In the year 2022, when most of the players and original fans of early '80s metal are nearing retirement age, Glam Rocker costumes can be found on the racks at Spirit Halloween, and there are approximately a squillion playlists of the same-old "Hair Metal Hits," what in the name of the Rainbow Bar & Grill could another collection of hard-rocking cuts from L.A.'s post-'70s rock 'n' roll renaissance have to offer?
As usual, the folks at Numero Group have found an angle—what the L.A. metal scene had to offer at a very particular moment in time: 1982, the exact midpoint between 1977, when Van Halen signed with Warner Bros. and basically provided a template for slightly sleazy, guitar-forward heavy metal, and 1987's release of Guns N' Roses' Appetite for Destruction, which represented both the apex of the form as well as a reversion to rock 'n' roll-first principles. While in 1982 there were some post-Van Halen L.A. bands who were making a name for themselves, they were mostly doing so outside of Southern California (Quiet Riot's first two albums, featuring Randy Rhoads, were only released in Japan, while Dokken's first album came out on a French label), as the center of gravity in hard rock and heavy metal was still in the U.K. and Europe. Which left the L.A. club scene in kind of a wild limbo. The scores of bands in the region worked in different shades of hard rock and metal, but there was no real distinction between "real" metal and "hair" metal, since all were trying to be as loud and menacingly spectacular as possible: sometimes that meant lots of hairspray; other times that meant whips and chains on stage; often it meant both. This collection documents this period via tracks that are formative themselves–demos, small-run singles, compilation tracks, and other oddities.
To casual fans of the genre, only a few names here will ring any bells—Armored Saint is the most well-known, but others, like Steeler, Rough Cutt, and Lizzy Borden, will also be familiar—but, given that this scene is known almost as much for its bands' ever-shifting revolving-door lineups as it is for its Aqua Net bills, there are innumerable connections and intertwined histories. And since most of these players were natives of the L.A. suburbs (the rest were recent transplants from points east and north), with roots in bands that stretch back to the mid-'70s, they maintained a sense of rooted interconnectedness that the mid-'80s transplants were completely lacking.
That also meant that "the scene" wasn't just based in the legendary Sunset Strip clubs like the Troubadour, Gazzarri's, and the Whisky a Go Go, but also suburban venues in Anaheim, Pasadena, and the Valley. By focusing in on a clutch of groups who were making waves (of various sizes) during a single year, Bound for Hell does a remarkable job of demonstrating just how exciting and risky it all sounded at the time. And since no one band had yet to completely break through to widespread acclaim (Quiet Riot, Dokken, and Mötley Crüe would all do so in 1983; Ratt would bust open the floodgates in 1984), the sound is much less homogenous than one would imagine. From the weirdo rockism of Reddi Killowatt and the thundering metal of Armored Saint to the crackling snarl of Bitch's "Damnation Alley" and the punchy grind of Odin's "Judgement Day" (yes, the same Odin that embarrassed itself a few years later in a hot tub in Penelope Spheeris' Decline of Western Civilization, Part II), there's a range of stylistic approaches to "metal'' here that may surprise modern listeners, but won't be much of a shock to those who remember just how unpredictable and thrilling this scene was at its peak. © Jason Ferguson/Qobuz