Dig Me Out: 70s & 80s Metal

Hawkwind Made Proto-Stoner Rock Before Anyone Had a Name for It

A Swedish band nobody outside Scandinavia ever heard live sounds like it was mixed by people who actually understood 80s post-punk instead of just imitating it. This epis

Tora Tora Sounds Like Judas Priest Fighting Aerosmith

Tora Tora beat Metallica in a poll. That alone should tell you something about how this show works. This 80s Metal episode covers Tora Tora's 1989 debut Surprise Attack,

The 1970 Billy Joel Metal Album That Time Forgot

Billy Joel in a metal band sounds like a late night joke, but Attila’s lone 1970 album is a lot stranger and heavier than the punchlines suggest. In this episode, we dig

Yngwie J. Malmsteen's Rising Force Turns 41: Why It Still Matters

A nineteen year old singer, a guitarist who barely wanted him there, and a record that split guitar playing into two schools for the rest of the decade. This week our 90s

1976: The Year Guitar Rock Split In Two

1976 was supposed to belong to disco, soft rock, and singer‑songwriters. Yet in the shadows of “Disco Lady,” “A Fifth of Beethoven,” and “Silly Love Songs,” guitar bands

1986: The Year Glam and Thrash Both Peaked at the Same Time

On daytime MTV, Bon Jovi was becoming the biggest pop-rock act on the planet. Poison was setting the blueprint for everything pop culture now calls hair metal. At the sam

Black Roses Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (1988): The King Kobra Album Hidden Inside a B-Movie

In 1988, a straight-to-VHS satanic panic horror film called Black Roses went nowhere fast. The movie itself is, by any honest assessment, terrible: bright red fake blood,

Gang of Four’s Entertainment!: Punk, Funk, and the Politics of Rhythm

Gang of Four’s Entertainment! is the moment post‑punk stopped being a scene and started sounding like a threat. This 1979 debut didn’t just tweak punk’s formula—it rewire

The Hummingbirds Gave the Lemonheads Their Biggest Hit

Returning Dig Me Out Union patron Josh Page is back from Australia with his second pick, and this one is geo-locked to his home country for most of the world. The Humming

Stevie Wright's Hard Road Is the AC/DC Prequel Nobody Told You About

The name Stevie Wright probably doesn't ring a bell. It should. Wright was the lead singer of The Easybeats, Australia's first international rock act and the band that ga

Metal Church's The Dark: The Album That Got Buried By 1986

You Opened for Metallica. You Got MTV Airplay. So Why Does Nobody Know Your Name? The strange disappearance of Metal Church and The Dark The Dark earned its place on th

Skyhooks’ Living in the 70s: The Most Important Australian Rock Album You’ve Never Heard

Skyhooks – Living in the 70s (1974) | 70s Rock Deep Dive What if the most important rock album of 1974 never made it out of its home country? In Australia, Skyhooks’ deb

The Secret Handshake: Why Dangerous Toys Never Became a Household Name

Dangerous Toys (self-titled, 1989) was brought to the show by Dig Me Out community member Keith Miller, who nominated it for the December 2025 Patreon poll, and the commu

The 1973 Album by The Sensational Alex Harvey Band That Sounds Like Rocky Horror Meets AC/DC

A Scottish cult hero. A seven-minute pseudo-electronic epic. A song literally called “Gang Bang.” This episode dives into Next (1973) by the Sensational Alex Harvey Band,

Before You Replay Master of Puppets, Hear This

When an Australian thrash band that never broke big in the U.S. gets compared to early Metallica, Slayer, and Maiden in the same breath, you know you’ve stumbled onto som

Agitation Free: The Album Nobody Remembers (But Tangerine Dream Does)

Ever heard of a band that traveled to Egypt on a Goethe Institute tour, recorded street sounds in Cairo bazaars, then came home to Berlin and created one of the most mind

Nothing But a Good Time… or Cold War Therapy?

What if the “dumb party metal” you grew up with turned out to be one of the sharpest mirrors of 1980s America? In this episode of Dig Me Out: 80s Metal, we sit down with

46% of Our Community Voted for This Leafhound Album—Here’s Why They Were Right

What if Led Zeppelin had a long-lost twin that nobody remembers? In this episode of Dig Me Out, we unearth Leafhound’s 1971 proto-metal masterpiece Growers of Mushroom—an

Is Living Colour’s Vivid the Most Underrated Guitar Album of the 80s?

Living Colour’s Vivid: When Rock Refused to Play by the Rules What happens when a jazz-trained guitar virtuoso teams up with a Broadway-bound singer, adds Mick Jagger as

Motörhead’s Ace of Spades: The Bar Band That Accidentally Redefined Heavy

Motörhead - Ace of Spades: The Bar Band That Redefined Metal (Whether They Liked It Or Not) What happens when you salvage a beaten‑up classic from the graveyard? You dis