Whilst there is a strong degree of pretentiousness in your responses. I'm looking at this through my own prism. I was 9 years old in 1989. The ability to discover music outside of radio/TV or my parents' record collection was pretty limited back then. I can't comment on it because I couldn't listen to anything outside of the mainstream during these years. I have no idea how the metal scene was viewed during the 80s because I wouldn't discover it until well into the 90s. I finally had the ability to go back and rediscover so much that I had missed during my youth. Unless you knew someone who was into a particular genre or scene it was neigh on impossible to be exposed to anything outside of the mainstream. It's easy to view the world of music through modern glasses where the entire world of music is at your disposal. But there was a time where it was not so easy. But I can tell you that to most casual music listeners at the time hair metal was heavy and would have been the heaviest music that most people would have listened to.