Baby Animals
Artist: Baby Animals

Hailing from Australia, Baby Animals is a four-piece hard rock/pop band whose self-titled debut was released in 1991. Produced by veteran Mike Chapman (Blondie, Divinyls, Lita Ford), this is pretty standard late '80s/early '90s AOR. Fronted by Suze DeMarchi, a powerful if nondescript singer, the band plows through a set of unchallenging material... Read More

Pop Songs (Greatest Hits)
Artist: Iggy Pop
Anthology
Artist: Angel

For a band who materialized on-stage Star Trek-style and did all they could to exploit their heavenly image, it's a wonder Angel didn't break through to a larger number of those rock fantasy-loving fans Kiss monopolized during the latter half of the '70s. Angel's problem might have been bad timing: had the band emerged during the spandex-metal... Read More

Wasted in America
Artist: Love/Hate
Community Score: 8.00
Time to Burn
Artist: Giant
Community Score: 7.50

Giant's second effort, 1991's Time to Burn is another excellent, melodic, hard rock album in the vein of Foreigner and Journey, but with the added sting of Dan Huff's incredible chops and blinding technique (especially on the title track). The rest of the band provides equally impressive musicianship throughout, and one is left with the feeling... Read More

The Best of Bob Welch
Artist: Bob Welch

Bob Welch has had an interesting, yet arguably frustrating career. The singer, songwriter, and guitarist spent five years and five albums with Fleetwood Mac in the early 1970s and left just before the band became a superstar act. The 1991 Rhino compilation The Best of Bob Welch collects the highlights of his work from 1976 to 1991. Welch's... Read More

Trixter
Artist: Trixter
Community Score: 10.00

In the late '80s and early '90s, MCA Records wasn't as commercially successful in rock as it was in urban contemporary, and sought to remedy that by signing an abundance of hard rock bands. While a few had potential (including Sweet FA), most were formula-driven and painfully generic. One embarrassing example is Paramus, NJ's Trixter, whose... Read More

Born to Be Wild: A Retrospective
Artist: Steppenwolf
Community Score: 8.00

Born To Be Wild: A Retrospective was the first attempt at a serious historical overview of Steppenwolf and founder/leader John Kay's career, and considering that the makers limited themselves to two CDs, they did an amazingly good job. A lot of listeners -- even those who were around during the band's heyday -- who think of Steppenwolf as... Read More

Faith Hope Love
Artist: King's X
Community Score: 8.20

Although the Jimmy Swaggart/Jim Baker crowd was quick to denounce heavy metal in general as a tool of Satanism, a number of headbangers have used metal to promote Christianity, including Stryper, the Resurrection Band, Contagious, and King's X. Quite often, King's X did so in such a subliminal fashion that they fared as well in the secular... Read More

Use Your Illusion I
Artist: Guns N' Roses
Community Score: 7.73

The "difficult second album" is one of the perennial rock & roll clichés, but few second albums ever were as difficult as Use Your Illusion. Not really conceived as a double album but impossible to separate as individual works, Use Your Illusion is a shining example of a suddenly successful band getting it all wrong and letting its... Read More

Extreme II: Pornograffitti
Artist: Extreme
Community Score: 7.71

Extreme came into its own on the concept album Pornograffitti, with the band's strongest set of songs and an intellectual theme revolving around the struggle for genuine love and romance in a sleazy, decadent society full of greed and corruption. The band shows a strong desire to experiment and push the boundaries of the pop-metal format, adding... Read More

Adrenalize - JAPAN
Artist: Def Leppard