Two weeks I wrote about how Ratt’s “Dance” is an excellent stripping song, and jested about trying it out myself. Jokes aside, I’ve always been fascinated by strip clubs and strippers and the whole shebang. It’s just so weird to me. The way it all functions and how lucrative it really is. When I was in college, we affectionately called the street right next to us “Stripper Alley” because of the cluster of clubs situated two steps from the dorms. You’d be hard-pressed to find worse houses of “burlesque” in the country.

Unfortunately, any fantasies or visions of naked grandeur were put to rest when I attended one innocent evening and an enthusiastic and obviously pregnant girl started raving about how much she loved my name. ‘Cause my real name was her stage name. Thanks, mom and dad.

It’s hard to deny that there’s some connection between metal, especially hair metal, and stripping. They go hand in hand like… syphilis and crazy. But I really don’t like the “stripping songs” that everyone always seems to go with. “Pour Some Sugar On Me”… like, really? There are so many underrated bands from that era and even more underrated songs. Some just had bad timing and some were plain ignored. But it got me thinking.

So here are the top underrated bands (note: “underrated” does not necessarily mean “unpopular”) of the 80s and early 90s, along with their corresponding strip songs. Now, these aren’t my choices, mind you — I just think they’d get the job done. I really hope no family members are reading this but if they are: HEY YOU GAVE ME A STRIPPER NAME, THIS WAS INEVITABLE.

Click to read more…

Jani Lane is dead. He was 47 years old.

He was found in a hotel room in Los Angeles. While the cause of his death is currently unknown, his struggles with drugs and alcohol over the years have been no secret, and it’s hard to imagine that they had nothing to do with this. [UPDATE: TMZ is saying authorities found vodka and pills in Lane's hotel room. Try to contain your surprise.]

We made fun of Jani a lot on this site over the years, and we do not regret that. But once upon a time, we thought he was awesome, and, of course, we never wish anyone any actual physical harm. So, yeah, this is still a bummer.

Here’s Jani the way we’d like to remember him, singing a song which now, of course, seems all too appropriate.

Our friend Bram Teitelman, a.k.a. “The Dude Who Runs Metal Insider,” deserves some kind of freakin’ award or something. Back in January, he brought this old commercial for the Warrant’s 900 number to our attention; now he’s unearthed the below video, of a not-yet-famous Cinderella for  Pat’s Chili’s Dogs in Folsom, PA. (Alas, Bram says Pat’s is no longer in business.) And if I find this commercial a little less amusing than I did the Warrant one, it’s only because at no point do Cinderella discuss fucking underage fans.

I always think of Cinderella as one of the all-around better bands of their era; their appearance aside, their music was always a notch above most of their peers, and they had the good sense to stop making records in the 90s and just live on as a legacy touring act. (In fact, they’re touring right now. You can get dates here.) So it makes sense that even the skeletons in their closet are slightly less horrid than those of the other hair metallers.

-AR

Am I high or is it weird that in 2011 nobody touts the first two Skid Row records as mega-masterpieces? What has undermined lasting renown? Is it that those jams are too heavy for radio listeners and not aggro enough for metal fans? Did major line-up changes doom them to be written off (except for the three enduring singles)? Is it Sebastian Bach’s fault? Is the rest of the band too stubborn and unambitious? Really, has there been a more compelling, awesome, and fearless heavy rock record since? Help me figure this out?

To me, it’s not a problem per se that one-time Skid Row vocalist Sebastian Bach is a huge jackass. One, his all-time top ten singing chops justify extreme arrogance and render decency unnecessary; two, reality TV and morning radio has immunized us all to dunderheads of Bach’s type. So fans are over it, right? Yet it’s still possible that Bach’s exhausting bimbo-ism has quieted the global and unanimous mega-acclaim that Skid Row deserves. How?

Think about it: Is it not Bach-related acrimony among the members of Skid Row that hamstrings their legacy-building? No reunion tours, no massive retrospectives, no anniversary celebrations. No documentaries, no tribute albums, no peer buzz. It’s probably Bach’s spaztardation that makes these things impossible. Click to read more…

Seether are still around? Apparently they are, and apparently they still sell buttloads of records. While Seether nabbed the top spot on the Top Hard Music chart, Scar Symmetry also had a good debut, as did, um, Vampires Everywhere. Foo Fighters, Hollywood Undead, Black Label Society and others are still selling lots of records too. Numbers after the jump.

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For all the shit we give hair metal bands we once admired around here, not all of them have aged so terribly. Sometimes they even surprise you and release something terrific. Last year, Ratt’s Infestation knocked us on our asses; just recently, Whitesnake caught us off-guard when their new album, Forevermore, actually turned out to be a whole lotta fun. (Extreme’s 2009 release, Saudades de Rock, was also quite good, although they’re not really hair metal.) My point just being that you have listen to these albums with an open mind, because sometimes these bands really pull their shit together and remind you why you ever liked them to begin with.

And sometimes they turn into Warrant.

The band’s new album, Rockaholic, comes out next month, and now they’ve released a video, “Life’s a Song,” to promote it. And the song totally fucking boring, the video so cheesy that Dino Cazares tried to eat it, drummer Steven Sweet apparently invented a time machine, went back in time to the 70s, doped a woman, shaved her bush, and used it as a wig, and — perhaps worst of all — the band has the cojones to use lots and lots of vintage footage — “Hey, remember when you loved us? YOU FUCKING LOVED US!!!” — despite the fact that Jani Lane, their most recognizable member, is no longer in the fold. (And this new dude, Robert Mason, is no Jani Lane. I mean he sounds like he can sing, but his vocals have as much personality as the name “Bob Mason” would suggest.) I think I even saw an old still featuring Jani in there, although my eyes may be playing tricks on me. What a load of crap.

Rockaholic comes out May 17 on Frontiers Records. It features a song called “Sex Ain’t Love,” so I guess we really are a long way away from “Cherry Pie.”

-AR

So apparently Warrant have a new album coming out (the band now consists of all the original members save for alcoholic/morbidly obese vocalist Jani Lane), and it’s called Rockaholic, and as you can see below, the cover art expresses the theme of the title in a manner both subtle and metaphoric. I can’t quite make out what the prescription attached to the file says*, but I bet it’s a really erudite and nuanced joke. Y’know, like the kind you’d see in a New Yorker cartoon or something.

Rockaholic comes out May 17 on Frontiers Records.

-AR

*Why the crap would any doctor attach a copy of a patients’ prescription to the outside of the file, as opposed to, y’know, filing it in the file? This not only seems like a potential violation of doctor/patient confidentiality, but it increases the chances that the prescription will actually be lost exponentially.

There are a lot of metal and metal-related movies out there. There are classics like This is Spinal Tap, which I’ve introduced to countless people, all of whom eventually admitted to loving it. And of course, every metalhead worth his or her Woolite Dark knows the answer to the question “Who’d win in a wrestling match, Lemmy or God?” Detroit Rock City is one of my favorite movies, which is a little odd, because I don’t particularly like KISS, although I do enjoy fire and explosions. And no account of metal movies would be complete without the celluoid genocide that was Rockstar. No matter how god-awful that movie was (though it’s still one of my top “bad” movies to watch), every single person in the civilized world knows the words to “Stand Up and Shout” — and I don’t mean the Dio song. They play it at my alma mater’s hockey games.

And on top of those films, there are the documentary explorations of the genre, which gave us such memorable moments like Chris Holmes from W.A.S.P. chugging vodka in a pool while is mom watches miserably in Decline of Western Civilization Part II.

I am here to add another illustrious title to this collection of cinemetal classics. I will show you exactly how Cool As Ice is a metal movie, and not a rap one, as everyone assumes. And I have various degrees in film, so you know my word is truth.

Click to read more…

In case you don’t know, ex-Warrant vocalist is a horrible, horrible lush — there have been stories going around for literally YEARS now about him stumbling off-stage mid-performance to make his way to the bar, because he literally can’t wait for the show to be over and/or someone to bring him a drink on stage to get inebriated, and one time I even heard about him vomiting in the crowd. And a couple of days ago, Metal Sludge reported that the dude was about to cancel all his solo tour dates due to his drinking problems, and now it looks like they called that one correctly. I mean, no official reason for the tour being called off, but his website administrator did say in a statement that “I do not wish to elaborate [on the reasons for the cancellation], but I do ask for your prayers and thoughts to be with Jani and his family at this time.” Might as well have just said “Jani’s too drunk too tour,” y’know?

Luckily, Jani won’t go dry just because he’s too fucked-up to do his job: Bring Back Glam alerted us to existence of the below television ad for Gain laundry detergent, which features the Warrant hit “Heaven.” Presumably licensing that tune cost a pretty penny. So if you were worried about Jani finally having to sober up, due to lack of funds if not any actual desire to stop being a total mess, well, fret not!

The commercial gets bonus points for using the word “gooder.” And for not being the most embarrassing T.V. ad with which Warrant has been associated.

-AR

Even this little kid can’t believe this shit.

Ever since The Deciblog started their weekly “Justify Your Shitty Taste” column — in which writers and musicians attempt to defend the indefensible — we’ve been joking that it was only a matter of time until someone stood up for Celtic Frost’s Cold Lake.

Ladies and germs, that time has arrived.

Click to read more…

So there are a lot of things that differentiate Frank Sinatra from most modern metal musicians, but I’d like to concentrate on two:

• He could actually sing.
• He was an honest-to-goodness, not-to-be-fucked-with badass.

And so it makes no sense to me that, according to Noisecreep, “members of Anthrax, Twisted Sister, Deep Purple, Queensryche, Warrant and other groups have recorded their own metallic versions of some of Sinatra’s standards and classics for an album called SIN-atra.”

Click to read more…

Sweden’s glam metal renaissance is solely responsible for my throbbing, veiny ear-ection these days, but so far my fave jamz are from two sleek, uber-produced acts: Crazy Lixx and Crashdiet. Young me wouldn’t have looked twice at these synthy, post-Loverboy bad-boys-running-wild types, but goddammit it’s 2011 and I’ll take what I can get. Shit, the songs are there, so it’s cool. But secretly, what I’m eagerly awaiting is the raunchy counterparts to this scene’s Poison, Slaughter, Warrant, and Winger. (I think Goethenberg’s Hardcore Superstar splits the difference like Motley Crue.) Yes, I say let’s get some non-glossy, sleazy, bluesy, flashy, ribald, Swedish hair rock, cuz it’s impossible to overrate the best work of Badlands, Junkyard, Dangerous Toys, and BulletBoys. Oh wow stop the presses there go the fabulous BulletBoys right now! Big news!

BulletBoys’ self-titled debut album was a smash success during the heyday of heavy metal, going platinum and spawning the MTV and radio hits ”For The Love Of Money” and ”Smooth Up In Ya.” Now original members Marq Torien (vocals) and Lonnie Vencent (bass) have reunited to perform the LP from beginning to end for the first time in the group’s long and storied history.

Click to read more…

Major props to Metal Insider for unearthing this gem of a vintage television commercial, promoting Warrant’s 900 number. (Do those still exist? And, if so, who the fuck uses them?) The ad would probably be hilarious just by virtue of its time and style, but really makes it worth your time is its use of ridiculous sexual (non-) innuendos. Some choice quotes:

• “Yeah, we like to rock, but we like to do a lot of other things, too!”
• “We’ll give you the warm, hard facts!”
• “Our fans always come first!”
• “Find out what happens behind tour bus doors!!!”

…all while instruction kids to ask their parents’ permission before calling, which is a classy touch. Although I doubt that Warrant ever discussed the abuse of cocaine, vodka, and young women on their hotline anyway. But, man, I would love to hear the filthy messages not-especially-bright young women and even-less-bright-thrash-fans-turned-pranksters must have been leaving on this line. I wonder if Warrant ever actually used it to recruit groupies.

In any case, I’m sure that the memory of this commercial is just one of the many things which now motivates Jani Lane’s efforts to eat and/or drink himself to death.

-AR

Well, here’s an anticlimactic conclusion to a dramatic story.

Avenged Sevenfold have announced that Arin Ilejay, formerly of the Christian band Confide, will be taking Mike Portnoy’s spot behind the drum kit for their upcoming tour dates. The announcement does not say that Ilejay is a permanent member of the band, but I’d imagine if he kicks ass on the tour, they’ll scoop him up. I mean, they have to give SOMEONE the gig eventually, right?

Honestly, I’d never heard of Confide until just now, but I’m not encouraged by this music video:

So that sucks.

Ilejay was apparently recommended by A7X’s drum tech, Mike “The Sack” Fasano, who has previously hit the skins for such illustrious acts as, uh, Warrant. Which almost makes me wonder why they didn’t just hire him, but whatevs. They probably felt like since they lost a Reverend they needed a Christian, and, voila, Ileljay got the job. Yeah, that’s a completely logical explanation, right?

Anyways, I guess we’ll see how this pans out…

-AR

At the Accept show I went to last week, I had a pretty funny moment with the boy when I said that it sounded like they were singing “We are nice” instead of “Neon nights.” Which got me thinking: I mishear lyrics a lot. It could be because I’m deaf, or people just don’t enunciate, or that most of the bands I listen to don’t really know English that well so they probably are singing stupid shit. Or it could be that I’d rather hear something than what I actually do — I mean, Bob Ezrin wanted a new, edgy song to appeal to those hip youngsters and thought Alice Cooper was singing “I’m edgy,” instead of “I’m eighteen.” Personally, I’m way more entertained with what my brain, or other people’s brains (as I got some volunteers for this task), comes up with. So here are a few songs that made it to my Misheard Lyrics Hall of Fame.

Click to read more…

The Smoking Gun has posted a list of the per-gig earnings of some of the highest paid artists that toured this year, and a number them may interest you, our beloved Suckalos.

It will shock absolutely no one to learn that Kiss are number two on the list, and take home $500,000 a night, or that radio stalwarts Buckcherry and Shinedown respectively earn $100,000 and $85,000 per performance.

More surprising, to me at least, is that Bret Michaels gets $64,000 a night even without Poison (which means all those reality show appearances are good for something!), and that Warrant — FUCKING WARRANT — get $12,000 per show. I know $12,000/gig probably doesn’t seem like much when you consider what Kiss is getting, but I can assure you that it’s wwwwwaaaaayyyyyy more than pretty much all of your favorite metal bands are earning (unless you exclusively listen to Metallica or Korn or whatever). And that’s for a band who haven’t had a hit in two decades, and who are currently touring without their original singer, who also happens to be their most recognizable member.

The moral of the story, I guess, is that it pays to have a radio hit. As long as there’s someone who wants to hear “Cherry Pie” and “Heaven” live, Warrant will be richer than you.

Look at the complete list here.

-AR

[via Gun Shy Assassin]

Remember a couple of weeks ago, when we told you that Great White vocalist Jack Russell needs a colostomy bag now ’cause he has a perforated bowel, which basically means his intestines ripped open and shit starting spilling into places it ain’t s’posed ta spill? Well even though that colostomy bag is only supposed to be a temporary situation, it’s bad enough that Russell can’t participate in an upcoming Great White tour. That news might disappoint aging former cheerleaders who let the quarterback knock ‘er up at senior prom ’87 and have wished they’d had the pregnancy “taken care of” ever since, but Great White are true professionals, and those dicks ain’t gonna suck themselves, so the show must go on.

The solution? Our number one homegirl, Allyson B. Crawford at Bring Back Glam, reports that Great White have hired Jani Lane to fill in on ten upcoming tour dates — at least one of which will feature Warrant as a support act. Warrant. The band that Lane has either quit or been fired from at least ten thousand times now. Awk-ward.

If I’m not mistaken, this will be Lane’s first gig since being released from a brief prison term for DUI. I don’t know if the man who apparently forever regrets having written “Cherry Pie” is still drinking (I’d wager he is), and I don’t know if Great White are still using pyro (I wouldn’t be surprised if they are), but if both of those things are the case, let’s just hope that Jani’s breath doesn’t cause any unfortunate incidents.

Here’s a video Ms. Crawford posted of Jani performing while not three but apparently nine sheets to the wind. This dude makes Vince Neil look like a classy dude who always stays on key and is never winded.

And here are tour dates, in case you wanna witness this sure-to-be-hilarious spectacle:

Click to read more…

I think Motley Crue’s “Home Sweet Home” was actually the first “life on the road” music video, but regardless of who created the genre, it existed before Guns N’ Roses’ Nigel Dick-directed clip for “Paradise City,” and has continued to exist long since. (A recent example would be DevilDriver’s video for “Fate Stepped In.”) And they seem to be a rite of passage in some sense — even Metallica have made one.

But there was a candid quality to “Paradise City” that, even if it was ultimately manufactured, felt real-enough to differentiate it from, say, Warrant’s video for “Heaven.” Jani Lane just looked right into the camera, and all the “home movie” footage looked like regular, glossy MTV footage with some kind of after-effect added in post, and, generally speaking, the whole thing just seemed pretty staged. Whether “Paradise City” was entirely authentic or not is beside the point; Dick did a top-notch job of making it feel authentic, which was enough to sell GN’R's image as a “real” band to kids like Vince and myself, who thought they were the cat’s pajamas.

In that context, it’s difficult to watch Slash’s new video for “Back to Cali” without thinking that it’s intended to be a direct call-back to “Paradise City” — it’s got the grainy B&W footage, the odd and unnecessary use of random Dutch angles, the playing in front of crowds disproportionate to the band’s current success (The “Paradise City” footage was actually filmed when GN’R was opening for Aerosmith; Slash seems to playing mostly European festivals in this video), etc. I don’t know who directed it and I’m not sure why he or she would make such a decision; kids who know Slash as “that dude from Velvet Revolver” won’t remember the “Paradise City” video and won’t care, and I don’t really think it’ll do much for the nostalgia of old bastards like me.

But, uh, whatever, I guess. “Back to Cali” is one of the better songs on Slash’s solo record; it’s basically just blues-based bar rock, which is to say, it plays to Mr. Saul Hudson’s strengths.

And here’s the “Paradise City” video, if you’re one of the aforementioned kids who have never seen it before…

Click to read more…

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Welcome to “Question of the Week,” a (sometimes) weekly debate amongst the MetalSucks staff regarding a recent hot button issue.

Since it’s hair metal week here at MetalSucks, it seemed only appropriate to consider a glamtastic question. So we asked our writers:

WHICH HAIR METAL BAND FROM THE ’80s BEST STANDS THE TEST OF TIME IN 2010?

The MS staff’s answers after the jump.

Click to read more…

One day mankind will go extinct and the remains of our civilization will later be picked over by aliens. Though they can speedily assemble collections of most homo erectus artifacts for their alien museums, their super-brains will struggle to grasp and group the arts of Earth, y’know, for their encyclopedias and stuff. So it’s in the interest of preserving and defining Glam Metal across the cosmos that we at MetalSucks have counted down the Ten Best Must-Have Glam Metal Albums. We even tapped in to the genius of Bring Back Glam‘s Allyson B. Crawford to give it that “definitive text” feel. (Read part one, part two, part three)

Thanks to Allyson and our Anso DF, Glam Metal will live on in other worlds long after our planet has become a barren hellscape. That’s comforting. Here’s the number one Best Must-Have Glam Metal Album! So, come now children of the beast, be strong and …

Click to read more…