While Def Leppard had obviously wanted to write big-sounding anthems on their previous records, Pyromania was where the band's vision coalesced and gelled into something more. More than ever before, the band's songs on Pyromania are driven by catchy, shiny melodic hooks instead of heavy guitar riffs, although the latter do pop up once in a while. ...
As the sixth domestic Aerosmith hits collection and the first to feature selections from both their Columbia and Geffen years (not to mention that it's the second double-disc retrospective released within eight months), The Ultimate Aerosmith Hits should live up to its title -- and it does, for the most part. Over the course of two discs and 30 ...
Def Leppard was untouchable in the '80s. Over the course of four albums, the band established itself as one of the best and most popular hard rock/heavy metal groups of the decade, scoring a long list of hit singles. Vault compiles the biggest of those hits, as well as selections from their first album of the '90s, Adrenalize, and the outtakes ...
At the time of its release, much of the fuss surrounding 1984 involved Van Halen's adoption of synthesizers on this, their sixth album -- a hoopla that was a bit of a red herring since the band had been layering in synths since their third album, Women and Children First. Those synths were either buried beneath guitars or used as texture, even on ...
Aerosmith's Greatest Hits remains one of the most popular and enduring best-of collections by any rock band, selling nearly ten million copies in the U.S. alone since its release. But when it was issued in 1980, the band had just about reached its nadir. With original guitarist Joe Perry gone (and Brad Whitford soon to follow), Aerosmith had ...
Among revolutionary rock albums, Van Halen's debut often gets short shrift. Although it altered perceptions of what the guitar could do, it is not spoken of in the same reverential tones as Are You Experienced? and although it set the template for how rock & roll sounded for the next decade or more, it isn't seen as an epochal generational shift, ...
After two pure party albums, the inevitable had to happen: it was time for Van Halen to mature, or at least get a little serious. And so, Women and Children First, a record where the group started to get heavier, both sonically and, to a lesser extent, thematically, changing the feel of the band ever so slightly. Where the first two records were ...
The 2005 double-disc set Rock of Ages: The Definitive Collection is the second Def Leppard compilation to be released in the U.S. The first, Vault: Def Leppard Greatest Hits, appeared ten years earlier, and while the band was active in the decade separating the two albums, charting fairly consistently, it didn't have any major hits during that ...
It's no secret that there's a deep animosity between Van Halen -- particularly their leader, guitarist Edward (formerly Eddie) Van Halen -- and their former frontman, David Lee Roth. His 1985 departure was acrimonious, and while his solo career paled in comparison to Van Halen's continued success with Sammy Hagar as their frontman, the group never ...
Fair Warning was such a dark, intense record that Van Halen almost had no choice but to lighten up on their next album, and 1982's Diver Down is indeed much lighter than its predecessor. In many ways, it's a return to the early albums, heavy on covers and party anthems, but where those records were rough and exuberant -- they felt like the work ...
Of all the early Van Halen records, Fair Warning often gets overlooked -- partially because it's a dark, strange beast, partially because it lacks any song as purely fun as the hits from the first three records. Because of that, there were no hits from Fair Warning that turned into radio anthems; only "Unchained" and, to a lesser extent, the ...
Backing away from the diversity of OU812, Van Halen turns in some of the most basic, straightforward rock & roll of the band's career on For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge. At times, FUCK recalls the sleek hard rock of Hagar's early-'80s albums. The band is still tight and professional, and Eddie's guitar work remains impressive. The anthemic "Right ...
The material on Skid Row is mostly typical pop-metal fluff, but since Skid Row was one of the hardest bands to find commercial success during the hair metal fad, the songs sound angrier and more aggressive than the lyrics and hooks might indicate. Part of this is due simply to the musical talent in the band, and part of it is due to vocalist ...
Where Pyromania had set the standard for polished, catchy pop-metal, Hysteria only upped the ante. Pyromania's slick, layered Mutt Lange production turned into a painstaking obsession with dense sonic detail on Hysteria, with the result that some critics dismissed the record as a stiff, mechanized pop sell-out (perhaps due in part to Rick Allen's ...
Long Cold Winter is a transition album for Cinderella, mixing pop-metal tunes with better hooks than those on Night Songs with a newfound penchant for gritty blues-rock à la the Stones or Aerosmith. The ballads -- the grandiose "Don't Know What You Got (Till It's Gone)" and the excellent, lower-key "Coming Home" -- are what made the album ...
From the opener, "Runaway," which rode to glory on Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band-mate Roy Bittan's distinctive keyboard riff, to the sweaty arena rock of "Get Ready," which closes the album, Bon Jovi's debut is an often-overlooked minor gem from the heyday of hair metal. The songs may be simple and the writing prone to all the clichés of the ...
By trying to give the David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar eras equal space, The Best of Van Halen, Vol. 1 winds up a little uneven. The first eight songs run through several of Diamond Dave's biggest songs -- "Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love," "Runnin' With the Devil," "And the Cradle Will Rock," "Jump," and "Panama." It's hard to argue with any of the ...
Although Meat Loaf has made several albums since Bat Out of Hell, Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell is an explicit sequel to that milestone of '70s pop culture. Reprising the formula of the original nearly to the letter, Back Into Hell is bombastic and has too much detail, thanks to the pseudo-operatic splendor of Jim Steinman's grandly cinematic ...
Big Ones serves up the hits and nothing but the hits; Aerosmith's excellent debut for Geffen, Done with Mirrors, is conveniently overlooked. So what's left is some of the finest mainstream hard rock of the late '80s and early '90s -- the fruits of one of the most remarkable comebacks in rock & roll history. Unfortunately, there's precious little ...
Extreme came into its own on the concept album Pornograffitti, with the band's strongest set of songs and an intellectual theme revolving around the struggle for genuine love and romance in a sleazy, decadent society full of greed and corruption. The band shows a strong desire to experiment and push the boundaries of the pop-metal format, adding a ...
The much-ballyhooed reunion of the original Aerosmith lineup had pretty much fallen flat on its face after 1985's hit-and-miss Done With Mirrors. Realizing that the band simply couldn't do it alone, A&R guru John Kalodner capitalized on the runaway success of Run-D.M.C.'s cover of "Walk This Way" and decided to draft in the day's top hired hands, ...
The Calling are a modern rock band circa 2001 comprised of a bunch of reasonably decent-looking 20somethings with a slick, glossy sheen who perform anthemic ("Unstoppable") and balladic ("Wherever You Will Go") songs on Camino Palmero. ~ Bret Love , All Music Guide
Even amidst the already seedy underbelly of the late-'80s L.A. glam metal scene, L.A. Guns were the undisputed bottom-feeders. A ragged collection of outcasts from various other bands (guitarist Tracii Guns was the original "guns" in Guns n' Roses, drummer Steven Riley had recently vacated the stool with shock-kings W.A.S.P., and British vocalist ...
The power struggle within Van Halen was often painted as David Lee Roth's ego running out of control -- a theory that was easy enough to believe given his outsized charisma -- but in retrospect, it seems evident that Eddie Van Halen wanted respect to go along with his gargantuan fame, and Roth wasn't willing to play. Bizarrely enough, Sammy Hagar ...
The somber black and white cover could have been a knowing allusion to Meet the Beatles!, but it's really a signal that Van Halen is playing it for keeps on OU812, their second record with Sammy Hagar. Indeed, the striking thing about OU812 is that all its humor is distilled into a silly punny title, because even the party tunes here -- and there ...
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