For starters, we all know metal has come a long way. Gone are the Aqua Net-jacked hair, spandex, girlie makeup and neon clothes. Each metal band has an identity of its own. And certainly videos have come a long way as well. Here are ten videos that were considered cool in the 1980s but stupid today.
Thor - Anger (1983)
-Prior to blonde Aussie Chris Hemsworth taking on the role of the Norse god of thunder was the band Thor. The only Thor the world knew about was a heavily muscled bodybuilder-turned-heavy metal vocalist who could blow up hot water bottles until they blew. This video is straight Conan the Barbarian rip-off. There are kids dressed as hobbits running through the woods, sword fights with only half the effort, as if the people duelling aren't even trying, a guy in a fake beard pretending to be a Merlin-like wizard stroking a crystal ball in a manner that borders on erotic. It's even worse when the man who produced the video posted it on YouTube under the heading "The Worst Music Video Ever Made". It takes a lot of guts to be the director of a video to say that.
Candlemass - Bewitched (1986)
-Jonas Akerlund has gone down in metal history as the man behind the Metallica videos, Madonna videos and more. His break into music videos came thanks to a bordering on hilarious, low-cost video for doom metallers Candlemass. It starts out showing a heavyset Swedish man in a monk's cowl and hair that looks like a Brillo scrub pad busting out of a coffin and ending with a spot of dancing that would earn him a spot on the British program Strictly Come Dancing. A little bonus here is that future Mayhem singer Dead makes a cameo as one of the headbangers
Queensryche - Queen of the Reich (1985)
-Some say this is a thinking person's metal band. The video for this is Doctor Who meets Star Wars. It shows a "heroic" heavy metal band taking on villainesses clad in bikinis while being assaulted by rubber monsters so fake even they would have been thrown off the Star Trek set. Somehow, the band had high success after this
Savatage - Hall of the Mountain King (1987)
-1987 seen these power metal legends standing on a dark cliff. It was for their video "Hall of the Mountain King". The video showed a little person in a bald wig and gnome prosthetics wandering through an underground cave network looking for treasure. It makes you almost think this video was Dungeons & Dragons brought to life. The prize for completing this dangerous quest? A copy, on cassette, of Savatage's new album
Yngwie J Malmsteen - I'll See the Light Tonight (1985)
-It seems like the 80s were just jam packed with wizards, gnomes and other magical, mythical creatures. Ronnie James Dio would have been like a kid at Christmas with all of that. The promo for Swedish axe slinger Yngwie Malmsteen and his 1985 single "I'll See the Light Tonight" shows a wizard, gnome and more including an obviously paper mache dragon poking its head out of a pool. Not to mention the singer has hair that has seen better days
Nitro - Freight Train (1989)
-Talk about bad. A guitar with four necks that would baffle even an octopus. Voices that could shatter wine glasses. Some say grunge couldn't come fast enough.
Krokus - Screaming in the Night (1983)
-This video is horrible in every meaning of the word. The video consists of the band and their girlfriends getting kidnapped by angry tribesmen of unknown origin, the singer getting thrown into a coffin and locked away in a pyramid and to add to the insanity, a trap door opening and the singer coming out in a cafe walking over people's food. That couldn't be more horrible if it tried
Judas Priest - Hot Rocking (1981)
-You definitely didn't expect Judas Priest to have a real stinker of a video on here. How it got airplay on MTV is anyone's guess. It was partly a homo-erotic soft core porn movie mixed with a public safety announcement on the dangers of pyrotechnics. You could literally catch fire, as Rob Halford actually did
Samson - Biceps of Steel (1980)
-Prior to becoming known forever as Iron Maiden's vocalist and the nickname "The Air Raid Siren", Bruce Dickinson was treading the beer-sticky floors of pubs with his prior band Samson. Julian Temple, a famed director of videos, directed the video for the above-named song. The video shows tattooed bouncers fighting with a roadie in a bad wig and then having his hair cut off by a seductive woman a la the story of Samson and Delilah from The Bible. Luckily, Maiden never made any questionable videos.
Virgin Steele - Perfect Mansions (Mountains of the Sun) (2012)
-While this is not an 80s video, it's said this one is a real head scratcher. This video was filmed in 2011 for a reissue of an album by Long Island, New York metallers Virgin Steele that had debuted in 1988. It appears to have been shot in the afternoon on a 1990s-era video recorder. There's so much going on here: the cliche of middle aged dudes in too much black and leather rocking out; the not so needed jumps between random locations (a beach, a forest, someone's living room); a giant sword in the ground for no reason; The only thing stopping it from being the greatest metal video ever is no person pretending to be a gnome or wizard
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