Badlands

Badlands was the band Jake E. Lee put together after his stint as Ozzy Osbourne's guitarist, and it came together in Los Angeles in 1988 with a lot of heavy metal credentials: singer Ray Gillen and drummer Eric Singer had both been in Black Sabbath, and bassist Greg Chaisson came over from Surgical Steel. But instead of doubling down on metal, they went back to the roots, playing Led Zeppelin-style blues and hard rock with plenty of swing and swagger.

The self-titled debut came out on Atlantic Records in 1989, and it's a strutting, bluesy beast: Lee's guitar slides and snarls, Gillen belts like a man possessed, and "Dreams in the Dark" and the moody "Winter's Call" show both sides of the band, the rocker and the brooder. Jeff Martin took over the drums after that first record, and Voodoo Highway followed in 1991.

Gillen then left and John West briefly stepped in, and Gillen's death in 1993 put an end to any hope of a reunion. Dusk, a set of demos recorded in 1992 and 1993 with Gillen singing, finally came out in 1998, the band's third and last album.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.