Mane Attraction [180-Gram] Vinyl

Mane Attraction is White Lion's fourth album, and it landed right at the worst possible moment for a glam metal band, released in April 1991, months before Nevermind changed what rock radio wanted entirely.

Mike Tramp and Vito Bratta had built a genuine reputation as musicians rather than just hair and spandex, Bratta in particular earning real respect as a guitarist's guitarist even among peers who didn't take the glam scene seriously. This record leaned into that ambition harder than anything the band had made before, and it shows in the arrangements, more complex and less single-minded than typical late-80s hard rock. It just arrived at exactly the wrong cultural moment, stalling outside the Top 20 in a way White Lion's previous two albums hadn't, and the band split by September of that same year, grunge's arrival making the whole conversation moot almost overnight.

Lights and Thunder is the record's clear reach for something bigger, an eight-minute epic with a structure genuinely inspired by Led Zeppelin's Achilles Last Stand, ambitious in a way the singles chart never fully rewarded. Love Don't Come Easy carries the album's most durable hook, still charting respectably on mainstream rock radio despite the band's declining commercial fortunes. Broken Heart, re-recorded from their earliest days, closes the loop on where the band actually started.

The last record from this lineup, made by a band that never got the chance to see where this direction led. First reissue since 1991, finally on 180 gram.