Ten Worst Albums of the 80's? Do you agree?

Hey, I did a good job of staying out of it this time. Usually I jump head long into the "what is and what isn't metal" discussions. I am darned proud of myself.   

In my initial post, I didn't even make mention that these were the worst "metal" albums, I just said "Ten Worst Albums of the 80's." It didn't even cross my mind that some of this stuff isn't metal by some people's standards. I was just glad someone agreed with me that Hysteria is utter garbage. Haha!

Boris2008 wrote:

Erm, not wanting to defend Duckface or whatever his name is cause he's coming off like a douche. But I've got pretty strong opinions about the music of the 60's, based on the fact that they were kind enough to record it for me and save it till I was old enough to hear it.

I think that I'm a prime example of the fact that being around in the 80's does not mean that I'm going to have the same opinion as you guys because like Count Duckula, I'm European and the one thing that I am absolutely sure of is that Europeans had a slightly different take on this metal thing.

Band after band that we loved followed the same script. Euro band comes along, kicks ass, gets popular in Europe, record label wants to push them in the biggest territory in the world for rock music, America, tells them that in order to break a huge territory like the states they NEED radio play, bring in American producer to help them get the big radio hit, big shot producer convinces them that they have to change their style as this will lead to more money, girls and cocaine, new Americanised album is hated amongst metalheads this side of the Atlantic, band doesn't care as they have now sold 200 squillion copies of the new record and are busy flying around in their solid gold rocket cars. Either that or despite best efforts America didn't get it and they come back to Europe and claim unemployment as even Euro fans hate them now. (Hey Raven!) Only Maiden & Motorhead wouldn't play this game and are considered proper metal as a result. Some bands made the big push for $$$ with alarming regularity but were so great that they just about got away with it (Priest & Rainbow spring to mind) while others lost a huge portion of their fanbase in Europe, none more so than Def Leppard (Saxon deserve a mention too though), I don't know how many copies of Pyromania they sold in the U.K but I would guess that it was less than High & Dry. Hysteria was a huge album over here but with a very different fanbase.

To me and the people that I hung around with, the big push for the American market was the death of many a band and a lot of those records bore no relation to what we grew up on as metal (Sabbath, Priest (pre Screaming) Maiden, Motorhead, Venom, Girlschool, AC/DC, Angel Witch, Accept, Scorpions, early Rainbow) so we didn't think of it as metal. A lot of my friends dug a lot of American stuff (Kiss, Van Halen, Aerosmith etc) but it was geared to American radio in a way that the stuff we loved wasn't, so we didn't see it as metal.

For all of the hate that they get now, the band that did more to change that mindset was Metallica, an American band who loved European metal music and were not the slightest bit interested in recording 'the big radio/MTV hit. Once they hit big, the script became redundant (at least until the Black Album).

So I can understand why you guys see a lot of records as metal when I just don't and I respect that as those records were aimed at you and publicised as metal, but over here we saw things a little differently.    

You made mention of Metallica and their love for European metal, but really Aerosmith were the same way. Their love was The Stones, Yardbirds, Led Zeppelin, Marc Bolan, etc. That was their blueprint, so your point about them trying to get American radio hits isn't really valid. In fact, Aerosmith were considered the bastard child in the 70's. Songs like "Dream On" didn't really become radio hits until years after the albums were released. Ted Nugent was another American heavy rocker from the 70's who was hugely popular despite the lack of radio support or hit singles. In fact, his first hit single didn't happen until his third album and even it was considered "to heavy" for most radio stations. Even shows like Midnight Special wouldn't play stuff like Aerosmith, AC/DC, Kiss or Ted Nugent until the wee hours of the morning because it was considered "too heavy" for the mainstream audiences.

I also don't think that Van Halen was geared towards American radio. VH prospered and became popular at a time when heavy music was not popular in the U.S. and all the magazines and media were asking, "Can Heavy Metal Survive the 80's?" VH didn't really purposely gear themselves for radio until "1984" an garbage like "Jump". Besides, you are forgetting bands like Blue Cheer from the late 60's and The Rods and Riot who were around in the late 70's and were creating music that was decisively heavy metal for that time.

I don't really care what people label bands like Aerosmith, Nugent, Van Halen, Blue Cheer, Riot, etc. I just think it is a bit deceptive to make the claim that all the American bands were "geared to American radio".

Deceptive is a ridiculously strong word dude, for starters I was nine when the seventies ended and I haven't been to the U.S but that's what the records sound like to me, you have to remember that in the era I'm talking about (early/mid 80's) bands like Kiss, Van Halen etc, were going for the radio/MTV hits I'm glad that you don't care what i label them because to me they are not metal and geared towards the American hard rock market. All of the cooler seventies stuff I discovered later and I'll say that it was heavier and less geared to the mainstream, still not really my idea of metal, but to each his own (as I've said from the start of this thread)

I haven't forgotten Blue Cheer at all, they are not really from my era and as such were another band that I discovered much later, but since I have, I've lost count of the times I've said that in my opinion Vincebus Eruptum was the cornerstone of the whole genre, but at the time I'm talking about, I hadn't heard it. I have also never been shy about dishing out the praise for the likes of The Rods or Riot either, totally metal and part of any self respecting English metalheads collection, but they never got big enough to be the game changer that Metallica were. They were the band that in the 80's could be used as the example that you didn't have to water anything down (as so many bands had) to be popular.

I've got nothing against U.S bands and if you read my post it is from the perspective of a teenage me who only really knew of American rock music from what I was hearing at the time (early MTV era) and the way that great European bands were changing to embrace that market.

The meaning of life = 42.

There is no dark side of the moon really, as a matter of fact it's all dark.

Heavy Metal in the 80's became such a broad term that some journalist would try shoe horn bands such as Slade, New York Dolls, Iggy Pop and even Sex Pistols among others.

The term became vogue in the big 80's, but magazines like Kerrange and journalist like Malcolm Dome, Mick Wall and even that dickweed Dave Marsh labeled bands such as Aerosmith, Kiss, and AC/DC as heavy metal.

manny wrote:

Heavy Metal in the 80's became such a broad term that some journalist would try shoe horn bands such as Slade, New York Dolls, Iggy Pop and even Sex Pistols among others.

The term became vogue in the big 80's, but magazines like Kerrange and journalist like Malcolm Dome, Mick Wall and even that dickweed Dave Marsh labeled bands such as Aerosmith, Kiss, and AC/DC as heavy metal.

And the band had no issues with the label nor dressing the part - and it helped sell tons of records

Yeah Kerrang! This was their favorite metal album of 1985



Thank God Metal Forces was around by then!

manny wrote:

Heavy Metal in the 80's became such a broad term that some journalist would try shoe horn bands such as Slade, New York Dolls, Iggy Pop and even Sex Pistols among others.

The term became vogue in the big 80's, but magazines like Kerrange and journalist like Malcolm Dome, Mick Wall and even that dickweed Dave Marsh labeled bands such as Aerosmith, Kiss, and AC/DC as heavy metal.

But magazines from the 1970's were also calling them Heavy Metal. It wasn't just and 80's thing.

Awwww, see now I'm getting suck in.   

As for AC/DC they cover everything that is "classic".

Quote :

As I mentioned, in the 80's, every single one of those albums were consider to be metal albums.

Some of them yes but not all of them.

It went both ways, as punk magazines in the 70s covered AC/DC and Motorhead and considered them to be "punk".

Hadley wrote:

It went both ways, as punk magazines in the 70s covered AC/DC and Motorhead and considered them to be "punk".

Quite true, both bands were based primarily in London in the late seventies and had pretty large punk followings too so the press lumped them in with that scene.

There are actually groups of Motorhead die-hards who consider the band to be a '50s-style rock'n'roll band closest in sound to Chuck Berry, and consider them being called metal a case of dumb metalheads lumping classic rock bands into metal in order to give metal credibility.  

TheGreatDuck wrote:

There are actually groups of Motorhead die-hards who consider the band to be a '50s-style rock'n'roll band closest in sound to Chuck Berry, and consider them being called metal a case of dumb metalheads lumping classic rock bands into metal in order to give metal credibility.  

I think you'll find one of those guys you're rolling your eyes at is Lemmy!   

Motorhead has more in common with 50s rock than almost any other metal band.

Lemmy in the past described Motorhead as "Chuck Berry with a Marshall stack".

I like all those albums to be honest, nothing bad about them, specialy the KISS lp, TURBO by JUDAS, THE FINAL COUNTDOWN by EUROPE (many cool songs on this one), and FREHLEYS COMET record are great.

I disagree with the list and I really like most everything on the list.

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Painkiller wrote:

No Vinnie Vincent Invasion or Stryper? This list is meaningless!

Love VVI, Stryper not so much, they're just too corny lyrically even for my tastes.

.

And Fear Not!

With the ones I heard I'd only say Turbo. It has some decent songs but compared with everyting JP did before...

However, I seem to love a lot of what people here hate (and recently have enjoyed music from a cartoon I won't mention so my opinion is probably invalid ). But I likes what I like and there is no shame in that (at least I still hate Buoyancé, Miley Sluttess, Justin Bleeper, and Wrong Direction).

I haven't heard that Coven album in many many years but I don't remember it being that horrible. I bought it when it came out and liked it alot, although my best friend at the time didn't prefer it very much, and he was a stickler for talented technically capable thrash bands of that era. Maybe he knew something that I didn't, but I liked alot of thrash bands that didn't necessarily overflow with talent but had a cool vibe, like Nuclear Assault or D.R.I. or Coven.

as for the entire list, I like alot of 'em on there but don't regularly listen to about half of them.

DallasBlack wrote:

With the ones I heard I'd only say Turbo. It has some decent songs but compared with everyting JP did before...

However, I seem to love a lot of what people here hate (and recently have enjoyed music from a cartoon I won't mention so my opinion is probably invalid ). But I likes what I like and there is no shame in that (at least I still hate Buoyancé, Miley Sluttess, Justin Bleeper, and Wrong Direction).

I acutally like Miley Cyrus and i'm not ashamed to admit, I don't totally hate beyonce, but do find her rather overrated.