In a new conversation with ‘The Hair Metal Guru’, Jason McMaster, frontman of Texas hard rockers Dangerous Toys, reflected on the genre’s dramatic fall from radio and MTV airplay in the early 1990s — and why he believes grunge wasn’t the root cause.
“If someone says that grunge killed hair metal… I think that’s wrong. I think hair metal killed hair metal. Too many bands got signed. Too many terrible bands got signed.”
The Dangerous Toys vocalist, who saw his band achieve gold status with their 1989 self-titled debut, said the scene lost its edge:
“It was ridiculous how far it got taken — the look, the feel of everything. It didn’t have any balls anymore. And it was supposed to have some balls.”
Despite the glam explosion around them, McMaster said he and his bandmates gravitated toward more raw, stripped-down acts:
“Bands like Junkyad, Rhino Bucket, Raging Slab, Circus Of Powe — those felt real to me. That dirty alleycat style of rock and roll. That’s what we connected with more.”
He also made it clear that while he’s fine with people labeling Dangerous Toys however they want, he rejects the idea that it was grunge that killed the movement:
“I think grunge was about to happen anyway. Soundgarden and Nirvana were already touring their first records in ‘87. It just took a minute for them to break — just like it did with Guns N’ Roses. People had to discover it in the underground first.”
While the band remains active on the live circuit, Dangerous Toys haven’t released new material since 1995. Their sophomore album Hellacious Acres arrived in 1991 — the same year Nirvana and Pearl Jam exploded — and failed to find the same success.
Looking back, McMaster said that despite strong material, the shifting tides in rock rendered them irrelevant in the eyes of radio and labels:
“When I think of Hellacious Acres, I think about what could’ve been. It’s an awesome record… but it never had a chance. The grunge movement buried a band like us.”
He added:
“Columbia dropped us because the whole industry flipped overnight. If you played hard rock or metal, you were screwed. By ‘91, they cleaned the shelf of everything popular in the ‘80s. Our record and our deal died with it.”
[Via Blabbermouth]
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The Mosh Network it was good he mentioned artists like Raging Slab and Circus Of Power. Those bands were great. Dangerous Toys could have also fell closer to the bands he mentioned than say Pretty Boy Floyd .