesting to think back to those people I mentioned earlier as they were all heavily into pills and MDMA and would sit around dressed like Axl Rose with their legs going, listening to these bands, like some of my other mates would sit around listening to bassline and hardstyle. Quite incongruous, really. They did the whole Jack Daniels and cigs thing too, mind.
 
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