Nothing’s obscure any more; weirdo Christian acid-folk records from Iowa, originally pressed by some dude’s uncle in 1971, get 180-gram gatefold reissues these days. It’s pretty spectacular. But there are still dark corners of rock’n’roll left dusty and unloved, and Sunset Strip glam-metal is one of them. It will undoubtedly be painful for some to hear, but that’s largely because that particular form of popular music has aged about as well as warm milk.
If you haven’t heard the Bullet Boys in a while, well, that’s probably for a good reason. But before all the cheeseball power ballads and hair-to-the-sky histrionics, there was a pretty remarkable scene full of scrappy hard rock bands sowing the seeds of fame and fortune for the lucky few. Bound For Hell is about the unlucky ones, and it’s a killer.
This flaming-red two-disc set shines a light on these starry-eyed pioneers, from second-tier hopefuls like the almost-metal Black N’ Blue, chest-plated warriors Armored Saint and untamed screechers Lizzy Borden, but also features tantalising never-weres like Sin, whose furious On The Run is primo 80s shred, and Odin, famous for being idiots in The Decline Of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years, who do, in fact, deliver dumb proto-power metal fun.
This collection’s sumptuous supplementary material, including a frankly gorgeous 144-page book and a bootleg-style bonus cassette, fleshes out the story and spotlights both the incestuous nature of Hollywood glam, and the importance of female-led participants like Bitch and Hellion. If you’ve ever considered fishnets a fashion necessity, then you probably need this.
