Dig Me Out: 70s & 80s Metal

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 were quietly rebuilding what hard rock and metal could be. Boston’s basement‑crafted debut exploded onto Epic Records, Thin Lizzy dropped Jailbreak and Johnny the Fox in the same year, and Judas Priest, Scorpions, Rainbow, and Rus...

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 same time, Metallica, Slayer, and Megadeth: were building massive and devoted audiences. These two worlds shared MTV, shared tour bills, and shared fans who were being asked to pick a side. That tension is what makes 1986 unlike any...

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, rubber monster suits, Vincent Pastore as a concerned father, and a teacher who kills a possessed student with a tennis racket. What the film left behind, almost accidentally, was a soundtrack worth arguing about. The musicians be...

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 rewired it, turning guitars into percussion, bass into a funk‑driven anchor, and lyrics into a full‑frontal critique of capitalism, modern life, and what it even means to be “punk” in the first place. In this episode of Dig Me Out, Jaso...

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 Hummingbirds formed in Sydney in 1986, signed to rooArt Records (the label founded by INXS manager Chris Murphy), and recorded their debut loveBUZZ in 1989 with producer Mitch Easter , the same man behind R.E.M.'s Murmur and Reckoning ....

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 gave the world "Friday on My Mind" in 1965. Then he made Hard Road. Released in 1974 and produced by Harry Vanda and George Young, the duo who would immediately go on to produce AC/DC's first six albums. Hard Road features Malcolm Y...

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 the turntable the way all our episodes do: through community vote. It pulled 47% of combined Patreon and Substack poll votes, beating out Fastway, early Pantera, and Metallica to claim this week's dig. If you have an album you think d...

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’ debut Living in the 70s was a cultural earthquake — 16 weeks at #1, the highest-selling Australian album of its time, six songs banned from commercial radio, and a bill where AC/DC and Split Ends opened for them. Outside Australia? Co...

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 community agreed, sending it to the top with 37% of the vote over LA Guns , Ozzy’s Diary of a Madman, and Lillian Axe. Keith clearly knew what he was doing. Want to bring YOUR favorite lost or overlooked album to the table? Suggest it...

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, a glam-adjacent, piano-driven, theatrical rock album that turned Cleveland into a true-believer city while barely registering anywhere else. If you’ve ever wondered how a band could sound like AC/DC fronted by a cabaret singer, t...

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 something special. This episode dives into Mortal Sin’s 1986 debut Mayhemic Destruction—a ferocious, drum‑heavy, DIY thrash record from Sydney that plays like a missing puzzle piece in 80s metal history. Across the conversation, the...

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-bending krautrock albums of the ’70s? This week, we’re digging into Malesch by Agitation Free—a 1972 experimental masterpiece that won our listener poll despite none of us having ever heard it before. This is pure discovery terri...

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 author, professor, and 80s tribute-band guitarist Jesse Kavadlo to talk about his new book Rock of Pages: The Literary Tradition of 1980s Heavy Metal and why those songs about girls, demons, and good times were actually wrestling...

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 album that had all the ingredients for greatness but somehow slipped through the cracks of rock history . With a Robert Plant-caliber vocalist, Jimmy Page-inspired guitar tones, and riffs heavy enough to rival Black Sabbath, Leaf...

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 producer, and sets out to demolish the color lines that 1980s radio had drawn around rock music? You get Vivid, Living Colour’s 1988 debut that kicked down every door with “Cult of Personality” and then refused to play by anyone’s...

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 discover why Motörhead’s Ace of Spades remains one of the most influential rock albums of all time—even if Lemmy himself refused to call it metal. Recorded in six weeks during the summer of 1980 and unleashed that October, Ace of Spad...

Before Operation: Mindcrime, there was this. Queensrÿche’s 1984 debut The Warning is the album that almost didn’t happen—at least not the way the band intended. While they were touring Japan, EMI executives remixed and completely rearranged their progressive metal masterpiece without permission, burying the band’s weirdest, most ambitious material deeper in the tracklist. But even with corporate i...

Ever wondered why some killer 70s rock albums slipped through history’s cracks? This week, Dig Me Out listeners unearth Pluto’s self-titled 1971 LP—an overlooked slab of psychedelic hard rock, boogie vibes, and vintage cosmic groove. Join us as we dig up the story of the London band with festival creds, a jaw-dropping album cover, and a sound that’s part Blue Öyster Cult, part proto-metal pioneers...

When Testament finished touring behind their debut album The Legacy, they had zero songs written for a follow-up. The label didn’t care—they demanded another record immediately. Scrambling to fulfill their contract’s 40-minute minimum, the Bay Area thrash band wrote The New Order in the studio, added an Aerosmith cover, tossed in some classical-influenced instrumentals, and somehow delivered one o...

What happens when a 40-year-old metal legend discovers he’s still got more fire in his belly than anyone expected? Welcome to the untold story of Ozzy Osbourne’s “No Rest for the Wicked” — the 1988 double-platinum beast that time somehow forgot, despite launching one of metal’s most influential guitar partnerships and serving up the perfect middle finger to moral crusaders everywhere. This episode...

Unearthing Europe’s Metal Roots: Wings of Tomorrow Revisited Have you ever wondered what Europe sounded like before “The Final Countdown” catapulted them to global fame? This week on Dig Me Out, we dive deep into Wings of Tomorrow, the underrated second album that proves Europe cut their teeth in raw ’80s metal—long before synths and stadium choruses took over. In this episode, your hosts Jason Zi...

Iron Maiden fans, get ready for a deep dive into five decades of heavy metal legend. This week, Dig Me Out welcomes celebrated author Daniel Bukszpan —the mind behind Iron Maiden at 50 —a passionate and visually stunning tribute chronicling the band's journey from East London pubs to global stadiums. Bukszpan’s new book, released September 16th, pays homage to Maiden’s 50th anniversary by explorin...

When Capitol Records’ Next Quiet Riot Vanished Into Thin Air Ever wonder what happens when a dream team of rock royalty assembles to create the perfect 80s metal album—only to watch it disappear during the mastering process? Icon’s Night of the Crime is the Phoenix-born tragedy that sits at the very top of the “could have, should have been huge” list, featuring Eddie Kramer behind the boards, Ron...

Death’s Scream Bloody Gore: The Album That Birthed Death Metal What happens when a 19-year-old horror movie fanatic from Florida decides to create the heaviest music imaginable? You get Scream Bloody Gore, the 1987 debut that didn’t just launch Death’s career—it created an entire genre. This is the album that made death metal official, complete with the perfect band name to match. In this episode,...

Ready for a cosmic discovery? Imagine if members of Deep Purple, Iron Butterfly, and Johnny Winter’s bands joined forces for one brief, blazing psychedelic trip—left behind in the dusty bins of 1970s rock. That’s Captain Beyond: a cult supergroup whose self-titled debut LP isn’t just underrated, but a secret handshake among true riff obsessives, stoner rock aficionados, and prog heads alike. In th...