Hair Metal in Covers

If you have been watching this blog carefully in the last few days, you'll notice a whole bunch of hair metal reviews. That's because I found a huge number of compilations that Cleopatra Records had put out in recent years, which included hair metal compilations. I've covered in black metal, the Metalhit Free Download Series, and Voivod a lot on here. That's all fine and well, but I'm a little sick of it. I've been obsessed with Cleopatra Records for years and years, but I had a closed mind about anything that they had put out in recent years. I recall being in the 6th grade staying up late to watch Headbanger's Ball on MTV, and I recall being more into thrash metal, but hair metal was in there- first show I ever saw was the Cult with Dangerous Toys opening. By high school i was more interested in goth but I'm sure that has a lot to do with goth chicks. During the 2000's it seemed nearly every one in New York I knew must have been in some band that played Williamsburg and the east Village, but they were probably nearly one for one bad bands. Kevin Shea and Electric Turn to Me had talent, but they squandered that talent in a lot of ways. Now, I'm all the easy back to the goth bands and metal bands from way back when. These more recent Cleopatra Records compilations are 100 songs long, so there is more material than I may ever get through. Hair Metal in Covers is really ridiculous. Some of it I could see- Great White covering Led Zeppelin or Bad Company, 70's bands that likely influenced the hair metal musicians early on. Then you get hair metal bands covering other hair melt bands that were there contemporaries, and people from 80's hair bands re-doing songs by their old bands as solo artists, Pretty Boy Floid doing Motley Crue. The material on Hair Metal in Covers is not from the 80's, it was all done years after the hair metal craze had ended. A lot of the bands on it are not so much hair metal bands and more what would generally be called progressive rock. Bret Michaels re-does his own band Posion's "Fallen Angel" as more or a less a country song. This compilation is a 100 songs long so it keeps going and going, too. Steve Summer's throws in an electronic beat for his version of Motley Crue's "Live Wire". Most of the album really is an abyss of hair metal. We're talking LA Guns covering Def Leppard here. I kid you not. Hair metal bands had the problem of sounding generic at the time, imagine hair bands after their prime covering other hair bands. It's hilarious. Those bands were funny in their prime, hair metal bands after their prime is priceless. There are errors in the info given- Nazareth (who were much older than the hair bands) does "All Right Now' by Free but the track is listed as being by Bad Company when it was in fact by Free, who had the same singer as Bad Company. The word "baby" appears quite a few times on this album, so be forewarned. This is some fairly preposterous and mongoloid excrement. Whoever runs Cleopatra sort of has the whole rock and roll thing figured out. You get a bunch of tracks by some hair metal bands, a couple of track from some goth bands, throw them on a compilation and be done with it. You throw in some silly covers for good measure. It's perspective from which Joy Division and Britney Fox are ultimately one. It makes a certain amount of sense.