[Equal Vision Records]
So back in the late 80's and early 90's, most teenagers and pre-teens were into metal. If not metal, then Glam Rock, which was derived from metal, but dressed up to sell more records.
In any number of suburban high schools you would find kids wearing Metallica or Slayer shirts, or even Motley Crue and Cinderella (actually, no one really liked Cinderella) shirts. After a while, pop-metal bands started popping (excuse the pun) up. Bands like Extreme, Firehouse and Nelson. They sort of looked metal and they used a sort of metal font for their band logo, but they played really shitty music no one really liked, These bands were universally hated by metalheads and generally classified as 'girl music'. Although girls still had heavier alternatives like Warrant and Slaughter. So in actuality, they were nerdy girl music.
Astonishingly enough, this music still sold. It was something packaged as metal but without any of the danger, so parents had no problem buying their children Extreme cassettes. I'm sure a lot of kids were plenty upset when they found an Extreme cassette under the tree come Christmas time.
I'd have to wonder if there were any metalheads with foresight that really analyzed this whole pop-metal genre. I'd like to think at least a couple did. Maybe they'd say to themselves, "Hey man, this is totally going to ruin the music I love. There's a bunch of bands coming out that look metal but they're playing watered down adult contemporary rock disguised as teenage metal rebellion! This music is completely inoffensive and can be programmed immediately into regular VH1 rotation and my parents would have no problem with that! This TOTALLY blows!".
Anyhow, if Alexisonfire cut out the screamy parts and wrote better hooks and choruses, they'd be the modern underground music equivalent of Extreme.
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