In 1991, a Phoenix-by-way-of-Hollywood glam band had a power ballad that reached number three on Dial MTV, landing between Metallica and Guns N' Roses. Within eighteen months, Atlantic had dropped them, and the genre that defined their commercial existence was effectively over. The lead singer spent the next twenty-eight years doing something stranger and more lasting than the band's brief commercial moment: he became, from the inside, the single most consistent chronicler of the scene he had briefly belonged to. The first installment of One and Done.
In April 1992, a Journey guitarist, two members of Bad English, and two brothers from Brooklyn released an arena-ready hard rock album into a marketplace that no longer existed. Ten years later, a different configuration of mostly the same band released the follow-up. Almost nobody heard either one. A look at Double Eclipse and II — the two albums that bracketed Hardline's actual commercial life, and the gap between them that made the second album the strange artifact it became.
Mentored by Dio, managed by his wife, signed to Warner Bros., opening arenas for the biggest metal acts in America. Rough Cutt had every advantage a 1980s Los Angeles hard rock band could have, and almost none of the success. By the time the band dissolved in 1987, the catalog of musicians who had passed through their ranks read like a list of who actually made it in mid-1980s metal. A retrospective on a band whose history is mostly the history of the bands that emerged from it.
After thirteen years and seven multi-platinum albums, Foreigner's voice walked out. The band that remained — Mick Jones, three sidemen, and an Atlantic Records frontman named Johnny Edwards — made a record that should have worked. It peaked at number 117 on the Billboard 200, the worst chart position of the band's career, and effectively ended Foreigner's run as a commercial force. A long play on the album that exposed exactly what Foreigner had always been — and what it could not be without Lou Gramm.
In 1990, Queensrÿche made the album most progressive metal bands spend their careers chasing. Triple platinum, a top-ten single, Grammy nominations, and the kind of critical respect their genre rarely earned. Then, for the next two decades, they slowly came apart. A retrospective on the long unraveling of a band that did everything right at the wrong moment — and never recovered from being good enough to succeed.
In 1994, the biggest glam metal band in America fired their lead singer, hired a stranger with a different voice, and made the most ambitious record of their career. It debuted at number seven on the Billboard 200 and was certified gold within seven weeks. Then the audience walked away, the tour collapsed into half-filled clubs, and within three years the experiment was over. A long play on the album that was supposed to save Mötley Crüe and instead got quietly written out of their own history.
Most hair metal bands of their tier released two or three albums in the 1990s and then disappeared. Warrant released eight, played every genre the decade offered, fought constantly, and produced one of the strangest discographies of any band that came out of the Sunset Strip. A retrospective on the post-Cherry Pie decade — and on three studio records that deserve to be heard for what they actually are, rather than for what their commercial trajectory suggested.
In 2007, four decades into their career, Scorpions made the strangest album of their lives — a concept record about a war between humans and machines, co-written with Bon Jovi's hitmaker, featuring Billy Corgan singing about Jesus and John 5 playing guitar on the opening track. Almost nobody bought it. This is the case for taking it seriously anyway.
