Badlands

Best known as the band featuring former Ozzy Osbourne guitarist Jake E. Lee, Badlands showed plenty of promise but their run was short-lived. Hard rock bands of the 80's and early 90's often were labelled as hair metal, and Badlands were often miscategorized as such, as they never went for the glam image of their compatriots. They debuted with a self-titled effort in 1989, and a fine debut it was, with Lee's tasteful bluesy riffs combined with Ray Gillen's Led Zeppelin-inspired vocals. They got good reviews, some MTV airplay, and decent sales, but they didn't quite make the impact that they (or their record company) hoped for. Two years later came the followup album Voodoo Highway, but it was a commercial failure, and by this time infighting between Gillen and Lee were threatening to break the band apart -- in fact, Gillen quit (or was fired) before a planned UK tour, only to be recruited temporarily back to complete those concerts, where naturally the tensions between the two were at full force. Following Gillen's final exit, the band soldiered on for a time with new vocalist John West (later to be seen in Artension and Royal Hunt), but this didn't last long and the band was soon put to rest. Lee disappeared from the public scene for many years afterward, while Gillen sadly died in late 1993. Their third album, originally entitled Tribal Moon, was shelved for years but finally saw a Japanese release in 1999 as Dusk.

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Discography

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