A HISTORY OF HEAVY METAL” by ANDREW O'NEILL is a hilariously informative book, in which prejudices are presented as scientifically proven facts. It also proved to be a kind of sentimental journey. This hilariously informative book, in which prejudices and opinions are presented as scientifically proven facts, as they should be, and proved besides being indestructibly entertaining, a kind of sentimental journey. A History of Heavy Metal according to Andrew O'Neill touched on more than few occasions on my own journey through the musical landscape. The opening of Beethoven's Fifth was one of the first encounters with music I can recall. The Beatles were THE band of my youth. Helter Skelter was probably the first heavy metal song I heard, without me knowing what heavy metal was. Helter Skelter probably was the first heavy metal song, without Paul McCartney knowing what heavy metal was. He couldn't. The expression was coined by Lester Bangs after he heard Whole Lotta Love by Led Zeppelin (more than a year after Helter Skelter was released in 1968). But then Helter Skelter was perhaps punk. Years before the Ramones, Johnny Thunders & The New York Dolls came to be, light years before The Sex Pistols saw the light of day – so much for genres and their boundaries. (There is a strange thing about genres. Genres are invented to map the musical landscape. And then all music has an obligation to fit within a genre.) Genre boundaries are exactly what Andrew O'Neill does care about. Not always but when you want to prove (like he does) that heavy metal is the best music in the world, it's important to get your definition about what heavy metal is strict & straight. So Andrew O'Neill (never heard of him before by the way) begins to explain what is – according to him – definitely NOT heavy metal (any album that came out before Black Sabbath by Black Sabbath, Nickelback, your band) and what can be considered as heavy metal, even when it is not music (skulls, goat skulls, your mum). Andrew O'Neill is a comedian and it shows. But a comedian with some tricks on his sleeve. He works his way back to the origins of his favorite music genre and comes up with some informative (and funny) observations. (“Metal fans are better than the rest of the population and that's SCIENCE.” LOL! And something that's addressed directly to me: “It's entirely possible to love heavy metal while still dressing like a - whisper it - normal person. But why the fuck do you want to do that?” LMAO!) In search for the origins of heavy metal O'Neill reminds us of the heaviness of Howlin' Wolf. He makes a bit of fuzz about the difference between hard rock and heavy metal (like we care) but is a bit hazy about explaining it. (My shot: Hard rock is rock 'n roll on steriods and heavy metal is rock without the roll, expanded with some heavy chromatism.) He talks about extreme and heavy music and there are some observations I might add to his. About learning the subtle variations of something that sounds like mayhem when you first hear it. The fascination for music that takes you where you didn't go before. Music that's like looking at clouds while waiting for the moment until you start recognizing faces. The liberation and energy when those faces appear. (In this regard it’s interesting to look at the differences between a grunt and a melodic voice. The difference between, say, Obituary and Queensrÿche - with opera-derived vocals. The different vocal styles changes, or should change, the music more than just the sound of it. The primal power of the grunt, the lack of melody of it, finds in the best of black and death metal, its compensation in the instrumentation. I don’t believe in melodic grunt, it’s a bit the worst of different worlds: melody in poor sound with no faces in the clouds.) My fascination for extremism in music brought me from Slayer to Kurtag. My taste for melancholy brought me from heavy metal to Richard Wagner. Heaviness in music is not defined by volume. Musical heaviness is about the “downer”-effect it has on its listener (the kind of sorrow that feels good). Death (the band) on low volume is still heavy music. Morton Feldman's – totally not loud – Rothko Chapel is extremely heavy music. Play Sky Radio loud and it doesn't become heavy music (it becomes sound pollution). Heavy music is heavy music on all volume levels and decibels only go so far to communicate that heaviness. Decibels are limited to what ears can take. (Mind my tinnitus, the day Lemmy engraved a tattoo on my eardrums) Interesting and enteraining. And did I mention that The Neil Gaiman found it hilarious? A History of Heavy Metal - Andrew O'Neill (320 pages)
- Wouter de Moor
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One of my favorite metal albums is Individual Thought Patterns from Chuck Schuldiner's Death. Heavy metal ear candy made by Schuldiner's vocals and guitar, Andy LaRocque's guitar, Steve DiGiorgio's fretless (!) bass and Gene Hoglan's drums. Neck breaking tempo changes and transcendental tutti's that together make it into great songs. It's music that liberates with guitars searching for heterogeneous arpeggios rather than monotous power chords. You will not find their music labeled as progrock but more than bands like Queen, Savatage and/or Dream Theater, I consider Death (from their album Humans on) to be one of my favorite progrock / metal bands; progressive song structures in music that crosses borders, burns like h*ll, never cease to fascinate and has a taste for the theatrical as well. Chuck Schuldiner's life was cut short by a life threatening disease (and the US healthcare system). He died on 13 december 2001. (WdM) To work oneself back through the catalogue of a favorite composer or band and find out that their early work already was full of substance and on moments eclipsed the music that would save their names for posterity. It happened with Richard Wagner (I like his first two operas, Die Feen and Das Liebesverbot, both more than Rienzi, his most famous pre-Fliegende Holländer opera) and it happened with Iron Maiden. Their debut album is a fresh heap of metal in a punk coat and I prefer it over a lot of their later output. Singer Paul Di'Anno sounds more pop and punk than metal. We're still a few years away from the band that would grow into a football stadium rock act. Compared to the Bruce Dickinson-years Maiden sounds on their debut album like a band that still has to make up their mind on a lot of things but the signature sound (with Steve Harris' galloping bass and the brazing guitar appergios) is already there. Remember Tomorrow (covered by Metallica on their latest album "Hard Wired, Deluxe edition) is a song of superb schizophrenia. It carries its teenage resentment with a mature attitude. It's the highlight of this album and one of my favorite metal/rock songs ever. (WdM) David Bowie considered Glenn Branca for a mutual project (there was a short collaboration between the two but the result never saw the light of day). And Scott Walker made a stunning album with Sunn O))). Stranger than fruitcakes and unlike anything I heard before (which is very much a recommendation). Belonging to the same generation of pop & rock stars, Lou Reed made, perhaps surprisingly, a more conventional choice when he was looking for a partner for his Lulu-project: the boys from Metallica. Creator of repertory that's considered by many as the Holy Grail of Heavy Metal, this collaboration with the former member of the Velvet Underground was received with both disbelief and expectation. Announced as Berlin meets Master of Puppets. As a result, Lou Reed even received death threats from Metallica fans who blamed him for destroying the career of their favorite band (did they really need Lou Reed for that?). Announced as "Berlin" meets "Master of Puppets" Was it that bad? It has a weirdness that obviously alienated Metallica fans who - when “Master of Puppets" is mentioned as reference for a upcoming Metallica-album - lose, whatever there is left, much, if not all, of their capability to keep an open mind for new music. The result is a poetry-slam over a metal jam. It milks out a few good ideas in songs that are in need of a good edit. It sounds like something that is stuck in pre-production. In a way it is the worst of both worlds and Reed, even by his standards, sounds off-beat and detached. But then, was "Berlin" not the same kind of monster? A singer who is losing himself in songs that, very often, are lasting too long. A shortcoming also Metallica-songs tend to suffer from. And Reed, being his own book, with that unique voice that tends to nag if you don't have a taste for it. Lulu is very much a Lou Reed-record. Don't try to make it through this album searching for "Ride the Lighting" and "Master of Puppets"-references because you will find nothing here but the title of the album-song "Frustration" closing in on you. In a way "Lulu" is like watching an accident waiting to happen. Reed rhymes and Metallica plays. And more than once the rhyme master is losing it when the band puts the pedal to the metal The Lulu on the album cover looks a bit like Louise Brooks with bleached hair. Louise Brooks played Lulu in the movie Pandora's Box from G.W. Pabst in 1929. A film noir that, almost 90 years later, lost nothing of its glamor and elusiveness. Louise Brooks - there is only one Lulu because there is only one Louise Brooks - is seductive and dangerous (for the men who love her and dangerous to herself). She is an impossible woman but we hate to see her go. When she has her death wish fulfilled by the hands of Jack the Ripper we feel a knot in our stomach. Compared to the Lulu of Louise Brooks and that other incarnation of Frank Wedekind's brainchild, in Alban Berg's opera, Reed's portrayal of this femme fatal is by far the most one-dimensional. His Lulu drives solely on anger and frustration and it's hard to see why she attracts men in the first place. Her death comes only as a salvation. We are not challenged to sympathize with or feel anything for her. David Bowie thought "Lulu" was Lou Reed's best effort. Up there with "Berlin" But for all what is missing here, solid songwriting to begin and to end with, Lulu from Lou-tallica became a kind of guilty pleasure for me. It's an album I learned to appreciate for what it is: a Lou Reed-album with Metallica jamming in the background. The best ideas on the album are in the first half. I like Miss Distress and Pumping Blood which gives us Metallica being their thrassiest self. A feel and approach I wouldn't mind if they could bring it towards their next studio-album.
For what it's worth, David Bowie thought "Lulu" was Lou Reed's best effort. Up there with "Berlin". (WdM) No staccato-style guitar riffs but chords, heavily distorted, slowly moving forward. Like bricks and grit that are poured into the ears of the listener. Welcome to the drone metal of Sunn O))). Minimal music made with maximum means. Minimal when it comes to changes in tempi and chord progressions. Maximum when it comes to the use of instrumental and vocal forces: guitars, accompanied by violins, cellos, trumpets and a choir. But minimal music is perhaps not the right term to use here because the absence of changing time signatures and changing chords every few seconds does not leave us with soundscapes that are short on ideas. Although this music draws on repetition this is not the Philip Glass copy-paste routine; music in which the curiosity towards the next note has vanished. The musical landscape of Sunn O))) is an organic hatch. It breaths, not unlike orchestral music, and is more versatile in composition that you will give it credit for at first hearing. The musical landscapes of Sunn O))) are breathing, not unlike orchestral music Their Monoliths & Dimensions is in my CD player for some time now. I simply can't stop listening to it. The music on this album is like a symphony in four movements. Eine symphonie des Grauens. A painting in black and grey. It's music for all moments of the day though. And music that works, like all good music does, on all volumes. In the morning it is, played on low volume, like a growling hound that's slowly waking up. A bit like the dragon that is disturbed in his sleep by Siegfried. But the dragon here is served by more than just a simple leitmotiv. More a leporello of a leitmotiv. A simple theme unfolded and expanded in time. Slow and heavy chords drifting in an ocean of stone and rock in the first movement: Agartha (like the Miles Davis album named after the legend city in Earth's core). The vocal lines for the choir in the second movement: Big Church have a neo-classical touch to it, say Schönberg's "Friede auf Erden" or Ligeti's "Requiem". When the choral singing starts in "Big Church" the beast illuminates. The dragon is gaining conscious or (in reference to the album's title and the movie 2001: Space Odyssey) the monkey has touched the monolith. An illumination short lived because in the third movement: Hunting & Gathering a grunted voice takes us back deep into the primal mind. With the trumpet in the fourth movement: Alice we reach the conclusion, the next evolutionary stage. Here the beast becomes civilized and the music, finally, shed some light. It's like the slaying of the dragon, PETA-style. With trumpets instead of swords. It was around 1340 that the poet Petrarca noticed, walking on the Mount Ventoux, that the landscape he witnessed influenced the thoughts that were on his mind. Thus he advised everybody to take a good stroll, once in a while, for the benefit of an uplifting spirit. Nietszche sad "Yeah right!" more than 500 years later and added to Petrarca's finding that everybody should make his own landscape. For that landscape we don't need to leave our chairs anymore because we enjoy the benefits of recorded sound. Nothing better than music to give your imagination a boost and create landscapes in the mind. Wondering through mystical worlds of sound that marvel the brain, relief the mind and bring in new ideas. With the musical landscapes of Sunn O)))'s Monoliths & Dimensions that is no different. It's a marvelous and transcedental record. (WdM)
There was a time when I could not come across the fruit & vegetables department in the supermarket without screaming “Roots, Bloody Roots” at the bananas, apples and carrots that were there in front of me.
Well, that's not completely true. But the metal from Brazilian band Sepultura was from the very infectious kin. Their album “Roots” was a breath of fresh air in a genre that was not too well known for its eclectism. Formed by the brothers Max and Igor Cavalera, the band drew attention of metal fans worldwide with their album “Beneath the Remains”. This was thrash metal at its best. Sounding like it was coming from the San Francisco Bay Area, rather than the country that gave us samba-to-dance-to and football-to-inspire-us (Pele, Garrincha, Zico & Socrates), the album was a headbangers ball to remember. After Roots Max Cavalera left Sepultura and formed Soulfly. I lost track of him after that but was more than pleasantly surprised when I came across his latest output with this band. It sounds by times as a return to his thrash metal roots after the world music influences on “Roots” and the first Soulfly album. The riffs in his music were never among the most original but the Cavalera groove is still unique. And still infectious as h*ll. (WdM) Being in Slayer Dave Lombardo wrote metal history. But being out of Slayer never stopped him from making great music either. I remember a show at Dynamo Open Air in Eindhoven '95 where he introduced the public to his new project: Grip Inc. It was the best double bass drums ever to be heard on a stage. There are drummers who are faster but the groove of Lombardo is something else. His drums write an epic story and by working with everyone from Mike Patton (see Fantomas) to avant-garde saxophonist-composer John Zorn he is one of those characters in rock and metal that are always interesting to follow.
With Grip Inc. he made four records. Each of them gems of metal. They made their last record in 2004. Singer Gus Chambers died in 2008 so that might just be the end for the future of Grip Inc. (although I would be more than happy to be wrong on that). In the vault of classic heavy metal songs lies "Hostage to Heaven" that is kind of a Slayer-offspring but the drums from Lombardo are just killing. This used to be my favorite driving-home-from-work-song while I was working nightshifts at a newspaper in the 90s. Virtuoso, bipolair disordered Devin Townsend from Canada is the wonderboy of rock music. He played with Steve Vai on "Sex and Religion". This stint was not very long lived and after a, not so pretty parting of ways, Townsend started Strapping Young Lad. With this band he lived a heavy metal wet dream. In the hand of a lesser gifted musician this band would be a joke without a punchline but Devin Townsend is both King and Jester in the court of heavy metal. If I have to choose a favorite record it would be "City". A slam-dunk-metal album that white knuckles this listener with a tornado of ideas. Its neverending energy never fails to impress. A man of many virtues he has many tricks on his sleeve but Strapping Young Lad is my favorite Devin Townsend-project. (WdM)
If I have to choose one record that, for me, is the missing link between heavy metal and opera it is Delirium Cordia (2004) from avant-garde metal band Fantomas. A project from Mike Patton (Faith No More) with Dave Lombardo (ex-Slayer) on drums. The record changed the way I listened to music. It exposed me to something different and intangible but fascinated me enough to want to give it repeated listens. There was no pulse in the music but there was a lot of atmosphere without becoming Pink Floyd. Not so much a rock album but more a soundtrack (which posed some challlenges, also for fans familiar with the work of Mike Patton - the view on the faces of some in audience with Faith No More t-shirts, years ago during a Fantomas gig in Amsterdam, who were staring at the stage as if a lorry load of manure had been poured over them was pure gold). It was not love on first hearing but it opened doors for me. And one of those doors was opera. (WdM)
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