Of all the sub-genres within the heavy metal world, hair metal seemed like the least likely to make a genuine comeback. Everything about the genre – from the sleek, polished production, to the spandex and hairspray, to the not-quite-ironic sexism inherent in the lyrics – is so 80s that the notion of it being able to exist outside of that decade should be laughable. The 90s and the rise of grunge and nu-metal pretty much killed the genre back then and many people assumed (and hoped) that its time on our Earth was done.
Fast-forward to 2016, however, and hair metal is officially back in a big way. Motley Crue just completed a huge (albeit final) sold-out world tour, Steel Panther are packing out arenas worldwide with their tongue-in-cheek party rock anthems, and even bands like Black Veil Brides are keeping the makeup, lace and leather spirit alive whilst selling absolute truckloads of records all over the planet. Clearly the world is ready to embrace the fun, camp side of metal again after a couple of decades of dour, sullen and grim bands owning the airwaves.
Sullen is not a descriptor that could be thrown at Finland’s Reckless Love. Definitely falling on the poppier end of the hair metal spectrum, the band have dropped a string of bubbly, silly, fun albums over the past half-decade or so, in the process becoming one of Europe’s most well known hair metal revivalists. Their latest, ‘InVader’, really could have been the platform that launched the band to the next level of worldwide exposure and success. However, unless the world is really desperate for a confounding mix of hackneyed stadium rock and turgid Europop, we can be fairly sure this isn’t going to win Reckless Love any new fans.
The Fins’ sound has always had a strong whiff of the fromage about it, but a bit of cheesiness is pretty much standard operating for even the biggest hair metal acts past and present. The levels of cheese found on ‘InVader’ transcend usual norms though, so much so that it’s hard to believe some of these songs were crafted by a rock band at all. Though some tracks are a little more traditionally metal (‘Bullet Time’ and the album’s only really great song, ‘Let’s Get Cracking’), a disproportionately large amount of the album sounds like Aqua with some crunchy guitars laid on top.
Mixing a bit of pop sensibility with harder music is fine when done well, but the results here mostly just come off as bad Eurovision handoffs. There’s even a woefully ill-advised attempt at rap-metal in the intro to ‘Pretty Boy Swagger’ that feel horribly outdated even compared to the rest of the album, which is pretty incredible considering hair metal as a genre pre-dates even the first attempts at cross-pollinating rap and rock by many years.
Lyrically the band also fall on the wrong side of cringe-worthy. We can forgive this to a certain extent knowing that English isn’t the band’s native tongue, but in any language it’s hard to believe that songs like ‘Scandinavian Girls’ could be viewed as anything other than garbage (sample lyric: “Even the snow is wonderful when you’re with randy Scandinavian girls”). It’s not even that the band push the boundaries of good taste the way Steel Panther do with their lyrics, as they’re pretty harmless throughout the album. The only offensiveness is in simply how bad they are – Reckless Love manage to hit all the cliché nails on the head without any visible trace of irony.
Even in the 80s, hair metal was something of a minefield – for every genuinely great band there were a dozen cheap knock-offs peddling watered-down piffle. Considering 30 years have passed since the genre’s heyday it wouldn’t be unreasonable to expect the bands working in the field today to use the power of hindsight to cut the wheat from the chaff and distill only the best parts of what, at its best, can be a thrilling and stupidly fun style of music. Sadly, on ‘InVader’ it seems Reckless Love have let too much of the chaff through and have left us with an album that mixes the worst parts of 80s rock music with some of the most awful pop tendencies imaginable. If this is an indication of where modern hair metal is headed (and we pray it isn’t), maybe the genre as a whole needs to hang up its spangled cowboy hats and leather chaps permanently.
JAMES LEE