PRETTY BOY FLOYD – Tonight Belongs To The Young

The heyday of Glam Metal, or Hairband Metal, was indeed a unique time in the history of heavy rock. Essentially, bands with the formula and aptitude to churn out Top 40 hits found that they could appeal to the masses and bag scores of really hot chicks if they added some distortion and adopted an androgynous stage personality. Like most sensationalist musical movements, Hairband Metal enjoyed initial legitimacy, but was ultimately utterly bastardized into something that eventually destroyed much of the popularity Heavy Metal deservedly had earned throughout the years.

Today, as we all know, Hairband Metal is still out there, but the “major” players have lost their limelight status, or have had to modify their respective styles to be taken seriously. Clearly, though, Hairband Metal has its place in musical history, and can/should be enjoyed for its merits even to this day.

Enter Pretty Boy Floyd (PBF)…a band determined to keep the sub-genre alive…and why not? In fact, God luv ‘em for it! Tonight Belongs to the Young is a 10-track compilation of previously unreleased PBF demos. Most tracks are filled with raucous fun and, via controlled decadence, the celebration of life — especially life as carefree “young bucks.” The lyrics, light in content, are generally shallow and ephemeral, but this is consciously done to promulgate a positive vibe throughout each song and to ensure that PBF can deliver catchy choruses – something that has always been and continues to be indigenous to Hairband Metal…“It’s been 5 long…, 5 long…, 5 long days…I’ve been workin’ for the weekend, so we can get away.” You get the gist. Heck, after one listen you’ll find that you’ve already memorized most of the words!

Because of the constant emphasis on sing-a-long lyrics, musically, there is nothing eye opening here, but there are no turn-offs either. In the end, the drumbeats are pronounced, basic, and deliberate. The guitars provide the pace for each song, and are presented with typical treble-influenced distortion – you know, the kind that basically blends all of the chords and notes together. The bass guitar work adds some structure to each song, and rounds out the sound by providing needed dimension, but is generally not complex. The vocals are the most emphasized instrument, and tend to come through smoothly in a non-offensive manner, however, a bit over-processed to achieve a canned Top 40 DJ voice sound – complete with plenty of old Hairband Metal tricks and fallbacks, such as periodic use of the cerebral “whoa-ohs.”

The unfortunate glaring weakness of Tonight Belongs to the Young is the demo production quality. Most songs sound like they were originally recorded on 3-for-a-dollar drugstore cassette tapes. The eighth track, “Stray Bullet,” has such bad production quality, it almost sounds as if the source tape had a warped segment in it where the instruments quiver as if the playback speed was wavering. The production failure with these demos is a true shame, because all of the tracks generally have all the right ingredients to be winners, and PBF shows as much ability as any band of their feather to create quality songs.

After listening to this CD a number of times, I began to realize that had this album been released in 1989 and received the benefit of conventional recording standards and promotional resources available at that time, PBF would likely have sold at least one million copies of Tonight Belongs to the Young. PBF successfully captures here that which made Hairband Metal popular, and churned out 10 quality tunes – a feat generally greater, quite frankly, than what most albums could proclaim during Hairband Metal’s reign during the 1980s/early 1990s.

That said, if rough production quality doesn’t bother you and you’re familiar with previous work by PBF, or if you’re a rabid fan of the Hairband Metal style that simply can’t get enough, you’ll be impressed with the merits of Tonight Belongs to the Young. For everyone else, I recommend you pass on this one only because the overall muffled, inconsistent sound quality simply makes this too difficult of a listen.