Embarassing Metal Bands You Love!

[Ian Jane Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close Ian Jane]

So with the Slow News Day thread turning into a hair metal love fest, it's time to split it off.

As mentioned, I saw Warrant with Cinderella, Slaughter and the Bullet Boys.

I also saw Warrant on a bill with Aerosmith, The Black Crowes and Metallica, which was weird.

I saw Skid Row open for Aerosmith on Aerosmith's PUMP tour and loved every minute of it. It was also the first time I saw real boobs when the girl behind me was kind enough to release the hostages for Sebastian Bach during Skid Row's set.

At one point in my life I owned everything Stryper had ever recorded.

I once had a Poison t-shirt that I wore with no shame and still consider myself a fan of their first three albums.

In 3rd grade I had a Motley Crue 'Theater Of Pain' button that I found on the playground. I liked Crue cause of the Smokin' In The Boys room video. It had a pentagram on it and I wore it and got in trouble with my mom so then I drew the Crue logo WITH the damn pentagram on my pencil case. Take that mom!

My step-brother once filled in for the guitarist in Ugly Kid Joe. Remember them? He also took vocal lessons from the guy in Helix. I was kinda jealous of this, actually.

I like Animalize a lot.

When Def Leppard was touring for Hysteria they played Buffalo. Tickets went on sale while I was to be in school, I knew they'd sell out. I told my mom that I needed to get out of school early to get tickets and she wouldn't let me. When school ended she drove me to the mall, the damn show was sold out. I was so upset that she took me to the record store and bought me a triangular Def Leppard logo patch that she then sewed onto the back of my jean jacket. I wore that thing until I outgrew it and can still sing along to every single song on Hysteria without messing up a word.

This is not my jacket but it more or less looked like this.

[Scott Intellectual Carrot Find all posts View Profile Close Scott]

I like Animalize a lot.

This was the first KISS album I owned. My uncle had all their early albums and got me into them, so I asked my mom if she would buy me one and after work one day she came home with the ANIMALIZE cassette. I loved it.

I don't listen to KISS anymore but I do still like Strutter.

[Roderick Butthorn Find all posts View Profile Close Roderick]

I was a punk rock kid from early on so I turned up my nose to most metal unless it was thrash or pretended to be satanic. But I did have a secret appreciation for Cinderella and to a much lesser extent Poison because they were so stupid and on occasion CC sounded a little bit like Steve Jones.

[Apronikoff Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Apronikoff]

In 3rd grade I had a Motley Crue 'Theater Of Pain' button that I found on the playground. I liked Crue cause of the Smokin' In The Boys room video. It had a pentagram on it and I wore it and got in trouble with my mom so then I drew the Crue logo WITH the damn pentagram on my pencil case. Take that mom!

I was raised in a ridiculously strict/conservative Christian denomination (I love to freak people out with the story of the demented church camp I went to...lol), so around about the time I turned 13 I rebelled hard against all that in every way I could think of. Thankfully the dangerous/criminal aspects of that rebellion were short-lived. What lasted longer was my fascination with metal and "satanism."

My pastor had a bunch of pamphlets warning against the dangers of all the hidden satanic messages in metal music. Rather than convince me that heavy metal was dangerous -- those pamphlets told me how awesome that stuff was...haha. In the little Texas town I was living in, there was no place to buy music except for Wal-Mart so I couldn't be picky -- anything that seemed like it might be dangerous or rebellious I lapped up. So, whereas before this I'd only ever owned movie soundtracks, now I started buying a wide assortment of hard rock/heavy metal music with no discrimination between good and bad. It just had to be popular enough to be found in a Wal-Mart. So I got Metallica, Guns and Roses, Motley Crue, Anthrax, Megadeth, Faith no More, AC/DC, Danzig, White Zombie, Misfits, Type O Negative, Slaughter, Life of Agony, Ugly Kid Joe, Jackyl, Ministry, Nine Inch Nails all in the same time period (91-93.)

And of course I wanted the world to know how rebellious and cool I was (who wouldn't!) I drew pentagrams and upside down crosses all over my textbook covers. More monumentally, I cobbled together a "metal" wardrobe out of whatever I could find at the nearest mall, Six Flags (!) and Wal-Mart and convince my mother to let me buy/wear. So I had a gigantic skull ring, a variety of rock shirts (my favorite was my Metallica "Ride the Lightning" T-shirt that I bought from a mail-order company I found in Guitar World magazine), and combat boots that I tucked my jeans into. Thankfully my mother was too embarrassed to take any photos of me in this era, so no records exist of my ridiculousness.

Given that prior to this I had been such a quiet, bookish boy -- a good Christian and straight-A student -- pretty much everybody I knew decided that I'd had a stroke or been possessed. I had "talking to's" from the deacons of my church, my vice-principal, various aunts, even some of my friends who hadn't joined me on the highway to hell. Good times.

The live music highlight of this era was seeing the Guns and Roses/Metallica tour at Texas Stadium in 1992. Metallica put on a pretty badass show, even with Hetfield out of commission as guitarist. The GnR show, however, ended my infatuation with that band. Axl Rose was such a pathetic, whiny little turd that I never really listened to them again after that...

[Andrew Monroe Pallid Hands Find all posts View Profile Close Andrew Monroe]

By the time the hair metal bands came along I was more into punk and thrash so I pretty much hated them all. I did like Def Leppard's On Through The Night album - saw them on that tour. They opened for Scorpions (Animal Magnetism tour) and Ted Nugent (Scream Dream). They were much more NWOBHM at that point. Wasted is a great song. One hair band I liked some was Europe, mainly because the guitar player, John Norum, played a very melodic style ala Blackmore and Schenker. Got The Final Countdown for my birthday when it came out and played the hell out of it. I still like the 2 albums that came out prior to that one, they were much heavier, particularly the first one which had a song about THE BEYOND on it! Way before that was cool.

I liked plenty of goofy metal bands back in the early 80s though (and still like some of 'em). I've mentioned Faithful Breath before, the music was very Accept style German metal but they looked hilarious. April Wine was a band I liked a fair amount. Nature Of The Beast was a particular fav, Crash And Burn was actually a pretty heavy song but overall a huge waste of 3 (!) guitar players. Warlord was one of those bands that take themselves oh-so-seriously and had a drummer who makes the term "busy" seem lethargic.

[Ian Jane Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close Ian Jane]

No shame in On Through The Night, Andrew. It's a pretty good record on legit terms.

Apro - we're cut from a similar cloth. My mom & dad were both pretty religious as I was growing up. Though my grandfather was a minister he also got me into horror movies and was a very accepting type, cool with letting me be a kid and be into the type of stuff that I was going to be into, this usually had a trickle down effect on my mom. My dad, however, came from a much more conservative family and while most of the time he'd be okay with what he knew I was listening to, there was a lot of stuff I hid from both him and my mother.

I remember that one of the church's in town had a 'Know what evil music your kids are listening to' night and that my dad dragged me to it to make me aware how a lot of this stuff would damn my soul. It was the typical type of presentation you'd expect to be delivered by someone with a strange agenda - Highway To Hell album covers as proof that we'd all turn into pagans for listening to AC/DC, stuff like that.

When the presentation was over we were invited to ask the speaker questions and I asked him if it was okay to listen to Phil Collins and if listening to Phil Collins would send me to Hell or not. No Jacket Required had just come out and it was pretty hot stuff. He told me that while Phil Collins' music might seem innocent enough it was actually very sexual and not appropriate for someone my age or any good Christian for that matter.

The eighties were pretty stupid in a lot of ways.

Oh and my dad took me to see Petra when I was a kid. All I remember about the show was that they had keytars and parachute pants and that the show was at the Darian Lake amusement park in upstate New York and I was stoked because they had roller coasters there.

[Todd Jordan Smut is good. Find all posts View Profile Close Todd Jordan]

Bleeding over from the Slow News thread....I do not love White Lion.

I like lots of hair crap, but its one song here, one song there. I got into thrash around 1984, pretty early on, due to hanging out with older kids and an older brother's influence. To me, hair bands were always suckbags and fake, but most of them pumped out at least a good song or two.

Other than a couple of Whitesnake albums (love listening to John Sykes play guitar) and the Scorpions, in all honesty I never bought into any of the MTV "metal".

Not really a very good contribution to the thread.

[Ian Jane Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close Ian Jane]

Bleeding over from the Slow News thread....I do not love White Lion.

Except that you sing Little Fighter and in your head it's about your dog. Isn't that what you told me?

I think that qualifies.

[Todd Jordan Smut is good. Find all posts View Profile Close Todd Jordan]

Darian Lake amusement park in upstate New York and I was stoked because they had roller coasters there.

I've been there...nice big wooden roller coaster.

Def Leppard is one of the bands I hated as a youth, and I still don't like them, but I can appreciate them. Wasted is a great tune. I always liked Photograph too, but for me all their stuff sounded the same.

[Todd Jordan Smut is good. Find all posts View Profile Close Todd Jordan]

Except that you sing Little Fighter and in your head it's about your dog. Isn't that what you told me?

I think that qualifies.

I don't recall the dog thing. I do like the song though. I have it. Hate that singer though.

But I could have said that about the dog. Wouldn't put it past me. You and I have shared a few moments of drunken bliss together.

[Andrew Monroe Pallid Hands Find all posts View Profile Close Andrew Monroe]

Other than a couple of Whitesnake albums (love listening to John Sykes play guitar) and the Scorpions, in all honesty I never bought into any of the MTV "metal".

Not to derail the thread too much, but I liked Sykes too. He was in Tygers Of Pan Tang and then played on a good Thin Lizzy album - Thunder and Lightning and the live one. I didn't like the idea of him singing for Lizzy when they toured this past decade though, there is no Thin Lizzy w/o Lynott (and yet another version of the band is recording a new album now) and I heard the live album they released...they metalled up the older songs too much.

[Ian Jane Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close Ian Jane]

I caught some live footage on the Palladium channel of Thin Lizzy with Sykes fronting, and you're right, it didn't do it for me.

On an embarrassing metal you love note, I remember getting dumped by my girlfriend of two weeks right around the time Bon Jovi's You Give Love A Bad Name hit the big time. Man did that song ever speak to me. Teared me up a little bit a few times listening to it over and over again on my Sony Walkman into the late hours of the night. But then Born To Be My Baby would come on and then there'd be hope for my broken heart.

I was eleven and probably, on a technical level at least, suffering from some sort of mental illness.

[Andrew Monroe Pallid Hands Find all posts View Profile Close Andrew Monroe]

I have very bittersweet memories of You Give Love...too, Ian. I was with the lass who was probably to this day the love of my life. It was a good point in the relationship when that song was huge and I used to mess with her, she'd be in the bathroom getting ready to go out or something and I would jump in the doorway and yell "shot thru the heart...." haha. Would have to peel her off the ceiling. Had and have some terrific relationships but she was THE ONE.

[Roderick Butthorn Find all posts View Profile Close Roderick]

Whenever my brother and I heard that song we used to change the lyrics to:

Shot to the balls
And you're in pain...

[Roderick Butthorn Find all posts View Profile Close Roderick]

I always used to call them Bon Scroti due to a GWAR shirt I had. It's hard to see in this picture, but the "before" guy in panel two is wearing a Bon Scroti shirt.