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1991: Stache-Metal pioneer Judas Priest may have ushered the hardcore machismo aesthetic into metal subculture, but Metallica shanghaied the torch, taking the facial incarnation of anti-authority to the top of the charts…and into the suburban mall.  Metallica’s 1991 performance of  “Enter Sandman” in Monsters of Rock in Moscow is not only a consummate moment in the band’s epic stache-metal career, but truly a great moment in mustache music history. Lyrically, a song about nightmares, this facial hair opera is what dreams are made of — thick, massive walls of sound, cookie monster vocals, amplified distortion, an extended guitar solo, various styled stances of hair whiplash, and the ultimate exclusionary masculine finger at authority: the mustache. The performance yields a triple stache-shred threat with three rhythm guitar tracks of the same riff only marginally shadowed by three mustachioed metalheads; James Hetfield, Kirk Hammett, and Lars Ulrich, respectively sport a beastly horseshoe combo, a thin painter’s brush and a five o’clock walrus shadow. In just one 5:29 minute metal performance, Metallica makes a stronger case for the mustache than they did against Napster.

But the night is darkest before the dawn. Metal subculture had reached its tipping point. Once synonymous with the hardcore-opposition-to-authority ethos, the metal-stache’s image was diluted.  Embraced by suburban middle school stoners and mallrats, a uniformed army of black t-shirt wearing posers with teen molester-stache’s was spawned in the Hot Topic womb and released unto the world, eroding the metal-stache movement of the early 90s. In a devastating move to disconnect the band from the molester-stache, James Hetfield trades his horseshoe for an inverted walrus with extended chinstrap, beginning the band’s slow descent from metal credibility. Exit light. Enter night.