“The label president said, ‘Angelo, I thought you were fast?’ I was taken aback. Then he said, ‘I want you to overplay all the time.’ He wanted the record to be abrasive”: Michael Angelo Batio tells the story of Nitro, hair metal’s most extreme band

American guitarist Michael Angelo Batio performing at a Dean Guitars event in London with his custom dual-neck guitar, taken on August 11, 2009. (Photo by Total Guitar Magazine/Future via Getty Images).

The critics were brutal, none more so than Guitar World’s editors, who branded Nitro’s 1989 debut, O.F.R., “dickhead music.” Michael Angelo Batio says the smackdowns stung, but he also reveals that what pissed him off the most was that he found himself agreeing with much of the criticism. “The band knew going into it that we were going to be very extreme, but we wound up going way beyond that,” he says.

Everything about Nitro was pushed beyond the max. The Los Angeles-based glam metal quartet, which also included singer Jim Gillette, drummer Bobby Rock and bassist T.J. Racer, was billed as having “the fastest, loudest, highest sound around.” And boy, did they ever. Gillette, whose ballsack-grabbing soprano seemed to extend to a range heard only by canines, reportedly shattered not one, not two, but three wine glasses at live shows.