Glam Metal

Glam metal, also known as hair metal, is a metal sub-genre that gained popularity in the late 70's and early 80's. Influenced by 70's glam rock, shock rock, and hard rock bands like sweet, KISS, ac/dc, aerosmith, slade, david bowie, alice cooper, etc... Glam metal style included teased-up hair, leather, accessories, etc... The music included distorted guitar riffs, sing-a-long anthems, hard-hitting drums, and guitar solos, etc... The glam metal style was more about the lifestyle than the music even though the music played a HUGE part of it. It all started on the LA sunset strip.. Dave Mustaine of Megadeth and formerly of Metallica used to say glam stood for "Gay LA Metal". It was very popular throughout the late 70's, the 80's, and very briefly in the early 90's.. The 90's hit glam metal like a freight train.. Nirvana's "Nevermind" album hit big along with other grunge bands Pearl jam, alice in chains, etc.. The glam metal genre was unpopular in the early 90's through the mid 90's until around 1997 some hair bands got back together and the genre was popular again.. Since '97 glam metal has remained underground, but still has a lot of great glam metal bands today.