W.A.S.P.

• Genre: Pop Metal
• Hometown: Los Angeles

About

Fervent in their embrace of debauchery and wanton sexual excess, WASP's albums are too often mere tirades of lewd potty humor set to glitzy metal riffs and cock-rock heroics. Nonetheless, these binge and purge musical miscreants know how to rub rock's sordid underbelly with one hand while giving the bird with the other to anyone who doesn't approve. Acting as if he could channel the ghosts of W.C. Fields and Nero, guitarist Chris Holmes earned his election into the pantheon of alcoholic saints by his consuming mind-boggling amounts of vodka in Penelope Spheeris' Decline of Western Civilization Part II - The Metal Years . The brilliance of that one performance nearly eclipses WASP's Spinal Tap-meets-Poison musical output.

- Chad Driscoll