In the 90's almost all 80's metal was considered hair metal!

Bands such as Dokken, Europe (outside of that appalling hit), Winger, White Lion, etc., remain in heavy rotation for me...love 'em all.

That Poison riff is just weak, the whole song sounds uninspired. Perhaps they have better stuff, to be honest I never listened to their records.

Europe, however, that's another story. Their 'appalling hit' is what got me into guitar music in the first place. Everyone just called it hard rock so I don't know that they belong in this topic (same with Def Leppard, Bon Jovi). They evidently had their phase with big hair and make up but the music was never so pop. The rhythm guitars got dialed down in favour of keyboards on The Final Countdown but John Norum's shredding still had a prominent place in the mix. Even the ballads, like "Carrie", are great songs. Really well-written stuff. I consider their first album to be metal, since it's so riff-heavy and has that feel.

(Unfortunately?) kinda true. There were some metal nerds who made distinctions and were "accurately" using subgenres, but ultimately the average consumer wasn't really filing Iron Maiden, Dio and Dokken in separate categories.

There was a vague awareness of the ridiculousness of lumping Metallica, Saint Vitus, Slayer, etc. in with the same zeitgeist as hair metal, and that awareness got more pronounced as the descendants of bands like that got more and more extreme. Which eventually led to the current obsession with micro-labels we have now. But I think being able to go from Motley Crue to Slayer in the 80s and getting your shoes blown off without really expecting it was part of the appeal of metal in the 80s.

pure shit

This is basically how I ended up getting radicalized as a metal separatist in the mid to late 90s when I was in high school. When people started conflating Black Sabbath's Dehumanizer and Dio's Lock Up The Wolves with hair metal, I basically checked out of the mainstream rock radio craze. Though to be fair, I noticed that there was a lot less of that when the late 90s nu-metal craze started versus the early post-grunge period from 1995 through 1997.

Do you ever wonder if there was a staff room meeting about you? With the teachers asking whether or not they should be worried about "metal radicialisation?" I'm just imagining some kid wearing chain mail storming through the corridors screaming "Dream Evil rules, dickheads!" or something of that ilk.

Do you ever wonder if there was a staff room meeting about you? With the teachers asking whether or not they should be worried about "metal radicialisation?" I'm just imagining some kid wearing chain mail storming through the corridors screaming "Dream Evil rules, dickheads!" or something of that ilk.

I went to a religious HS and got my balls busted CONSTANTLY for having long hair and wearing band shirts...I'm sure the staff talked about me and the one other metalhead lol.

It was my gateway into metal (via my sister who introduced me to it). I never fully got into the glam scene, though there were a few bands I liked, and even now still an album or two I like to spin every once in a while. For me it was Motley Crue, LA Guns, Skid Row, Slaughter, and WASP. I kind of don't think WASP quite belong lumped in with the rest of them though. They were always heavier and faster, and their shows were meant to shock, not dazzle.

I'm still partial to Skid Row's "Slave to the Grind" (listening to it right now). It's heavier than their debut overall, and the title track has that killer fucking riff that really wouldn't be out of place on a thrash album. Another one is LA Gun's "Hollywood Vampires." One of my favourites. It's cheesy AF but has so many great moments. To me it sounds like it has a little darkness running through it which, even when I was a kid, was certain to grab my attention (in particular Over the Edge). I always did gravitate to darker tunes.

Slave to the Grind is a really unique record in that most hair bands got LESS heavy as they went along, but Skid Row was one of the few who decided to up the ante with their followup record.

. I kind of don't think WASP quite belong lumped in with the rest of them though. They were always heavier and faster, and their shows were meant to shock, not dazzle.

Yeah, WASP is and always has been a metal band. They even toured with Slayer in the mid 80s (although I'd hate to be the band that followed Slayer during their halcyon days).