These guys will forever make boomers seethe because they killed hair metal… wait… is Nirvana based??

I kind of agree. The late 80s schlock was awful and mostly meant for teen girls, more ballads/pop rock than metal and guys just in it to party rather than make cool music. In the early 80s though they had more grit, hunger, raw energy and werent doing it for the cashgrab but out of genuine love for metal, glam, and punk

some of those guys could play though. like the mr big guitarist paul gilbert is incredibly skilled in terms of technical ability, and cc deville in poison was pretty good. but at the same time i dont want to listen to those bands records or the style they played.

Thrash metal killed hair metal

They didn't kill Hair Metal, they pussified Rock. Two different things.

By the time Nirvana blew up you already had bands like Pantera and Metallica selling out stadiums. Jane's Addiction, Faith No More and RHCP kicking it for the Alternative bands, Alice In Chains had a hit with Man In A Box and the journalist darlings were praising Blues/Southern Rock bands like The Black Crowes. The UK was producing no-ballad Hard Rock like The Cult and fun Madchester dance music.

If you really want to put a finger on who killed Hair Metal, it was probably Guns N Roses
>but they were Hair Metal themselves
Only in the same way Mother Love Bone was Grunge. They were a part of the scene but did not sound anything like the typical Glam bands, everything from Slash's guitar tone to Axl Rose's weird (even ugly) voice was a total departure from the pretty boy sound of Bon Jovi or Dokken.

Guns N Roses were more on the simplistic side (not enough Van Halen worship in solos), had a rougher Punk edge, went acoustic in an old 60s Rock sort of way and had lyrics much sleazier and nastier than any Glam band at the time. Then came Skid Row who while definitely Glam also made the sound heavier and rougher. By the time 1990 rolled around Hair Metal was on its way out.

All the big hair bands were basically dead. Vince Neil doing his failed solo career. Cinderella was doing some Southern Rock shit, Bon Jovi was doing his whole cowboy shtick and then turning to AOR stuff like Keep The Faith. WASP was doing pure Heavy Metal. And some bands like Twisted Sister and Def Leppard had stopped releasing albums altogether (actually Def Leppard made a small comeback after Nirvana).

>but what about one hit wonderers like Slaughter, Warrant and White Lion
None of these bands made as much of a cultural splash as the groups that came before GN'R. GN'R and Metallica made fun of bands like Winger and made them a total laughing stock.

Nirvana killed testosterone in Rock, not Hair Metal.

Give it a rest with this narrative. All trends eventually cease being "the" thing, "hair metal" lasted an entire decade as the dominant force in hard rock music before it was swapped out. In comparison "grunge" lasted a small few years before nu-metal and pop punk took over the mainstream but nobody talks about that.

No it didn't. Thrash was around while hair metal was the biggest thing.

Metallica's debut was one year before Ratt's, for example. Ratt was stil way huger than Metallica at the time.

>cc deville in poison was pretty good
lmao

>"grunge" lasted a small few years before nu-metal and pop punk took over the mainstream but nobody talks about that.
I think that's by design, though. Glam designed itself for mainstream popularity, they catered to the industry and lived up being rockstars. The Seattle grunge scene was really basically an indie scene, and when they became huge, I think they didn't know what to do with it, because being popular was so against indie values. I actually also think this was despite themselves - the Pearl Jam/Mother Love Bone guys always wanted to be rockstars, from the beginning Soundgarden was making big, Led Zeppelin-style hard rock, Nirvana wanted an accessible, catchy punk album in Nevermind, and Alice in Chains were a hard working band on the metal circuit. But once they got to the big time, they didn't know what to do with themselves.

I agree that grunge was the next cultural phase, though. Some of those glam guys practically sound traumatized about seeing kids going from poofy hair and spandex to ripped jeans and flannel. It's telling that some of those hair bands even made grunge albums in the 90s. There's even a grunge KISS album.

>it was because of the art
>foo fighter becomes stadium rock

because REM broke into the mainstream

youtube.com/watch?v=Kk7H8G3R_jo
youtube.com/watch?v=7xxgRUyzgs0
youtube.com/watch?v=rArtHgO43iw
youtube.com/watch?v=WYfljBCpmE4
youtube.com/watch?v=WM8bTdBs-cw
youtube.com/watch?v=jrwjiO1MCVs
youtube.com/watch?v=BZjP3NaLoCQ
youtube.com/watch?v=qml8OHFc9Js
youtube.com/watch?v=ao-Sahfy7Hg
youtube.com/watch?v=7XdYnh729IQ
youtube.com/watch?v=8V38Qej-3Tw
youtube.com/watch?v=ZG_k5CSYKhg
youtube.com/watch?v=u1xrNaTO1bI
youtube.com/watch?v=nM__lPTWThU
youtube.com/watch?v=lBpDFjau-Ps
youtube.com/watch?v=2ESWRtaHNU8

Hair Metal was dead long time before Nirvana mate

I'm not following what you're trying to say, but I'll sort of respond.

I think thrash contributed a lot to the end of glam, but I think the biggest thing was marketing. Pointing to the art is less accurate than pointing to the fashion. If record execs had decided they wanted to start promoting Black Flag in the early 80s over the glam metal bands, it obviously would've been a bad move, but we'd have a different narrative, that there was like an industry war between punk and glam. I think grunge killed glam because MTV and record people decided it did, in part, and I think the audience went for it because pop metal was getting really lame and there were more exciting sounds like grunge, thrash, and sleaze.

There were some alternative bands that got some mainstream attention in the late 80s, like R.E.M., the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Jane's Addiction, and The Cure. In fact, we could even say alternative WAS a mainstream genre in the early 80s because of new wave. I think the reason that the narrative is that grunge killed glam instead of those other alternative bands, is because MTV and record execs decided it did. I also think it helped that grunge had a specific, marketable look.

>nu-metal and pop punk took over the mainstream but nobody talks about that.

yeah. that was pretty embarrassing. Best try to forget it.