November 1987
METAL CONTENTS
CHAINMAIL
Hi, I’m writing about your August issue, which was pretty good since you included Anthrax, Megadeth, Lizzy Borden, etc.— all of which make Motley Crue, Cinderella and Twisted Sister look and sound like the overdressed morons that they are.
Leapin' Leppards! They're Back At Last
Toby Goldstein
Go ahead, call them names. They’ve heard ’em all before. At least the kind of names that depict Def Leppard as “heavy metal’s Boston,” referring to the four-year gap between 1983’s supersmash Pyromania and its just-released followup, Hysteria.
OZZY OSBOURNE POSTER
RECORDS
Jeff Clark
Here's a new album from Mr. Generic, Sammy Hagar. He’s the boy next door, having a great time performing good-natured rock. The disc has a playful live-in-the-studio feel, and the good songs, upbeat group vocals, and generally high spirits make for an engaging summertime record.
Poisoning Europe The Columbus-In-Reverse Chronicles
Judy Wieder
Even though it took them nearly four years to get their first album, Look What The Cat Dragged In, out and onto the streets of America, once it happened, Poison quickly attained the all-time record for rock ’n’ roll overnight sensations. No band has seen their career blow straight through the ceiling this fast, this high and this massively.
KISS EXPLAIN MUCH, EVEN THEMSELVES
Elianne Halbersberg
The word for today is “great.” As in “Great sound, great material, great songs, great playing.” These thoughts, dear readers, come to you straight from the lips of Paul Stanley, and he should know better than anyone else. “Every time we talk about a new album, I always tell you it’s great,” he reasons, “so why should this one be different?”
REAL ROCK RADIO !
Don Kaye
It seems gloomy sometimes for rock 'n' roll music in this here wonderful country of ours. So many people are down on the stuff—and heavy metal in particular—that they’ve even gotten around to throwing lawsuits at it for lack of anything better to do.
BRITMETAL: Sock ft To Me, Baby
Sylvie Simmons
They stink, they’re dirty, they hang around in pairs; they’re always near the gutter attracting little bits of fluff! They’re socks! Sit back and put your brain on rinse-cycle as Britmetal brings you everything you wanted to know about socks but were afraid to ask!
AEROSMITH: No Easy Answers
Chuck Eddy
Have to start this out by noting that I really hate “question and answer format" interview articles, because they make writers lazy—firstly, they require you to use a tape recorder when you’re doing the interview, which means you don’t have to take notes, which means you end up relaxing more than you ought to, which means you keep losing your train of thought.
SELECTRIC F-uneral
Chuck Eddy
Darn those silly Bug-A-Ways! You send for ’em through the mail because they don’t sell ’em at Woolworth’s, ya plug ’em into the wall and that little red light comes on, they work fine for about a year or so, and then all of a sudden one day their warranty runs out and you get all kindsa gross creepy-crawlies with a squillion hairy appendages climbin’ up and down your plaster, and you have to squish ’em with your shoes and flush ’em down the toilet and, boy, does that ever make you mad!
METAL VIDEO
Rick Johnson
Performance videos—can’t live with ’em, can’t return unused portion for refund! At least, that’s what I always say. Well, not always. Sometimes I say, “They have no morality—they’re dead,” like the old lady in Zombies Of Mora Tau, or even, “How can a disaster happen to a disaster?” as my idol Col. Klink once queried.
A GRIM TALE
Judy Wieder
Grim Reaper is back, and if you knew what they’ve gone through to get back you’d give their new album, Rock You To Hell, your undivided attention. Still rallying their cataclysmic energy around the awesome guitar of Nick Bowcatt, the leather-lunged vocals of Steve Grimmet, the steady rhythms of bassist Dave Wanklin and the bracing sticks of drummer Marc Simon, Grim Reaper is metal’s shiniest example of the idiom: What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
HIGHWAY TO HELLOWEEN
Harold DeMuir
“It’s very hard over here, because this is not a rock ’n’ roll country,” says Helloween guitarist Michael Weikath, over the phone from his home in Hamburg, Germany. “The music magazines we have over here are just pop and disco, and there’s just a few radio stations which have a heavy metal hour once or twice & week.
NOT A.C., BUT D.C. LaCROIX
Elianne Halbersberg
When her parents gave Sylvie LaCroix—their seven-yearold daughter—a plastic guitar, they had no idea that it was only the beginning. “I first remember listening to the radio when I was four years old,” D.C. LaCroix’s vocalist recalls, “and I went totally crazy!
Y’ALL BEST LISTEN TO DOA
Mike Gitter
What keeps the grizzly bearbashin’, brewskie-swiggin’, guitar-crunchin’ DOA going after nine years of sweat, thrash and message? Hailing from the frozen Northlands of Vancouver, the hard-rockin’ four-piece—propelled by lumberjack proportioned rubber-neck Joey “Shithead” Kieghley on rhythm and lead vox, the always exciting and nearly skeletal Dave Gregg on lead, Brian Goble on bass and ex-SNFU drummer Jon Card smashing with metronomic abandon—DOA live up to their name as one of the hardest working groups in rockdom.
THE ACCUSED & THE GUILTY
Mike Gitter
“We’re called the Accused,” says Accused guitarist Tom Niemeyer, “since anything that ever happened when we were in high school that was within a 50-mile radius of the hick town in which we lived, usually got blamed on us. We were the only punk rockers around.
BITCHIN'!
Sharon Liveten
Here are three facts that the Bitch gang want to get across: • They are not defunct. • They are selling hard rock records, not an S&M service. • Their latest record is called The Bitch Is Back. Got it? Now you know more about Bitch, the rock band, than most people.
Not Davy Crockett, GARY MOORE, King Of The WildFrontier
Sylvie Simmons
“I don’t consider myself part of the socalled heavy metal movement that’s going on right now. I’m just playing the music I want to play. I’m not singing about the devil, and going up there in leather and studs and everything. It’s a joke! I look at those bands and I think, well, you could really get heavy music across to a lot more people if you didn’t stand around looking like a bunch of prats!”
THE TEXXAS JAM
Elianne Halbersberg
Outdoor shows have never been my idea of a good time. You’re at the mercy of the weather, victim to heat, cold, and bloodthirsty insects. The visibility sucks, there’s too many people knee deep in debris, and morons drink too much and can’t make it to the facility in time to send it back up the way it went down.
ROLL OUT THE BARREL
Ida S. Langsam
Four hours before, the show combining Billy Idol and the Cult on the same bill was cancelled, throwing the New York rock crowd into a tizzy. Official word was Madison Square Garden pulled the plug due to incomplete construction, or an asbestos leak, depending on whose report you heard.
RAVEN IT UP!
Kris Nicholson
New York City’s Cat Club seemed an odd place for Raven to be playing a showcase, considering that the group’s audience is probably 12-to-18-year-old males— and you have to be 21 to get in the door. Still, they were there in all their chained-leathered and spandexed glory, to see the Gallagher brothers: Mark on guitar and John on bass and vocals, attacking the stage with all of the enthusiasm of two kamikaze pilots.
Sink, Swim Or Sell Time For GREAT WHITE
Judy Wieder
Still considered to be more dangerous than any other band known to mankind. Great White (Rockus Sharkarias) may very well have broken through to their widest audience ever with their latest album Once Bitten—and just when you thought it was safe to play your stereo!
Nikki & Vince On The Phone: Thanks Yo You From MÖTLEY CRÜE
Judy Wieder
As their first album in over two years, Girls, Girls, Girls, clearly headed for the top after only two weeks in the record stores, Vince Neil, Nikki Sixx, Tommy Lee and Mick Mars were, quite simply, freaking out! Except for Bruce Springsteen, nothing like this has ever happened to a rock ’n’ roll act in the entire history of the record industry.
BOSTON: HOW THEY'RE BACK, WHY THEY'RE BACK & OTHER MATTERS OF IMPORT
Elianne Halbersberg
Maybe rock ’n’ roll audiences aren’t quite as fickle as I thought. Maybe they don’t forget from one week to the next. After all, it’s been eight years since anyone heard from Boston and look what happened: a #1 single, “Amanda.” A #1 album, Third Stage.
THE PANTS DROP HERE
"Look! We’re still trapped in METAL, where we were forced to go through that stupid photofeature last month! Fortunately, we of Slayer know the secret exit route from this mag ...OK, drop the pants, Hanneman!" "Mein Gott! If zey can do it, vhy can't Krokus escape also from zis rag? Der pants, schnell!"