The MOST Underrated 80s Hair Bands That Could Have Been HUGE! 

Badlands and Shotgun Messiah are so underrated. Incredible guitar playing!

Steelheart was an 80s band that didn’t come out till the 90s really. One of the best collective groups from then in skill and writing. The guitar player wrote some of the best solos and riffs ever in the genre and the singer could be argued as the greatest rock singer of all time.

Yeah I loved Dangerous Toys - Junkyard - LA Guns - Faster Pussycat - Circus of Power, Saigon Saloon, RattleSnake Shake, Zodiac Mindwarp and the Love Reaction - Raging Slab - Hanoi Rocks -The Dogs D'Amour - D'Molls - Vain - Kix - Tigertailz - Jetboy - Bango Tango . There are so many I could keep going but man I miss those days that was the happiest time in my life living in LA from 1986 to 1992.

Giant and Dann Huff were One of the most underrated bands and musicians... Really liked them!❤

Giant was one that never really got their due. Very cool band. Also, Blue Murder was a John Sykes project after he left Whitesnake. Killer band!!

LA Guns too big for this list?

Bulletboys for sure was so underrated... that groove on smooth up in ya .. and thc groove are so fire..

Spread Eagle. Another band that just caught the tail end of the hair band Era. Awesome album.

The Jake e Lee band Badlands didn't make a big footprint in the 80s but they were good! Got to see them live in 1989 and Jake was outstanding!

Whoa! I wrote & recorded #5!! Thx so much for the Tora Tora love, Robert!! 🙏🤘🎸⚡️

One band that was way underrated was Lillian Axe. Stevie Blaze was a hell of a songwriter! Check 'em out if you haven't yet.

Hardline was a pretty cool band as well with Neal schon in guitars. And of course XYZ had killer guitar riffs

Fastway and Zebra are a couple that come to mind as extremely under-rated.

Heaven’s Edge is very underrated, check out their 1989 debut album. Another great band that arrived late to the party. Reggie Wu does some killer guitar work on that. They also recently released a new album too.

I don’t know if White Lion was technically underrated by definition, but I can’t help feel that at least Vito Bratta deserved more recognition than he got. Amazing guitarist. 🎸

Lynch Mob is absolutely one of those rare gems of a band that would have been HUGE if they hit the scene 4 years earlier. I am jealous of everyone who does not own the first two records and is checking them out right now because of this video.

Armored Saint and Loudness were both pretty good. Also, had to edit to add Metal Church and Testament. 😊

Robert Mason was the singer for that 2nd Lynch Mob album, he is currently singing with Warrant. You touched on many of my favorites! I'm gonna add a baker's dozen (see what I did there lol please don't block me lol) 1 XYZ 2 Cold Sweat 3 Spread Eagle 4 Babylon AD 5 Cry Wolf 6 Every Mother's Nightmare 7 Leatherwolf 8 Saigon Kick 9 Lillian Axe 10 Shotgun Messiah 11 Blue Murder 12 Keel 13 Badlands

So many underrated bands from the 80's. Steel Heart, Britny Fox, Kix, LA Guns, Fastway.... The list goes on and on.

Babylon A. D. Is always near the top of my list for overlooked 80s hard rock. The production, the songs, the playing. Their debut is great top to bottom

The guitar riff to Slaughter's "Wild Life" is more complicated to play then it sounds. Tim Kelly is very under rated. That song sounds great even without vocals.

TESLA! Oh and glad you mentioned Firehouse. Great picks man, I’ll be updating my Spotify playlists for sure 🤘

for me its Cinderella , long cold winter is a flawless album with killer riffs and solos

Lillian Axe. Their second album, Love+War from 89 is still one of my top all-time 80's albums. To my ears, their music was more sophisticated than much of the more popular stuff. I do think they were also victims of coming late to the scene. Psychoschizophrenia is a killer album, but it came out in 93 after grunge had taken over. Bonfire is a German band virtually unknown in the USA. Their first 2 albums are the only ones commercially released in the USA back in the mid 80s, but they never gained traction here. But I fell in love with them. Their third album was also great. 4th not so much, and after the guitarist and singer left, I didn't keep up with their music, though I think they are still active. Ready 4 Reaction is to this day what I consider one of the best opening songs for an album. It was on their second album Fireworks. Check it out. Gotthard is a Swiss band that has killer chops. Never heard or seen anything by them here in the US, but I happened to be in Switzerland in the early 90's and discovered them. I bought their debut album and still love it. I guess they're a 90s band, but the music sounded like 80s. I think they might be still active, but I only know that first album.

Steelheart,...XYZ ,.. Rough Cutt....Keel...,Enuf zNuff... Autograph

I got to see Tora Tora and Dangerous Toys open for LA Guns. Love them both and love that I was a teenager in the late '80s and got to see so many bands live. It was a good time all of the time.

Dirty Looks is one of my favorites. The guitar tone is awesome.

I always liked and thought Mark Kendall's playing in Great White was fairly underrated, I think you could've added them for sure!

Another band that I loved was Sleeze Beez. Screwed, Blued and Tattooed was a great album.

I absolutly love Giant. They are still producing albums. The last one was incredible and still staying true to their original sound.

I gotta say one of my favorite underated 80's bands has got to be Bullet Boys !!! Such a cool groove based Rock Band !!! I'd love to see you do a video on them at some point ?!

Great list. I knew most of these but now I have a few more to know! Im surprised XYZ wasnt on here for firehouse. Firehouse was pretty big in the early 90's. XYZ's 2 albums can go head to head with any of these bands on the list. Marc Diglio had guitar playing that were bluesey, heavy, poppy, flashy and swingin all at the same time

Roxy Blue with their only album „Want some?“ from 1992. Not really 80s but one of my favourites from that time. 🤘

Giuffria, XYZ and Loudness come to mind for underrated 80's Hair Metal bands.

Glad to see TNT made the list. They should have been huge. Good call on Electric Boys! That whole album is fantastic. King’s X remains the most underrated ‘80s band of all time. And the ‘90s too.

I love Dangerous Toys, always reminded me of early GnR. What about Tyketto? They fell into the same realm as Hurricane for me.

blue murder is so underrated

I’ve read through the comments and have seen a lot of really good recommendations. Two that I haven’t seen are Rough Cutt and Helix. Both only had a few albums, but I really liked their stuff. If any are unfamiliar with them, go check them out.

I enjoyed Tyketto a lot and Badlands was really killer!

Vicious Rumors - Digital Dicator is one of my favourite 80’s albums, still listen to that now, awesome shredding. Crimson Glory were also good, but they kind fizzled out after a couple of albums.

Icon and Leatherwolf immediately come to mind, both are fantastic. Madison is another one you don't hear much about.

Can't believe you didn't mention Spread Eagle and Paul Di Bartolo! Some down right awesome riffs ! Intro to Switchblade Serenade is one of the best intro solos of that time. Vocals were awesome too... Then there's Steelheart ( technically 1990 ) but the guitar player was great and Vocals were unmatched by anyone including Bach !

Saw Dangerous Toys and Tora Tora on their 1st tour with L.A. Guns. Fantastic bands!

Krokus was very underrated! Screaming in the night and Our love. Vandenburg Back on my feet again and Burning heart are great songs from a great band.

Love your choices, especially Y & T. I would include Bonfire, Lillian Axe, Blue Murder, Badlands, Lord Tracy and King's X. One more I would like to add...Scatterbrain.

Fastway, MSG(with Robin McCauley), Killer Dwarfs, Helix, Cats in Boots, Icon, Harem Scarem, Leatherwolf, Obsession

Good List. I was not familiar with Giant... For me the most underrated band was KIX. Other bands I would say were underrated would be Jetboy and another late to the party band Child's Play Their album Rat Race was fantastic

Great list! KIX is my top underated band. They had a few hits but i think they should have been much bigger. Im glad you added Dangerous toys. Another great i loved in the 80s

One the greatest discoveries I made in these last 4-5 years are Lillian Axe. Love and war, Poetic Justice and Psychoschizophrenia should be metal classics and Steve Blaze is a top tier guitar hero and composer. Please hurry up and listen to the aforementioned albums, you'll never regret.

Dude, back in the day when I lived in Denton Andy Timmons would set up at the Fry Street Fair with a coffee can. If you put a dollar in you could request any tune. If he didn't know it he'd give up all the cash in it. Never saw it happen. Steppenwolf, Michael Jackson, Beatles... and he was just a super cool dude that would just talk music with you when he was just checking out the fair. Love that dude!

nah. bad list when 6 out of the 10 bands you listed are so well known. LILLIAN AXE is THE ABSOLUTE MOST under rated band of all 80s... P E R I O D.

The first time I heard Firehouse I fell in love. Their sound is ultra sheen 80's today, but underneath the gloss their first albums are great power ballads. They would change their sound dramatically later on, but still rock.

Also could have gone in this list... Blue Murder (criminally underrated) Badlands Steelheart Great White (talk about memorable riffs!)

YES!!! Dann Huff is a god! I actually followed him from way back when he was in a Christian Rock band called Whiteheart. Another amazing 80s bands was Dirty Looks, Icon, and definitely Tyketto! Also Trixter, of course Savatage (which morphed into Trans Siberia Orchestra) was decent. There were actually some amazing Christian hard rock/metal bands too (beside Stryper), but you can't call them underrated since they were generally not released, promoted, or targeted to the regular rock and metal demographic.

Love Dangerous Toys and Danger Danger. I remember buying the cassette tapes at Sam Goody's and Tower Records. One band that I started getting into way late was Vain. That No Respect album is soooo good!

Yeah Giant ! I first heard them on Arsenio Hall and loved them immediately. Great stuff

White Lion, Night Ranger, Steelheart and Trixter.

Definitely the 1980's is my all time favorite era of music, especially hard rock/heavy metal, though being only a little kid back then I really learned about these bands as I got older around 2000 when I first got into hard rock/heavy metal, some more underated bands from back then are Spread Eagle, Every Mother's Nightmare, Harem Scarem, Swedish Erotica, Barren Cross, Bloodgood, Recon, XYZ, Babylon A.D., Chastain, Vicious Rumors and many many more fantastic bands that I love.

Great list! I would add Badlands to this list too. First two albums are excellent. Great vocals and Jake E. Lee on guitar.

Faster Pussycat was criminally underrated. LA Guns too.

Roxy Blue is my favorite underrated band. Their first album rocks! Unfortunately it came out in 1992. I think they got back together a few years ago.

Giant, Firehouse, XYZ and Bad English are some of the best bands but so underrated…

Two bands right at the end of the era (1990?), Steelheart and Thunder. Steelheart had the big ballad "Never Let You Go", and I love that song "Dirty Love" by Thunder.

TNT is to this day one of my favorite bands, because of Ronnie LeTekro. You're correct - he didn't really play solos. He was/is extremely percussive. I'd call him the King of Stacatto. At the time I was developing a similar style and wondered how it would go over. Hearing Ronnie make it work in TNT was validating in a sense. Tell No Tales defined my freshman year at University of Michigan and was constantly playing through my purple walkman, in between DLR Skyskraper and White Lion's Pride. LeTekro was also one of those guys you'd frequently see mentioned as an influence in Guitar for the Practicing Musician, although I never saw him actually featured. I could just rap with you for hours about this list. Tora Tora - used to love playing Walking Shoes and Amnesia (2nd album) with my band at the time. Second singer in Lynch Mob was Robert Mason. He was with them until it dissolved. Funny enough, opened for Warrant with Lynch Mob and now is the lead vocalist in Warrant. And GIANT. Wow. But see, I never think of Giant as a "guitar band" like the others. As great a guitarist as Dan is (and was on the Giant stuff), they are just great songs. I put them in the vein of Journey, Foreigner, Toto. Great guitars for sure, but the songs are more than the sum of the individual parts. I think that might be partially why they didn't get huge. The bands that did, fans really got to be fans of the individual musicians and would get excited about guitar riffs or solos, or specific keyboard lines (I'm looking at you Europe), and I think that drives fandom. You hear really great songs where the song is greater than the individual performances and you don't get that. Bad English and perhaps Badlands could have made the list for similar reasons.

Enuff Z’nuff got a raw deal in my opinion. The record company packaged them as your typical late 80’s rock band but they had more in common with Cheap Trick than with Poison. They were great band with great songs.

Grim Reaper count as a hair band? Cause they were awesome

One of the most underrated bands of the hair metal era got to be Wildside. Man that Under The Influence Album is one of the best albums ever imo!✌🏼

Shotgun messiah was bad ass. Tim skold and Harry Cody yall.

Awesome video! I loved Junkyard, Tuff & Everymothers Nightmare also Trixter

I still have the cassette single of "Lips 'n' Hips", I was running late to my guitar lesson from school and went without my guitar or my music but had that single buried in my backpack. My teacher and I sat around with a couple of fluorescent ASI Sustainiac guitars from the guitar store he worked out of and figured that song out for the lesson that day. 😁

One of my favorites was XYZ. They only had that one song on Headbangers Ball, "Inside Out", but man it was terrific.

My favorite underrated 80s bands: Honeymoon Suite Kane Roberts Harem Scarem Roxy Blue Bonham The Storm Vixen Unruly Child Trixter (That 2nd album is AWESOME) I had 4 more on here but they were on your list too. Oh Man! You played "I'll Be There When It's Over" by Giant! SOoooo good! Fun fact about the 3rd Giant album..... it's just a collection of B sides and tunes they cut from the first 2 albums and called it an "album.". That's why there are only 8 real songs and a cover song. Fun fact about Danger Danger - Andy didn't play any of the solos on the debut album. :(

Not sure if anybody else mentioned these...but I would definitely add Lillian Axe and Saigon Kick to this list.. Old Savatage is good too. Chris Oliva was amazing. Lost him way too soon!! Really newer Savatage is good too :)

1:55 - I loved "Scared" by Dangerous Toys! Playing that is a trip because it starts in F, but eventually switched to E, and it happens so organically in the song that it took me forever to figure out what I was doing wrong trying to learn it by ear. Edit: Not F sharp, F

Stryper, Michael Sweet and Oz Fox have some killer riffs and solos, both guitarist are underrated.

Firehouse debut album is damn near perfection. One of the few albums I can listen to every track and not skip. (The other being skid row debut)

BLUE MURDER’S first record is absolutely Slamming! I saw them live and even met their keyboardist Nik Green. Very cool band. John Sykes is a badass gunslinger!

Just love Kingdom Come. The song Living out of touch is so groovy one of my best songs ever

Great list! Robert Mason (currently in Warrant) was the other singer in Lynch Mob. Blue Murder needs to be on this list. Nice call out to Hurricane! Love all of their albums! Singer is in Foreigner now, but Slave to the Thrill Rocks!!

I’m not seeing Salty Dog mentioned anywhere in the comments so I’m throwing them in, their Every Dog Has its Day album was pretty killer.

Saxon got some popularity in the late 70’s and through late 80’s then declined through the mid 90’s. But you’ve GOTTA listen to their last 12 albums over the past 24 years, they are amazing! I can’t believe they aren’t HUGE!!! They have a new album coming out 1-19-2024 Hell, Fire and Damnation. Listen to the title song you will be blown away! Lead singer is about to turn 73!

XYZ are one of my favorite hair metal bands. Inside Out has got to be one of the best riffs ever

Y&T. To this day, Summertime Girls and the solo to the live version of "I Believe in You" are two of my all-time faves. Dave Maniketti stays on one note for like 8 measures in that thing and gets more emotion out of that single note than many guitarists squeeze out in a career. Love this list all the way through. And yes, "Funkometal Carpet Ride" - Electric Boys. I think it just hit too close to Extreme and Nuno cornered the market on metal funk acrobatics. Like Vito Brata with the first White Lion album (pre-dating "Wait"), Nuno was too much of a VH clone on the first Extreme album, but introduced himself with Pornografitti. Extreme HAD however already developed a fan-base and so even though the two albums came out about the same time, Extreme I think was seen as the "legit" band, and Electric Boys as "the Extreme wannabes."

Black N' Blue has a pretty stellar catalog Britny Fox also killer, best part of them was the look, they had the yngwie wardrobe with the glorious hair Sort of clung to the Cinderella sound a bit too much though

Any underrated, underappreciated list is incomplete without Babylon AD, Danger Danger, Dirty Looks etc etc etc.

Kik Tracee, Stryper, Kings X, Blue Murder, the Scream, Shotgun Messiah, Bang Tango, Cats N Boots, Badlands, Britny Fox, Babylon AD, Hericane Alice, so many great bands.

1:38, Dangerous Toys... who would have thought they would spawn Texas Outlaw Country star Kevin Fowler... Beer Bait and Ammo🤣

TNT was so amazing. Tony Harnell was definitely my favorite vocalist.

Just those you didn't mention... Autograph, Leatherwolf, Honeymoon Suite, Cry Wolf, BonFire (at least in the US), Magnum (at least in the US), Shy, Bonham, Pretty Maids, Kingdom Come (should have been bigger) and most definitely Rough Cutt

Tesla and Great White are the 2 most under rated 80's bands

Stevie Blaze of Lillian Axe from the 80’s. Danny Johnson of Private Life. Eddie Van Halen discovered them. Mark Kendal of early Great White before the “Rock you” era. Vito Bratta is the most underrated guitarist of the 80’s without question Sorry, I know this was bands, but it had to be included. Cheers!

Giant and Winger are my top underrated 80s bands. I am so glad to see someone give props to Giant and Dann Huff’s guitar work! Awesome music. Most have never even heard of Giant. I felt like I was the only person that even knew of them. And I have been a fan since day one when “I’ll See You In My Dreams” debuted as their very first single from the duvet album Last of The Runaways.

Vandenberg Loudness Killer Dwarfs Babes In Toyland Child's Play Arcade Fastway * Just some I thought of in no order

For me 2 of the best bands of the whole hard rock/ hair metal scene that deserved to be huge but just came out a bit too late are XYZ and Babylon A.D. Both criminally underrated.

Love/Hate, EZO, Teeze, Heaven's Edge, Circus of Power, Wrathchild UK

Hard to think of Y & T as underrated. They were huge in the bay area. Personally I always felt Phantom Rocker and Slick were underrated. Just crazy rock-a-billy spin on their music. Earl Slick is a beast.

Great list bud! Two that I would add is Loudness and Icon.

I really dug Krokus.

LOUDNESS from Japan was super shreddy, thumpy and WAY TOO LOUD! Didnt speak a word of English but was VERY METAL.

Great list but we need to talk about Shotgun Messiah 🤘🏻 Incredible riffs and awesome solos.