Jason McMaster thinks of what could have been with Dangerous Toys’ album ‘Hellacious Acres’

Jason McMaster thinks of what could have been with Dangerous Toys’ album ‘Hellacious Acres’

Dangerous Toys and Dirty Looks frontman Jason McMaster was recently interviewed by Andrew Daly for Metal Edge Mag.

McMaster was asked why Dangerous Toys‘s sophomore album Hellacious Acres, which was released in 1991, did not achieve the same level of success as their self-titled debut record, to which he replied:

“I think it had a lot to do with the whole Seattle movement. That record came out in ’91, the same year Nirvana and Pearl Jam dropped their first albums. But a lot of people got really into grunge, and that buried a band like Dangerous Toys. It felt like the streets in cities like L.A. emptied, and everyone changed their wardrobes overnight. So, when I think of Hellacious Acres, I think about what could have been. It’s an awesome record, and at the time, it boggled my mind that people weren’t into it.”

On whether the Seattle grunge movement is what led Dangerous Toys to get dropped by Columbia Records, McMaster opined:

“Absolutely. You had this new style of rock music that had all these people latching onto it, and it killed bands like us. The radio and MTV wanted nothing to do with us and refused to play our stuff. So, an album like Hellacious Acres never had a chance. Couple that with the giant moguls and money-making machines throwing all their weight behind grunge and acts like Dangerous Toys were essentially dead in the water.

So, with Columbia, labels have to do whatever the trends say they must do for them to pay their giant rents or whatever. It wasn’t a shock that Columbia jumped ship on us, just like all the other major labels did with other bands. I mean… I know they were trying their best to have some sort of ditch effort with Alice Cooper, Judas Priest, Metal Church, and Motörhead around that time, but it didn’t matter. If you played hard rock or metal, you were screwed. By ’91, they cleaned the shelf of all that was popular in the ’80s, which meant sleazy hard rock was dying, and our record and our deal died with it.”

You can read the rest of the interview with Jason McMaster via Metal Edge Mag‘s website.

Dangerous Toys‘ “Gimme No Lip” video (from Hellacious Acres album):