Slaughter
Belly to Belly
By Joshua Green
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Now, hair metal may not lend itself to Ratliff’s grand pronouncements about metal’s ties to epistemology and the power struggles of the working class–it’s metal for teenagers who just want to rock ‘n’ roll all night. But for better or for worse, it’s not dead. It does, however, have an image problem–and more than half of image is age. Unlike the recent ska and lounge revivals, the current wave of hair metal finds its energy not in newer, younger bands who’ve chosen to resurrect the banner but in the same groups that cleaned up the first time around. Here’s the problem: Rockers like Sting and Eric Clapton can slide gracefully into middle age, and so can the Stones, with a wink and a nod. Even Metallica can segue to slower, more accessible music without losing too much credibility. But there’s just no way to inconspicuously abandon the excesses of hair metal–including the excessive hair–without diminishing its appeal considerably.
Recently CMC released three new albums from some of the finest hair wavers of the 80s: Warrant, Slaughter, and Dokken. There was a time when you couldn’t surf past MTV without catching one or the other of them leering gleefully at the camera. Two of these bands, Warrant and Slaughter, will test Lipsky’s theory about hair metal’s enduring live appeal this week at House of Blues, on a bill with Firehouse and Quiet Riot. But if the albums are any indication of what’s to come onstage, I can’t imagine how even the nostalgia factor that buoys Styx nowadays can help these guys.
