A sort of early blueprint for Stairway to Hell (note the headline), where much of this piece wound up — though not nearly as much as I’ve long assumed. Only three albums (Celtic Frost, Voivod, Dick Destiny) overlap both book and article, plus one more band (Saint Vitus) represented by different albums in each. Plus introductory snatches here and there. Otherwise, note my still-active distrust of if not disgust about hair/pop/Nerf metal, which I don’t call any of the above yet — purged somewhat in a similarly lengthy music-section-lead Voice roundup of that rocking subgenre nine months later, by which time I was a Poison fan. Before long, I more or less switched teams.
Village Voice, 27 January 1987
Eliminated for Reasons of Space 
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Sara Quell
In 2021 I prefer this stuff to the pop stuff mainly because it’s faster, so more things happen in a random minute. Not a very diverse range of things (mostly the same 8 parts of a drum kit + one larynx + 2 or 3 stringed instruments) but it’s quantity-per-minute that counts, the glam stuff has sonic Easter eggs all over the place but some tracks make you wait four minutes to hear them. Also, popmetal uses either major/minor triads (pop, ‘Beatle’ chords) or ‘blues scale’ which is even less notes, while the underground shit is ‘chromatic’, i.e. they can use any note at any time. Oh yeah ‘words’ 🤷🏻♂️, popmetal has those and they’re mixed louder than everything, a lot of people like that for some reason. So it’s due exclusively to my individual neurochemistry, and I wonder what would’ve happened had I just admitted that 30 years ago instead of concocting some story about “false consciousness” and “commodity fetishism” etc.
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