This week marked a huge milestone in heavy metal music. Monday was the 35th anniversary of the day Quiet Riot's third studio album, Metal Health, topped the Billboard album charts, becoming the first heavy metal album to do so. While another heavy metal album (if you can call Van Halen's 5150 "heavy metal") didn't top the charts for another two and a half years, Metal Health showed radio stations, consumers, and record companies that heavy metal was a viable genre that was here to stay. It also shined the spotlight on the Sunset Strip and Los Angeles as the place to find up-and-coming hard rock and metal bands.
The most famous song off of Metal Health is the band's cover of Slade's "Cum On Feel The Noize," which hit #5 on the Billboard Hot 100. Other hits off of the album were "Slick Black Cadillac," which was an MTV staple and reached #32 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart, and the title track. Whether you call it "Metal Health," "Bang Your Head," "Metal Health (Bang Your Head)," or "Bang Your Head (Metal Health)," it was the band's second Top 40 song on the Billboard Hot 100, reaching #31, and it is a metal classic.
I highly recommend the 2015 documentary about the band, Quiet Riot: Well Now You're Here, There's No Way Back, which is taken from a lyric in "Metal Health" and chronicles the history of the band and drummer Frankie Banalli's attempts (sometimes successful, other times not) to get the band back together after the 2007 death of lead singer Kevin DuBrow.
Interesting tidbit: Kevin DuBrow's younger brother is reality TV plastic surgeon and star of Botched, Dr. Terry DuBrow.
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