80s Metal Album Tournament | Vote

Four listener-nominated albums enter—only one gets the Dig Me Out deep dive. Cast your vote now.

We’ve pulled four albums out of the Hopper—each one a listener pick, each one begging for a deep dive. Now it’s in your hands: which album should we queue up next? Cast your vote and help us decide what gets the full Dig Me Out treatment. Let’s find out what forgotten gem or cult favorite deserves the spotlight.

Lita Ford - Lita

🎧 Listen | You know Kiss Me Deadly. You Know Close My Eyes Forever but do you know the rest of this album? I'd venture to say probably not. Now the question is are you better or worse off for not knowing the other seven tracks on this album? That's for you to decide - Keith P Miller

Cats In Boots - Kicked & Klawed

🎧 Listen | Fun glammy album with a ton of hooks and crunchy guitar. To this day it’s in my regular rotation. - John

The Dogs D’Amour - In The Dynamite Jet Saloon

🎧 Listen | as a kid growing up during the pop metal, hair metal, whatever you want to call it explosion of the 80s only 3 bands mattered to me: faster pussycat, hanoi rocks and the dogs d’amour. i read a small blurb about them in a music rag and decided i was going to spend my hard earned paper route money on them next. i found their cassette, took it to the register of the local musicland and the guy behind the counter snidely said, “i just put this out. you like these guys?” “i dunno. i read about them and wanted to check them out.” the fact that this band seemed to annoy this guy already endeared them to me. my mom was cool enough to let me listen to it in the car on the way home. i had the volume cranked a little to high for tyla’s intro. whoops! they often get lumped in with the hair metal of the times but there was a lot more going on lyrically and musically with them then with their so called contemporaries. my father raised me on a steady diet of tom waits and i feel like the dogs kind of bridged the gap between my dad’s record collection and my own quickly growing cassette collection. - anthony

Celtic Frost - Into the Pandemonium

🎧 Listen | A genre-bending album from a thrash band that was trying to get away from thrash just as it was becoming popular. - David Gorgos

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