They signed to Capitol Records, and with songs like "I Wanna Be Somebody" (an absolute anthem to blind ambition) and "L.O.V.E. Machine" leading the way, their self-titled 1984 debut was an instant success. W.A.S.P. took their horror show on the road, and their momentum continued to build with the following year's The Last Command, which featured new drummer Steven Riley and the band's biggest hit, "Blind in Texas." Later that year, the band gained even more prominence as one of the biggest targets of Tipper Gore and the P.M.R.C. (Parents' Music Resource Center), a group of Washington housewives leading a crusade against violent, sexist song lyrics. Though the incident (which included Senate hearings on the issue with guest speakers as disparate as Frank Zappa, John Denver, and Dee Snider from Twisted Sister) would cause more publicity than actual results, it served to make W.A.S.P. a household name -- for good and for worse.

Ironically, the band toned down their act for 1986's Inside the Electric Circus, a lackluster, repetitive album which saw Lawless switch to guitar (replacing the departed Piper) and the hiring of bassist Johnny Rod. The blood and guts were largely gone (as were the good songs), and despite releasing a strong live album entitled Live...In the Raw the following year, the band's popularity began to plummet. The all-time low arrived with the release of Penelope Spheeris' heavy metal "rockumentary," The Decline of Western Civilization 2: The Metal Years. An expose about the L.A. metal scene, the film's most dramatic and depressing sequence showed an inebriated Chris Holmes drinking himself into a stupor in full stage gear while lying on a float in his mom's swimming pool. In a movie filled with debauchery and decadence, this scene was by far the scariest.