Extreme’s first record in thirteen years, Saudades de Rock, is as complex and satisfying as it is simple and somewhat disappointing. The bad news is, in no particular order: the production is dry and raw, singer Gary Cherone more or less screams his way through a good deal of his vocals, and some of the songs are just downright bizarre (see: Take Us Alive). The good news, however, far outweighs the bad, as the band really has put together an unusually delicious collection of songs that are as likely to be categorized as ‘hair metal’ as Slipknot would be considered ‘country.’

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Nikki Sixx’s side project, SIXX: A.M., have just released a video for the track “Tomorrow” from their critically acclaimed album The Heroin Diaries. For those of you who have been living under a rock, The Heroin Diaries is a soundtrack to Sixx’s autobiography of the same name – sort of like how Saints of Los Angeles is a soundtrack “loosely” based on the Motley Crüe book The Dirt, except not exactly. Hey, remember when metal bands just made music based on, umm, music? Was there an Operation Mindcrime or Songs from the Elder book that I somehow missed? Anyway, The Heroin Diaries is actually a pretty solid album (and the book was fucking amazing), and I am looking forward to seeing SIXX: A.M., along with the Crüe, Buckcherry, et al., when they are in town next week with Crüe Fest. As far as the video for “Tomorrow” goes, it’s pretty much your standard “Hey, we’re on stage rocking your shit! Hey, and now we’re hanging out backstage and having fun!” type of thing. Oh, and if you can correctly identify how many tattoos the band collectively has, there might just be a prize in it for you. Can you say, “MetalSucks condom?”

-MSR

Apparently the palatial MetalSucks Mansion kitchen needed new granite, so guess who isn’t going to the hair metal extravaganza of the year, also known as the second annual ROCKLAHOMA? You guessed it.  Hey, I am the new guy, so I guess I can’t complain – unless Vince and Axl don’t send me next year.

As we speak, thousands of dental hygienically challenged guys with mullets are running around suburban Oklahoma (isn’t all of Oklahoma suburban?) wearing Ratt and Ozzy concert shirts from a quarter century ago.  Chicks have squeezed themselves into jeans and/or spandex that were probably last worn a decade ago and were better left in their dresser, or burned.  Honestly, people are just flocking to this event from all over the world, literally, and why wouldn’t they? Have you seen the lineup? Sure, there are some great hair metal bands coming to a city near you this summer, like Poison, Dokken and Motley Crue, but ROCKLAHOMA features an absolute smorgasbord of talent, top (e.g. Queensryche, Extreme) to bottom (e.g. Jet Boy, Trixter).

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[Welcome to our new column Hair Metal Happy Hour, which will be manned by the fine writer Michael S. Robinson. Things have been admittedly less hairy around here lately, but we hope to rectify that situation with this semi-regular column. Huh huh, he said "rectum-fry." - Ed.]

It’s hard to believe that it’s been almost twenty years since glorious hair metal ruled the charts and MTV. Once the crispy, crunchity sounds of the Pacific northwest took over, many of our cock-rocking heroes from the 80s faded into oblivion, while others continued to record sporadically, enjoying varying degrees of success, or lack thereof.

Now it’s 2008, almost 20 years to the day since Stryper released In God We Trust, and we find ourselves in the midst of unarguably the greatest year for hair metal releases since the 1980s. I’m not sure what any of us have done to bring about this incredible turn of good fortune, but it’s worth pausing to analyze, and give thanks for the bounty of hair metal we have been given, and are about to receive, in 2008.

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