lizzy borden

by Greg Prato
In the wake of Mötley Crüe's meteoric rise to superstardom in 1983 on the strength of their now classic album Shout at the Devil, a countless amount of other similarly styled theatrical metal bands cropped up in the Los Angeles heavy metal community, including Lizzy Borden. Basically an '80s update of Alice Cooper (with some Iron Maiden-esque riffs mixed into the melting pot), the group built a substantial regional following on the West Coast with an over-the-top stageshow, but failed to break through commercially. Like Cooper, the band Lizzy Borden had a lead singer who shared the same name as the band, issuing several albums on the Metal Blade label from 1984-1990: 1984's Give 'Em the Axe, 1985's Love You to Pieces, 1986's The Murderous Metal Roadshow and Menace to Society, 1987's Terror Rising and Visual Lies, and 1989's Master of Disguise. Borden also appeared in the 1988 Penelope Spheeris-directed ary about the '80s metal scene, The Decline of Western Civilization Part II. With the hard rock musical climate changing by the early '90s (and grand stageshows becoming old hat), Lizzy Borden decided to pack it in. Borden would go on to form a more retro-glam outfit, Diamond Dogs, in the '90s, but opted to reunite the Lizzy Borden group by the end of the decade, in time for 2000's Deal with the Devil and ensuing tours.