Remember buying an 80s metal cassette and trying to figure out what it meant for the band? Was this the record that would push them to the next level or the one you’ll find a year later in a cut-out bin and wonder why no one else got it?
That’s the story running through this month’s ballot. Lies caught Guns N’ Roses in the awkward, combustible space between a debut that changed everything and an impossible follow-up. Cocked & Loaded found L.A. Guns right in the middle of the Sunset Strip machine. Little Monsters made a case for Holland as Chicago’s next big export. And The Great Radio Controversy showed Tesla delivering something more ambitious than their debut.
The contenders
Guns N’ Roses — Lies
Suggested by Keith P. Miller
“Guns N Roses put out this half acoustic half fake live album to try to satisfy fans while they waited for the next album.”
Released in the long shadow of Appetite for Destruction, Lies is a strange, transitional artifact: one side built around a manufactured live atmosphere, the other around acoustic confessionals, barroom swagger, and “Patience.” It is also inseparable from the controversy around its lyrics—a record that invites a conversation about late-’80s hard rock, its blind spots, and what it sounds like from this distance.
L.A. Guns — Cocked & Loaded
Suggested by Richard Waterman
“Classic late 80’s LA sleazy rock/metal”
There is no overthinking this one: Cocked & Loaded is Sunset Strip rock at full velocity. Hooks, leather, danger, and enough sharp-edged guitar work to remind you why L.A. Guns were never just another name on a flyer beneath the headliner.
Holland — Little Monsters
Suggested by Len Anzelde
“Probably the best metal band coming out of Chicago in the 80’s.”
This is exactly why we run these polls. Holland made one album full of catchy, riff-heavy songs that sounded built for wider radio—and then largely disappeared. Little Monsters has the unmistakable pull of a lost contender: the record you find years later and wonder how it slipped through the cracks.
Tesla — The Great Radio Controversy
Suggested by Whitney Beehler
“Great Hard Rock album from a band that gained a lot of attention at the tail end of the 80s Metal craze.”
Tesla arrived when the metal boom was beginning to buckle under its own excess, but The Great Radio Controversy had more muscle and heart than most of its era. It is a big, lived-in hard-rock record that deserves a fresh listen beyond the usual hits-and-hair-metal shorthand.
Your vote makes the episode
Vote for the album you want to hear us pull apart, defend, question, rate, and place back in its proper corner of rock history. The winner across Patreon and Substack becomes the next full Dig Me Out episode—and your comments may wind up in the discussion.
Gotta vote for Holland. I submitted this album for consideration several years ago. This album was big on Real Precious Metal (RPM) radio in Chicago in the mid 80s, especially Gotta Run and Wake Up the Neighborhood, and was formative to my burgeoning metal and hard rock tastes.
I like all these (except for GNR), but my vote goes overwhelmingly for Tesla. A record that not only avoided the dreaded “sophomore slump” but improved upon the band’s debut.
That said, Holland would have been my backup choice. It’s a great little album which also includes the lead guitar skills of future multi-necked axe slinger, Michael Angelo Batio. Band leader Tom Holland was also part of another great short-lived Chicago band earlier in the 80’s called The B’zz. Their 1982 major label debut (and I think also sole album), Get Up, is also worth investigating.