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Warrant, Dokken and Slaughter: Hair to stay

Lately, there have been enough "hair band" sightings to get executives at Aqua Net worked into a tizzy. Five years have passed since the flannel invasion, and now pop-metal is staging a surprisingly fierce comeback.

"Metal is now the alternative to alternative," says Tom Lipsky, president of CMC International, a Raleigh, N.C.-based indie that has gobbled up pop-metal acts orphaned by major labels. In fact, Lipsky says, radio stations that have consistent shunned anthemic power ballads and arena-ready rock are varying their format to include retro-metal.

Until recently, indies like CMC and New York's Mayhem Records have served as virtual graveyards for fallen metal gods. Now major labels want a piece of the pie. Columbia recently inked a deal with Night Ranger, Sony Music signed Jackal and Mercury added KISS to their roster.

But don't expect time capsules like Warrant, Dokken, Slaughter and even '70s behemoth Alice Cooper to play anything but their greatest hits when they blaze through the Valley on Aug. 26. Rather than reinventing themselves to kids weaned on bands like Prodigy and Marilyn Manson, these retro­rockin', girl-lovin', devil-may-care pro­genitors of cheese-metal are reaching out to a 25-and-up crowd seeking to relive a bygone era.

"When you have 25 albums out, you don't want to concentrate on the new material," says Alice Cooper, whose recent disc, A Fistful of Alice, is a live retread of early material with one new studio cut tossed in. "Audiences want to hear the hits. We haven't really changed that much, yet people keep coming to see us because there's something satisfying about the shows."

Having shocked audiences throughout the '70s and '80s with colossal concerts featuring gallows, guillotines and boa constrictors, Cooper says his current road show is a creepy carnival spectacle that is more theatrical and more energetic than ever before. "Audiences want to get their money's worth," Cooper says. "They're tired of seeing a band singing to their shoes."

"People are returning to the fun, lightheartedness of the past two decades," agrees CMC's Lipsky. 'They're like, 'I want to be entertained again. I want you to distract me from all the crap in my life.' Metal is a great combination of theater and music and is not meant to be taken so seriously that it adds another burden to your daily life."