Deep Cuts

Music writing for the long play

Category

Retrospectives

  1. Two Eclipses: Hardline and the Album That Couldn't Be Followed

    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.

    By Deep Cuts · Issue 03 · · 16 min read

  2. Cut from the Same Cloth: Rough Cutt and the Bands That Outgrew Them

    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.

    By Deep Cuts · Issue 02 · · 14 min read

  3. The Crumbling Empire: Queensrÿche After 1990

    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.

    By Deep Cuts · Issue 02 · · 28 min read

  4. What Warrant Did After the Party Ended

    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.

    By Deep Cuts · Issue 02 · · 31 min read

  5. Lillian Axe and the Long Pursuit of a Hit

    They had Ratt's manager. They had Ratt's guitarist as their producer. They were nearly fronted by Warrant's Jani Lane. For seven years across four albums, Lillian Axe were the band the industry kept handing the right introductions to, and the audience kept walking past.

    By Deep Cuts · Issue 01 · · 18 min read

  6. The Cockroach Problem: How Danger Danger Lost Five Years to a Lawsuit

    A gold debut, a respectable follow-up, and then the strangest stretch of legal and creative chaos in late hair metal. A retrospective on a band who recorded their third album twice, released the wrong version of it, and missed the only window they had left.

    By Deep Cuts · Issue 01 · · 16 min read

  7. Vain Saw It Coming: A Band Watching the Door Close in Real Time

    They had the songs, the look, the magazine covers, and a debut album that critics still call a lost classic. Then their label collapsed, an ex-Guns N' Roses drummer walked into the picture, and the 1990s happened. A retrospective on a San Francisco band who kept making records nobody was listening for.

    By Deep Cuts · Issue 01 · · 16 min read