1/4/2024 0 Comments Glam metal![]() ![]() You can see it on their drug/booze-ravaged faces – plain as day: the disappointment, sadness and regret whenever Dunn mentions the fall of GM. Perhaps it was harder to laugh back in the 80s, when this rubbish was omnipresent, but now one can sit back and enjoy watching these once-upon-a-time sell-outs as they struggle(d) to come to terms with the fact that their audience had shrunk to less than a tenth of what it once was. In defense of this episode (though not GM itself), even though GM had almost nothing to offer musically, it was an over-the-top scene always good for a laugh. There was episode 10, too, which delved into the painfully moronic world of so-called "power metal". Episodes 5 and 8 though aren't the only ones to cover garbage. He started off both by admitting (to his credit) that he disliked glam/nu, but finished each of these episodes by taking on a more diplomatic, "peace-offering" sort of tone, stating how he had "realized that this genre has a rightful place on the metal tree". Speaking of episode 8, Dunn starts off and ends episode 5 almost the same way that he introduced and concluded episode 8 with. ![]() Hence the episodes on GM and nu-metal, and none on some infinitely more important ones on Dunn's evolution tree. That's the wrong approach: after all, this is a series about metal, anyway not well known for its commercial success. It seems Dunn/McFadyen focused more on genres that sold millions rather than on the musically relevant genres that garnered far less media attention. Dunn might argue that alternative metal is more about the alternative scene than metal, but what is GM? Essentially pop tunes with a little bit of distortion thrown in – more fitting for a TV-series covering the evolution of pop. Industrial metal, alternative metal, death metal, and even black metal (which is also crap, but at least heavy) deserve far more screen time than glam. However, when one considers which metal genres Dunn/McFadyen barely even mentioned, let alone had entire episodes dedicated to, something's wrong. I would never deny GM a place in a docu-series such as ME. In the early 80s, major-label scouts, cash-hungry producers and other sleazoids had stuck their noses into every pile of trash they could find, rummaging around through tons of dung, until finally finding the next putrid-smelling product that could entrance the hype-happy, tone-deaf masses until they got sick of it and moved on to the next fad. Glam metal was for the 80s metal scene more-or-less what nu-metal was for the 90s: a thoroughly commercial, predictable, image-orientated, contrived, hence to the most part musically-speaking useless sub-genre, receiving almost instant backing by major labels which are usually quick to recognize a truly awful (hence profitable) music style, sniffing out like animals the huge potential that resides in almost every garbage-heap.
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