W.A.S.P. | TheSocial.news

W.A.S.P. formed in Los Angeles in 1982 under the creative control of vocalist and guitarist Blackie Lawless, and immediately made a reputation for theatrical shock tactics — raw meat thrown into the crowd, staged acts of violence, and an image designed to offend that earned them a place on the Parents Music Resource Center's infamous "Filthy Fifteen" list in 1985. The controversy was real, but so was the music: their debut album (1984) and its follow-up The Last Command (1985) contained genuinely excellent heavy metal songwriting that would have merited attention without the shock tactics, and their most celebrated song, "I Wanna Be Somebody," is a straightforwardly anthemic hard rock track that holds up regardless of context.

Blackie Lawless steered W.A.S.P. in increasingly ambitious directions through the late 1980s and 1990s — including the concept album The Crimson Idol (1992), which is considered by many fans their artistic peak — and has maintained the band as a touring entity through subsequent decades. The 1984 to Headless tour revisits the band's foundational era for audiences who lived through it and those discovering it now, with KK's Priest — the band formed by ex-Judas Priest guitarist K.K. Downing — providing a support act from the same tradition of British and American heavy metal that W.A.S.P. emerged from.

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