80s Metal Tournament: Four Forgotten Classics. One Winner.

Dangerous Toys. Diary of a Madman. Lillian Axe. LA Guns. Cast your vote and help us decide which forgotten album gets excavated next.

You bring the music. We bring the spotlight.

Four of you nominated albums with everything: the talent, the hooks, the staying power. The exact ingredients of a great metal record. But today—nobody’s talking about them. They slipped through the cracks. They had their moment and vanished.

Until now.

The winner gets the full Dig Me Out treatment. We’re breaking it down track-by-track. We’re digging into the history. We’re asking why it got overlooked. We’re making the case for why it should’ve been huge—and why it deserves another listen.

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Dangerous Toys - Dangerous Toys

Keith P Miller’s pick: “If AC/DC came from Texas instead of Australia, they’d sound like Dangerous Toys.”

You know what that means? Pure riff. Pure swagger. Pure metal. No apologies. No overthinking. Just a band that understood the assignment.

Ozzy Osbourne - Diary of a Madman

Seth LaPeer brought this one: “It doesn’t skip. It gets overlooked because it follows Blizzard of Ozz. But it deserves its own moment.”

Here’s the thing about albums in someone’s shadow—sometimes they’re actually better than people assume.

Lillian Axe - Love + War

Matt’s shout-out to sleaze-metal excellence: “This band was too talented to be forgotten.”

That’s the whole thing right there, isn’t it? Too talented. Too good. Too forgotten. That’s exactly who we’re here for.

LA Guns - LA Guns

Jake Miller connecting the dots: “Same DNA as early GNR. Dropped months after Appetite. Let’s see where they actually stand.”

Timing is everything in music. And sometimes the best albums get buried just because the world wasn’t paying attention at the exact right moment.

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Comment below. Tell us which one you’re voting for and why. Share this with someone who loved one of these albums.