Don’t let the gently mocking, faux-anthropological title of Penelope Spheeris’ riotous and hilarious Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years fool you into thinking this is some kind of staid, academic approach to the decidedly anti-academic world of drunken trashy 1980s hair metal. Starting with a blast of Alice Cooper music over the opening credits montage of Die Hard Metal Fans (looking nigh indistinguishable from the frizzy-haired masses assembled in the epochal Heavy Metal Parking Lot), the film maintains a full-throttle pace, leaping between interviews with all the major and not-so-major players in the scene, thrilling and not-so-thrilling concerts, and the occasional satirical or surreal aside.

Granted, Spheeris and her crew (including the husband and wife production team of Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, who would later direct the ultra quirky overrated indie darling Little Miss Sunshine for some bizarre reason) don’t have to work very hard to land satirical blows when their well-known subjects already inhabit a lifestyle that surpasses self-parody and approaches total megalomania, and their unknown or lesser-known subjects are merely pretenders to that throne of supreme excess. First we meet Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons, better known as the legendary power-pop duo KISS; their interviews are filmed in separate locations but share the common theme of unbridled carnality bordering on satyriasis.

Stanley, in the sack with a trio of identical white women, issues braindead would-be-inspirational platitudes about years of hard work paying off and virtue being its own reward or some such shit. What the girly-man says isn’t as important as the way he wishes to portray himself; the shot is so immaculately composed, so clearly planned out weeks or months in advance that its inherent staged quality transcends its obvious falseness and speaks volumes about egoism, insecurity, and the soul-draining emptiness of “success”. Did any of these women even know Stanley before the film shoot? Were they floozies picked at random from Central Casting? Is this even Paul Stanley’s bedroom, or is it merely a smoke-filled soundstage? Who knows? Who cares? The issue of the film’s authenticity has been called into question more than a few times by its detractors, concerning a handful of scenes that will be covered later.

More amusingly, Gene Simmons gives a lucid interview in a Frederick’s of Hollywood high-end lingerie boutique wearing his trademark leather biker jacket and looking for all the world like a sleazy sexual predator. In a contrast to his comrade Stanley’s empty-headed oratory, Simmons is quick to point out the high burnout rate in his particular strata of success, and the temptation to succumb to self-destructive urges can be unavoidable in such a high-pressure, high-profile lifestyle … before his gaze wanders to the particularly well-built behind of a passing lady, and his train of thought derails completely.

From there we are introduced to a few followers of KISS, glam-rock bands such as the soon-to-be-forgotten Lizzie Borden (who perform an underwhelming power-metal cover of Steppenwolf’s “Born to be Wild” before an indifferent crowd) and the outrageously smutty Faster Pussycat, who dress like a debauched biker gang and wear an obvious Russ Meyer influence on their tattered sleeves. Thrill to the tender, sensitive lyrics of “Bathroom Wall”, a romantic love ballad about a steamy hookup facilitated via restroom graffiti, like a much less subtle version of “Jenny (867-5309)”. We briefly sojourn backstage after a successful gig at one of LA’s better-known sleazepits to discover that after performing songs about wanton drunkenness and screwing, they commence with wanton drunkenness and screwing. Hardly inspired, but at least their self-deprecating candor and lack of pretense is refreshing compared to the unchecked egoism of some of their hair-metal compatriots.

Unknown, deservedly obscure bands such as Seduce and Rigor Mortis perform loud, sloppy, derivative and just plain crappy sets, then retreat backstage for some debauchery and boasting about all the multimillion dollar record deals, world tours headlining sold-out shows in the biggest stadiums on Earth, and all the bitchin’ shit they’re gonna buy to fill up their 80-room mansions; generally behaving like entitled douchebag clowns, overgrown children who feel success is owed them simply by virtue of being able to bang out three or four power chords and investing in enough Aqua-Net to burn a hole in the ozone layer the size of Canada.

Granted, this could hardly be called a newfangled 1980s phenomenon, as these idiots are simply the next generation of washouts, just like all the hippies of the 1960s and 70s who would ingest copious amounts of marijuana, LSD and psilocybin and form shitty psychedelic bands in the hope of becoming the next Jefferson Airplane. Likewise, all the Seduces and Rigor Mortises of the hair-metal era would place a much higher priority on partying than honing their musical craft, as if Motley Crue or Van Halen became successful due to the amount of alcohol consumed rather than the amount of time spent practicing or songwriting. For every Metallica that could somehow pull off an awesome set while knocking back cubes of lager onstage, there were countless pretenders lacking in any semblance of talent. Partying was somehow seen as an impetus to greatness, rather than a reward for hard work. Surely, the fact that Spheeris and her crew with following them with cameras and sound techs must have been a sign that they were headed for the big time, and their narcissistic delusions are fueled all the more.

For a surprisingly nuanced account of a depraved, alcoholic and drug-addled existence (with occasional music), we turn to none other than the poster boy for that lifestyle: Ozzy Osbourne, the man who was once kicked out of San Antonio, Texas,  for the crime of drunkenly urinating on the Alamo.

In a sequence nearly as spellbinding as the climax of The Thirty-Nine Steps, Ozzy recounts the bad old days spent in a perpetual narcotic haze while touring with Black Sabbath, and the alcoholism that continued to plague him after the legendary heavy metal pioneers broke up and he pursued his solo career. While he recounts hilarious and cringe-inducing anecdotes in a jovial, conversational tone, Osbourne is preparing breakfast in the modest kitchen of his home in Los Angeles. The boiling tea, scrambled eggs and sizzling bacon strips on his griddle are captured with all the fetishistic detail of your typical Food Network program. It’s a strangely humanizing moment for this larger-than-life caricature of a man; compared to the KISS interviews, or the scene with some jackass from Poison talking about his “brand” with all the passion of a record company shill, Osbourne is as humble and down-to-earth as you can get while still being a world-famous rock star with more money than God.

With alcohol abuse becoming more and more of a dominant theme in the film, we meet various drunken fans, drunken wannabe successes (one kid with a towering blonde mullet, when asked about any contingency plans, claims without irony that he’d “probably die” if he did not achieve success as a musician), and perhaps the most egregious cirrhosis case in the making: Chris Holmes of W.A.S.P., a self-proclaimed “full-blown alcoholic”. In the most notorious scene in Decline Part II, he’s interviewed sitting on a floating pool chair, downing at least one and a half bottles of vodka while his own mother looks on, horrified but powerless, from poolside. When asked the reason for his suicidal and downright idiotic alcohol abuse, Holmes unscrews the cap of a fresh bottle and repeats his mantra: “I’m a full-blown alcoholic!” Then he proceeds to guzzle about a third of the bottle in one pull. Nostrovia, indeed!

One thing that most, if not all, of the drunken party groups depicted in the film have in common is that, musically, they’re all terrible in their own special, unique and precious way. While most seem to be content with being slapdash, forgettable, and slipshod in arrangement and performance of their uninspired material, Odin is a band that is terrible in a kind of transcendent, all encompassing shittiness. Their segment begins, apropos enough, with a creepy old man running a beauty pageant, an old Vaudevillian who wants to “keep it clean” while he parades around a couple dozen half-naked bimbos; the rowdy crowd soon usurps him and turns his pageant into a striptease contest, setting the stage for Odin to come out with their spandex, waist-length hair, and unspeakably shitty musicianship. The androgynous, presumably male vocalist rocks his assless chaps and lashes out his disturbingly long, lizard-like prehensile tongue while humping his microphone stand in a prone position on stage; all the while the old man is trying to pump up the crowd with an “Odin! Odin! Odin!” chant that somehow fails to catch on. The whole sequence is horrifying and inexplicable, all the more so when we join Odin backstage for familiar drunken hot tub hijinx and the insufferable vocalist is going on and on about how they’re gonna take over the world, etc. etc.

As of the time of this writing, Odin is still waiting on their record deal; their biggest exposure came from Decline Part II and their myspace profile, the best efforts of the old Vaudevillian all for naught.

All the sober personalities seen in the film, on the other hand, are not only much more articulate and distanced from the subject matter at hand, but their level-headedness seems to bring about a total lack of ego. Aside from the jaw-droppingly soulless musings of Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler and Joe Perry (who were much more interesting when they were constantly Hoovering rails of cocaine throughout the 70s), we have musings on originality and shock value from the always fascinating Alice Cooper, interviewed on stage in freshly applied bloody corpse makeup, and surprisingly passionate anti-drug sentiment from Jeff Young and Dave Mustaine of Megadeth.

While Young’s ideas about sobriety may be as trite as the verbiage from a D.A.R.E. workbook (“I don’t get fucked up when I’m practicing at home, so why would I cheat the audience that way?”) and Mustaine is still visibly bitter about his ejection from Metallica, but once Megadeth comes onstage to perform their epic “In My Darkest Hour”, all their words become meaningless white noise in the face of PURE METAL SHREDDING AWESOMENESS, which whips the crowd into a frenzy and creates a turbulent, swirling, dangerous environment filled with impromptu mosh pits, vicious elbowing, and unprovoked fistfights breaking out between concert patrons. Then Mustaine’s solo incites crowd-surfers to charge the stage and fling themselves headlong into the pulsating crowd. From the camera angle just below the edge of the stage, Megadeth towers like metal Gods before a worshipful congregation, a unified mass of rabid fans churned up into a frenzy and becoming one mindless organism, with a heart that beats to the relentless tempo of the music. Then slapstick comedy ensues after the crowd’s frenzy has sated somewhat but the crowdsurfers continue to charge the stage. Some end up crashing down painfully to the concrete, some poor folks are nearly flattened, and others misjudge their angle of approach, crashing headfirst into a towering amplifier.

While Megadeth gives far and away the best performance in a film packed with wall-to-wall music, Decline Part II should not be judged solely on the strength of its concert scenes. Some are terrible, as discussed earlier, so be sure to get as sauced up as the performers. The greatest strength of Spheeris’ epic documentary, aside from its invaluable importance as a late-80s time capsule, is its multifaceted approach to the subject matter. In a dramatic improvement from Decline Part I, which focused on the early 80s punk scene and was more or less a collection of concert scenes bookended by brief interviews, Part II adopts a more kaleidoscopic approach, making the already cartoonish personalities depicted within somehow both even more ridiculous, and yet achingly human. Those who don’t try to drown their insecurities in an alcohol blitzkrieg realize their limitations not only as artists but also as fragile human beings who generally aren’t cut out for the insane workaday lifestyle of a touring band. While the delusional drunken idiots are far more entertaining to watch, the handful successful sober individuals are the heart and soul of the film.

Sorry. I take that back. The heart and soul of Decline Part II is the universally horrendous hair. But the few who successfully combine artistry with badass guitar shredding and their awful hair are those who are most deserving of respect. Everyone else is just a fool with an enlarged liver and way too much Aqua-Net.

Tags: 1980s, aerosmith, decline of western civilization, faster pussycat, hair metal, johnathan dayton and valerie faris, megadeth, metallica, odin, penelope spheeris, poison

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