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Book review: A History of Heavy Metal by Andrew O’Neill
I’ve bought this book two months ago, and let me just say that A History of Heavy Metal is one of the best books I’ve ever read! It was a break from the books I usually read (comic strip collections and children’s chapter novels, mainly as inspiration for writing my own) for a book that covers the one music genre I truly love, which of course is metal. I’ve even written my own personal commentary to go with many of the facts and opinions stated by the author, Andrew O’Neill, some I agree and some I disagree. Once I was done with that, I decided I wasn’t done with this book. I wanted to share my thoughts to the world, or at least to a site, hence this book review, so let’s talk about that!
Let’s start with when and why I bought this book. There’s this book fair that goes on every year in my country, and I don’t think you’ve heard of it, but it’s called “The Big Bad Wolf Book Sale”. I found the book in the 2018 sale and took a quick sneak peek of it, and it looked really cool, but when I was trying to flip to one of my favorite bands via the index, I found the page that has that band, and… Well, I’ll tell you what that part is when we get there. All I’ll say is, I changed my mind about that book decided not to buy it. Then I found it again in the 2019 sale, and once again, that one part made me not want to buy it. Then the virus happened, and the 2020 sale (a few months before this review) was an online one. This was the perfect time to buy it because I don’t have to see that dreaded part when browsing before buying, so I got the book! I won’t lie, that was as tough as Rebecca Parham (Let Me Explain Studios)’s attempts to talk to Markiplier (see her VidCon recaps).
Here’s what I think of the overall content of this book. Pretty much everything in this book is historically accurate, with a few made-up facts just for the sake of humor. Basically, everything needed for you to know about metal and its history and pre-history is all in here. You know what, this book is just too d*mn good to summarize, I need to get right into the journey before the destination, so that’s we shall do.
Now before we go any further, I have to point out that the author Andrew O’Neill is described as a heterosexual transvestite and non-binary, and therefore prefers to use they/them pronouns. I’ll just say “Andrew” throughout the review. Not quite the politest way, but what I can do if I can’t say “Mr.” or “Mrs.”?
Beginning the journey is…a little profile of myself I’ve written and drawn in the blank page before the intro to describe myself, my metal taste, and a shout-out to Metal Academy and my member name:
Then the real content begins! I’m just going to point out some things I find notable, like, or dislike. If you want greater details in the stories, you would have to read the book yourself. So here we go…
There are 3 categories for me to split my opinions, from the…
To the…
And the…
The introduction started pretty well with the mention of a couple progressive metal artists, “every guitar teacher’s favourite band – Dream Theater” and “the gonzo comedy of Devin Townsend”, with Andrew saying that the former “sound like they write their music in paper before picking up their guitars.” That was the only time Dream Theater and Devin Townsend were mentioned, because Andrew did not talk a lot about progressive metal. I’m guessing Andrew didn’t know or care about progressive metal while writing this book.
The denial of heavy metal by a few metal bands is considered “anathema to metal fans”, and one example is Anathema who, just like The Gathering, denied their earlier death-doom for just lame alt-prog rock.
I seem to have made the interesting reference to the Jonas Brothers getting "rings wrapped 'round their d*cks" from Protest the Hero’s “Sex Tapes” a small running gag throughout the book starting with when Andrew mentioned the possible scenario of those brothers “wearing a biker jacket and playing the worst guitar solo ever at the country music awards”.
Soon we get to the genre divided into subgenres and then sub-subgenres, like for example, death metal. You know what I like, the technical death metal, melodic death metal, and Swedish death metal, never the gory stuff like brutal death, blackened death, and death-thrash.
The only slight problem I had with the introduction is near the end, when Andrew considers goth “NOT HEAVY METAL”. Clearly, Andrew doesn’t think gothic metal is a good mix. The only thing Andrew wrote in a list of things that are both metal and goth is “OLD CRUMBLING CHURCHES”. I added “and GOTHIC METAL (duh)”.
The introduction was pretty decent, but now it’s time for the…
This chapter is about the origins of heavy metal, from the very beginning “with the first humans to bash rocks with sticks” to the disastrous last year of rock and roll’s pre-metal reign. If classical music does “increase IQ” and metal “increases your capacity for alcohol” (never for me), then neo-classical metal would be a good yet oxymoronic combo.
Heavy metal has been known as the sum of other music genres, with tribal drumming, operatic vocal range, folky songwriting, a palette of blues, and orchestral dynamics, all of which has made me recall my earlier power/symphonic/folk metal taste and me wish I had appreciated more of that.
The film Ghost World has “a horrific dude-bro blues-rock band called Blues Hammer”, which sounds like a magazine before Metal Hammer, and made me wonder if there was a “Rock Hammer”. I also thought of Johnny Kidd and the Pirates as the Alestorm of 60s rock and roll, which makes more sense visually than lyrically.
The Beatles has been known as the most successful and influential band in music history, and heavy metal probably wouldn’t exist without them, and I think even lower tunings like B tuning wouldn’t be a thing either if they haven’t invented new chords.
Dave Davies of The Kinks made a roaring evolution to guitar distortion. For the song “You Really Got Me”, he slashed the paper speaker cone of his Elpico amp with a razorblade and had produced an epic startling sound which, the way Andrew wrote it in the book, sounds like the Terminator theme: “BA-DA-DA BA-DA! BA-DA-DA BA-DA!” Then in the guitar solo, Dave’s brother Ray screams, “OH NO, NO!” as if he’s about to become a razorblade murder victim.
“Helter Skelter” is a “f***ing brutal” song known as the Beatles’ heaviest and most metal song, though I think “I Want You/She’s So Heavy” is a close second, having been covered by prog-thrashers Coroner. Eric Clapton is not to be confused with gothic metal singer Eric Clayton.
The legendary Jimi Hendrix was in his own short-lived group Jimmy James and the Blue Flames, which I think the name reminds of In Flames’ blues ancestor band. The rivalry between Pete Townsend and Eric Clapton turned into friendship because of Hendrix, like the end of Watchmen: “F*** you!” “No, f*** you.” “No… F*** HIM!” Lol, don’t f*** my favorite gothic rock/metal band!
As the 60s reaches its end, more of the heavier rock bands started incorporating doomy distorted in a style before heavy metal and doom metal, known as “proto-metal”, with bands such as Cream, Led Zeppelin, Blue Cheer, Iron Butterfly, and Steppenwolf.
The Rolling Stones ended the decade with a bit of bad luck. Guitarist Brian Jones left the band due to drug addiction then drowned in a pool weeks later. Then in December, the biker gang Hell’s Angels support the band as security, but they weren’t as angel-like as they seemed; one of the “Angels” brutally killed Meredith Hunter, a fan who brought a gun. The 60s may have ended in tragedy, but the 70s saw a new beginning, the rise of…
February 1970 saw two special beginnings; February 13, the day Black Sabbath released their debut album that began the heavy metal genres, and February 26, the day one of the greatest heavy metal cover artists, Travis Smith was born. However, this chapter is about Black Sabbath, so let’s talk about that band. Their self-titled debut marked the real birth of heavy metal, with everything before being proto-metal. The band was formed in Birmingham, known as one of the most common places to spawn metal bands. Another band formed there is industrial metal pioneers Godflesh, but we’ll get to that band later.
All 4 of the original Black Sabbath members spent their youth in their birth country UK where the messes made in World War II were being cleaned up. The war was a fascinating subject for many metal generations, making the careers of bands like Hail of Bullets, Eastern Front, Marduk, and let’s not forget Sabaton!
There are a lot more details about post-war UK, blending bleakness with hippy happiness, but of course, that all changed when Black Sabbath took out all that’s groovy (the groove is still in groove metal) and brought back some of the bleakness in a darker, more frightening level.
In 1965, guitarist Tony Iommi was in a band called The Birds & The Bees. On the day before he was supposed to leave for his first professional tour with that band in Germany, his mother made him complete his last day of work in a sheet metal factory. He had to use a machine to cut the sheet metal used to weld, but the press came down and chopped off the middle and ring fingertips of his right hand (the two fingers hidden for the devil’s horns). Soon, he was at the hospital depressed that his music career would be over. Then a friend came and played a recording of Django Reinhardt, a virtuoso jazz guitarist. The friend revealed that the guitarist lost his fingers in a fire yet could still play. This boosted Iommi’s confidence, and he decided to make prosthetic thimble fingertips for the ones that were missing. I think when he started tuning down to drop D-flat for less string tension, THAT marked the invention of tunings lower than E.
Black Sabbath’s music and lyrics have been inspired by horror films, one of which, Black Sabbath, would inspire the name of the band after a couple earlier names; The Polka Tulk Blues Band and Earth. Many other metal bands would also pick up horror movie influences, such as Ice Nine Kills.
Black Sabbath would go on to write many songs, from their self-titled song that started it all, with its riff taken from Holst’s Planets and its lyrics coming by a nightmarish vision bassist Geezer Butler had, a “figure in black which points at me”; to the Christian “After Forever” that might’ve inspired the name of Dutch symphonic metal band After Forever. These songs are great examples from their first 3 albums, starting with the one that gave birth to heavy metal, which of course is their debut.
As more albums go by, more changes were made, such as Ozzy Osbourne getting fired from the band due to drug addiction and ending up starting his own solo career. Their next vocalist Ronnie James Dio did a couple albums with Black Sabbath then ended up in a solo career. It was until the 2010s when the flame started being lit out. Dio died of stomach cancer, and Black Sabbath retired following a farewell tour. The band may be over but they already started a new age…
Actually, the sun was rising in the Golden Age, but good guess, Alestorm! There were a few bands competing for the attention of being the first heavy metal band (though Black Sabbath is the clear winner). One of them is Led Zeppelin. Guitarist Jimmy Page had been a session guitarist for several singles, including Rolling Stones songs “Heart of Stone” and “The Last Time” (the latter is not to be confused with an All That Remains song and a Paradise Lost song that are both great).
Speaking of the Rolling Stones, the magazine named after them includes that band, The Beatles, and Bob Dylan in the “Top 100 Artists of All Time”. The list skips Queen, extreme metal, and Queen-inspired extreme metal.
Led Zeppelin, which by the way is just proto-metal, started their career with covers, most of which had small changes and no credit for the original artist, resulting in heavy lawsuits. A few 60s rock bands started as cover bands, including the Beatles and the Stones. One of Hendrix’s first singles was a cover of “Hey Joe”, in turn later twisted by Type O Negative as “Hey Pete”.
Besides Jimmy Page’s rich lifestyle along with horrific actions such as “fishing” a 14-year-old girl, he was a fan of occultist Aleister Crowley (there’s a song about him by Ozzy Osbourne, “Mr. Crowley”).
Another strange runner-up for the first heavy metal band is Deep Purple. Their first 3 albums were psychedelic rock with dominant keyboards and f***ing harpsichord, with hit singles such as “Hush” (a cover of that song appearing in I Know What You Did Last Summer, along with Type O Negative’s “Summer Breeze”). After that, In Rock came out as a greater blast of heaviness, though Jon Lord denied the term “heavy metal”. Well, what did you expect from an organ player? Though not exactly metal, this direction continued with albums Fireball and Machine Head (not to be confused with groove-thrashers Machine Head). Andrew’s description of the riff that kicks off “Smoke on the Water” is a bit like a superhero film theme: “DUN, DUN, DAAAAAA! DUN, DUN, DA-NAAAAAAA! DUN, DUN, DAAAAA, DU-DAN, DAAAAAA!” Sadly, the rest of that song peters out. Deep Purple ended up going through more vocalist changes than Annihilator.
One band that became the second true heavy metal band is Judas Priest. They were formed a year after Black Sabbath, but Judas Priest didn’t release their first album, Rocka Rolla, until 1974, and it was a rock'n'roll album. Their second album, Sad Wings of Destiny, became their first heavy metal album and the first not to be released by Black Sabbath. They took out the blues influence from Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin, and turned heavy metal into a recognizably unique genre. They would get heavier throughout their career, leading up to the thrashy Painkiller.
There are some rock bands in the 70s that are often MISLABELLED as heavy metal, such as Scorpions, whose glam power ballads such as “Wind of Change” gaining more exposure more than other songs (speaking of exposure, that’s what they did to a girl in the album cover for Virgin Killer, along with its title inspiring the name of a chopped-up backless sweater worn on its own); and Aerosmith, whose overrated ballad “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” was used in the film Armageddon. Alice Cooper isn’t metal, but he would inspire the corpse paint appearance and horror concert concepts, along with his anthems of rebellion (NOT the Arch Enemy album). Also, F*** OUT, Whitesnake!!
Motorhead is another heavy metal band that followed, combining the style with speedy punk. The band was formed by Lemmy after his drug troubles got him fired from Hawkwind. The original name for Motorhead was basically a swear word. For some forsaken reason, Lemmy thinks his band is rock and roll instead of metal, yet this mix of metal and punk would inspire countless bands along with a later combo, metalcore. Their greater hits include “Overkill”, which started double-bass drumming in metal, and “Ace of Spades”. Lemmy is gone now, but the golden age is immortal, leading to…
The New Wave of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM) is known as the most important wave of metal (second most important being the New Wave of American Heavy Metal). The roots of the movement originated from British punk bands like Sex Pistols and The Damned. There were some punk bands who released their albums themselves without needing a record label, a bold move that would inspire a different later age where they operate via MP3s, streaming, and Bandcamp.
Throughout the second half of the 70s, the Bandwagon Heavy Metal Soundhouse, ran by DJ Neal Kaye was home to many rock and metal LPs, even demos, where people learn more about new and upcoming metal bands, and also where the air guitar was popularized.
Unlike today’s metal bands like Neurosis that have day jobs because their albums don’t sell enough to make ends meet, a few NWOBHM bands had commercial success (though many others would fall into obscurity).
Those few bands are known as known as the stratospheric 3 of NWBOHM; Saxon, a metal band that sings about the genre itself; Def Leppard, who were metal but now release glam ballads, and they have a drummer who lost an arm in a car crash but can still play drums with his other hand and feet (what a hero!); and the one to rule them all, Iron Maiden!
Iron Maiden was formed in 1975, the same year as Motorhead, but ended up released their debut album almost 5 years later. They already made it big with their demo, The Soundhouse Tapes. Their original singer was Paul Di’Anno, then he was replaced with the operatic-sounding Bruce Dickinson, who brought their level of success up to catch up with Led Zeppelin. The band even has their own plane with Dickinson being their pilot, which is so Bruce! After a few albums with lyrics of depression and isolation, they changed their lyrical themes to epic mythology and history that would later inspire power metal. Iron Maiden continues to fill arenas worldwide.
With this new wave, heavy metal became its own world without having to deal with the mainstream, and would later be divided into its own subgenres. A band called Venom would help invent…
Add 3 Geordies, one of them from a holiday camp and youth training scheme, give them more leather and spikes, and make NWOBHM harder, better, faster, stronger, and more satanic, and BOOM!! You get extreme metal, more specifically black metal, more specifically Venom!
Everything was extreme and satanic, starting with their debut album Welcome to Hell. Their debut marked a new heavier beginning for metal, and then the name of their second album, Black Metal, is where the name came from and established their sound as metal’s first subgenre. The band said that their music makes classic heavy metal sound like “weak pop music” in comparison.
Venom toured with bands such as Slayer and Black Flag, both of whom they had rough experiences with. Slayer’s Tom Araya peed on Cronos who got up and punched out Tom’s eye. Then Black Flag frontman Henry Rollins ripped on them in his tour diary. In a way, Venom is in the middle of those two bands when it comes to the genre. The hardcore punk of Black Flag would be mixed with metal to make Venom’s extreme metal that would be split into new genres like the thrash metal of Slayer, along with Metallica, Possessed, and Voivod.
Bathory was next in line to develop black metal, formed by vocalist/guitarist Quorthon (Tomas Forsberg), with the first 3 albums of his project. He would later start the concept of one-man black metal bands. With albums #4 and #5, Blood Fire Death and Hammerheart, the more melodic and epic Viking metal was invented, and he has kept that way in many albums ever since…until his death of heart failure in 2004.
A Swiss fellow named Tom Gabriel Fischer, later known as Tom G. Warrior spent his childhood in hatred in isolation. He took the darkness of his youth and let it bleed in the heaviness of his first band Hellhammer. If there was ever such a thing as being labelled “too heavy”, that was then. The music press torn them apart with negative reviews from magazines, and ultimately, Hellhammer came to a swift end. However, its legacy was kept on with Celtic Frost. Many of their albums each had a different style, some good, some awful.
One more first-wave black metal band, Mercyful Fate, is not exactly black metal. They’re more melodic with falsetto vocals. Think of them like a satanic Judas Priest. Lead singer King Diamond would have his own solo career while releasing a few more Mercyful Fate albums. Other bands like Sodom and Sepultura would start with black metal, but then they became part of a more well-known metal genre, the genre that made extreme metal reach higher masses, known as…
Thrash metal came as the “teenage younger brother” of heavy metal. The earliest origins of thrash came from the Black Sabbath songs “Children of the Grave” and “Symptom of the Universe”, the latter containing a catchy killer riff, as described by Andrew: “DUH-DUH-DUH-DUH DUH-DUH-DUH-BRAAAAAAM! DUH-DUH-DUH-DUH DUH-DUH-DUH-BRAP-BRAAAAAAAM!” This would be followed by songs from later bands that have inspired thrash metal so much that a few bands of the genre named themselves after those songs; Judas Priest’s “Exciter” and Motorhead’s “Overkill”. The greatest thrash point for Judas Priest is the track “Painkiller”. Motorhead had also introduced to metal double-bass (drumming, NOT the need for two bass guitars).
Discharge is a band that falls into the hardcore category of The Clash and Sex Pistols, but far more aggressive with extreme metal influences from Venom and Motorhead. Discharge would inspire the concept of nuclear war and its perils for speed/thrash metal bands like Voivod, and also start a wave of band names that start with “dis-”, including progressive/melodeath group Disillusion.
Now before we get into this speed/thrash metal debate, let me say that there’s a big difference between those two genres. Speed is heavier than NWOBHM, and thrash is heavier than speed. DragonForce is speed (mixed with power metal), and Metallica is thrash. End of debate!
Metallica was formed by two guys who had their own histories, drummer Lars Ulrich (whom Andrew kept telling him to sit down) and vocalist/guitarist James Hetfield. Born in Denmark, he moved to America and start playing drums for his newfound obsession with heavy metal. A friend of his, Brian Slagel would be responsible for Metallica’s existence. James Hetfield was already in several bands. It wasn’t until his previous band Leather Charm split up when James and Lars started jamming, with a song recorded for Slagel’s Metal Massacre compilation, and formed Metallica.
Back then, the biggest bands in California were guitar-rock ones like Boston, REO Speedwagon, and the Eagles (NOT of death metal), and the lower but still prominent side is the hardcore movement of Black Flag and Dead Kennedys. However, the worst scene to come up in California before thrash is its total opposite, glam metal. When Metallica’s original Ron McGovney left the band, the masterful Cliff Burton stepped in with glam fares but his bass is what powered the band’s sound.
Before recorded their debut, original lead guitarist Dave Mustaine was removed for his alcoholism and reckless behaviour, and in came Kirk Hammett, straight out of Exodus. Kill ‘Em All (originally intended to be called “Metal Up Your A**”) became a turning point for extreme metal, the start of thrash metal!
At the same time as Metallica, another thrash band Slayer was formed, and they also recorded a song for one of Brian Slagel’s compilations. Their debut, Show No Mercy has injected the aggression of Venom into the heavy metal of Iron Maiden and Judas Priest, without ever starting as black metal, unlike Sepultura and Sodom.
Anthrax was formed in New York, and it was them who inspired the name thrash metal. Who needs a skateboarding magazine or thrashcore compilation, when you can refer to a Kerrang review for their debut Fistful of Metal? Forget “power metal”, that term is saved for a different glorious genre.
In 1984, Metallica released their second album Ride the Lightning, containing their first ballad, “Fade to Black”, which caused cries of “sell-out” far too early. Next year, Exodus released their debut, Bonded by Blood, 6 long years after formation, and what did we get from the long-awaited artwork? Good and evil conjoined twins. Slayer leaped forward from their debut with Hell Awaits.
1985 was also the year thrash became international, but it was 1986 when thrash was at its highest peak. There were many classics that year, my favorite being Voivod’s Rrroooaaarrr. Master of Puppets saw Metallica rise from the underground and play arenas, with many blistering tracks. Slayer had also released their third-time charm, Reign in Blood, that year. While that album doesn’t surpass the fame of Metallica’s album, it certainly is the most praised in both the thrash and extreme metal realms, though began Slayer’s many controversies.
The remaining part of thrash metal’s Big 4 is Megadeth, whose second album, Peace Sells but Who’s Buying being another essential thrash album from 1986. The band was formed by Dave Mustaine after his ejection from Metallica. A few thrash band members like Metallica’s Cliff Burton and Kirk Hammett were inspired by classical music and Joe Satriani, hence the possible parallel inspiration for neoclassical metal. Andreas Kisser would add cleaner tribal sounds to Sepultura.
Andrew enjoys the 3 of the most essential thrash bands (Metallica, Megadeth, and Sepultura), but doesn’t like the next 3 on the list (Anthrax, Megadeth, and Exodus). Andrew also likes Coroner, which I enjoy for their avant-thrash. Then thrash scenes started spawning other countries like Germany and Canada, the latter having the avant-garde thrash of Voivod and Annihilator.
In the Swedish part of Metallica’s Master of Puppets tour, Cliff Burton won a game of cards with Kirk Hammett and took Kirk’s bunk. Then while he was sleeping, the bus skidded and flipped on its side, he fell through an open window, and was crushed to death under the bus. The band continued for Cliff’s legacy and hired Jason Newsted (who would later join Voivod). Their next album, And Justice for All would be more diverse from “overlong” 10-minute epics to a half-ballad about a World War soldier whom a landmine cost him everything except his useless torso and senseless head. Its music video is a polar opposite to Motley Crue’s music video that’s just about “Girls, Girls, Girls”. That’s right, Motley Crue, the band that was part of the horrific scene of…
In a time where Black Sabbath where began heavy metal to face the bitter truth of the 70s when Hendrix was dead and so was a Rolling Stones fan at Altamont, and there was an energy crisis and industrial breakdowns (NOT the kind you’re thinking of), glam rock made things worse, thanks to Marc Bolan and David Bowie. Soon, many bands started to following that movement. They pour glitter all over themselves, and they invite their girlfriends over to join the concert then steal and wear their clothes, leaving the girlfriends wearing nothing.
If you’re looking for the inspiration for Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s Christmas albums, look no further to the Christmas songs made by glam rock bands. Other than that, we’re not going to talk about this glam rock pain Andrew and I went through, especially not Gary Glitter, whose horrific songs weren’t just for show (let’s not go there). Let’s move to the actual metal stuff…
I definitely trust Andrew O’Neill (99%), but never Motley Crue’s Vince Neil who claims metal’s birthplace to Sunset Boulevard. 100% FALSE! LA’s Sunset Strip was dominant in the music scene, especially glam metal. They don’t call it the Strip for nothing; girls there would join strip clubs and remove their clothing, then their naked selves would participate in mud wrestling. Glam metal doesn’t make a lot of difference from glam rock.
The first band of the scene is Motley Crue. The only decent thing about their debut, Too Fast for Love, is the one opening riff of their first track “Live Wire”. Surprisingly, that album sold well. Their US Festival concert in 1983 was so sh*t that even drummer Tommy Lee was embarrassed and started crying when he found out the show was taped.
Andrew and I are pretty sure they only brought in Vince Neil as lead vocalist was because of JUST THE F***ING LOOKS!! They kept him around for most albums anyway, one of them being the confusingly titled Shout at the Devil. The band made millions of dollars and wasted it all on drugs that they would later flush down the toilet. They also married strippers, threw parties, and got people killed in some of their antics, like Neil’s car crash that killed Hanoi Rocks drummer Razzle.
More glam metal bands kept spawning, but the worst thing the genre did was infect bands like Discharge, Celtic Frost, and most notably, Scorpions (who were already in the controversial glam game with that Virgin Killer album cover, let’s not discuss more).
The only glam metal band Andrew found OK is Guns N’ Roses. Andrew definitely enjoyed their debut, Appetite for Destruction. They’re far more punk and metal than glam in their glam metal, unlike Motley Crue and Poison. They spent so much money on their music videos and drugs, and their latest album, Chinese Democracy, took a whole decade of production before its release. Glam metal was a terrible scene taking the world by storm, but a darker heavier side of metal would rise…
Death metal is to the weak and intolerant what having Barney’s “I Love You” repeated is to any metalhead prisoners in Guantanamo Bay (unless it’s Jared Dines’ parody of that song). What does death metal do instrumentally? They tune down super low and mix the slowness of Black Sabbath with the speed of Anthrax. Progressive, right? Not really, because death metal bands focus on the goriest tortures and murders in the most explicit detail possible, with monstrous growls.
The horror movies in the time when Black Sabbath was formed were more modest due to all its censorship, following the Hays Code. With that code dropped, spawning the most gruesome films like the Exorcist and Zombie Flesh Eaters, some of the most horrific sh*t went on to inspire the genre that is death metal.
1982 marked the birth of black metal with Venom’s second album. 1983 saw the first 3 thrash metal releases, the debuts albums of Exciter, Metallica, and Slayer. 1984 was the year when death metal started being heard as a prototype in the underground with bands like Slaughter and Possessed, the latter’s demo with the title Death Metal, thus spawning the genre. Possessed sealed that deal with their 1985 debut album, Seven Churches, the true beginning of death metal. That was just a year before 1986, the big year for thrash, and more specifically Metallica and Slayer.
1986 was also the year when Possessed released their second album, Beyond the Gates, which had a thrashier direction. Then in 1988, the band split, and they wouldn’t release another album for 3 long decades. In 1989, just a year after they disbanded, lead vocalist Jeff Becerra was shot through the spine by a burglar, paralyzing the lower half of his body. The gunman was going to finish Jeff off with a headshot, but luckily the gun jammed. Becerra has been confined to a wheelchair ever since, but he still recently revived Possessed. What a hero!
While Possessed started death metal, Death was the ultimate death metal band, from their first demo Death by Metal, to frontman Chuck Schuldiner’s death from pneumonia caused by brain cancer which caused the band to end. They even spawned a few subgenres. Their first 3 albums started death metal and its gory brutal kind, then technical death for albums #4 and #5, and melodeath (the least problematic death metal subgenre) for albums #6 and #7. Their parents were supportive of Death, and apparently, Obituary also has supportive families. That would’ve been something Tom G. Warrior would wish for.
Repulsion (also the original name for gothic metal band Type O Negative) is a band that also helped invent a heavier genre. Beginning as a thrash cover band, they switched to a hardcore-ish style of death metal, then finally, a prototypical style of grindcore. A demo was recorded in 1986, titled Slaughter of the Innocent. It was released in 1989 as a studio album called Horrified, thanks to Carcass and their own label.
There are a few death metal bands talked about before getting to grindcore, starting with Obituary and their debut, Slowly We Rot. Besides a slower traditional death metal approach, this album began the death growl, a vocal style that could only be deciphered as “BE-BLEEEERRRRRG!” (like part of a death cover of the Beyblade Burst Evolution theme), and also known as “Cookie Monster” vocals.
Death growls would be used by vocalists such as Cannibal Corpse’s inhumanly low Chris Barnes, and even non-metal singers like Tom Waits. Angela Gossow, ex-vocalist of Arch Enemy has proven that even women can death-growl, and it doesn’t require b*lls.
Deicide took a more aggressive antichristian lyrical path similar to black metal. Their original name was Amon, and I’m glad they changed out of that name! Otherwise, Amon Amarth would forever have their scummy “Scum” name. Vocalist Glen Benton would cause the band more infamy than fame, which caused “more T-shirts than records” to be sold.
Morbid Angel is less aggressive but with darker explorations into Lovecraftian literature. They stayed at death metal’s highest peak of creativity, except for one album that had more industrial elements than death metal.
Producer Scott Burns was responsible for helping with almost every death metal record until 1996. Death metal has two homes; Florida and Sweden. Swedish death metal has 5 siblings; brothers Entombed, Dismember, At the Gates, In Flames, and sister Arch Enemy. I’m glad Arch Enemy is still around. Sadly, At the Gates split up for 15 years and In Flames went alt-metal.
Now we get to the similar-sounding grindcore! What’s different about grindcore is, it’s more punk-influenced, blast beats were invented, and so were micro-songs. The band started all this is Napalm Death. Their debut album, Scum was recorded in two separate sides, each in a distant period away from each other with a different line-up. Side A ends with the world’s shortest song, “You Suffer”, and just slightly over a second!
Napalm Death Guitarist Bill Steer was way too focused on Carcass and decided to stick to the latter. Carcass began as goregrind for their first two albums, with lyrics and artwork taken from gross pictures of medical textbooks (as if the band was formed by Dr. Cesspool from Big Nate). Then they went technical and long-titled with their third album Necrotism, and developed melodic death metal in their next album Heartwork.
Bolt Thrower would use war themes and use cover art from Games Workshop's Warhammer 40,000. Cannibal Corpse is known as the biggest death metal band ever. Despite the obscene cover art and horrific lyrics, they somehow moved out of the underground into the mainstream. This is probably because of their appearance in Ace Ventura Pet Detective. Napalm Death also gained mainstream popularity in a couple shows with Takeshi’s Castle commentator Craig Charles.
Death metal has become more of an overused name now, with a band called Eagles of Death Metal who aren’t even death metal. I wonder if that’s what triggered that mass shooting at a Paris gig. Botch is metalcore yet sometimes referred to death metal out on a limb. Some members of Napalm Death would go to doom metal (Cathedral) and industrial (Napalm Death). Despite all those death metal subgenres, melodeath is what I like, and certainly not another metal genre’s continuation…
A new wave was forming for black metal, the second wave! One fateful event that levelled up the second wave was the killing of Euronymous, the guitarist of Mayhem and founder of the record label Deathlike Silence (named after a song by Sodom, but would inspire the name of a killer song by Nightrage). That’s right, there was arson and murder in the early 90s black metal scene, and of course, the offenders were arrested. That’s good because they shouldn’t get away with their crimes while Ozzy Osbourne and Judas Priest were sent to court just because of a couple suicides.
Mayhem began developing the darkness of Norway, started by Oystein Aarseth (Euronymous) as a Celtic Frost/Venom band. They began making original songs that pushed the boundaries of extreme metal much further, in the demo Pure F***ing Armageddon (same year as Slayer’s Reign of Blood) and the EP Deathcrush. For the latter, besides the cover art of two severed hands hanging, the blueprint influences from punk, thrash, and death metal all formed a new era for black metal.
Vocalist Per Yngve Ohlin (Dead) was obsessed with death, inhaling the rotting fumes of dead animal corpses while recording and cutting himself with knives on stage. The latter action was the last thing he did to his wrists and neck before finishing himself off with a gunshot through the brain. Before that, he wrote a suicide note starting with “Excuse the blood…” He fulfilled his “Dead” potential. Euronymous found the corpse, and you know what he did? He just bought a camera from a nearby store and took photos of the scene. One photo would be used as the cover of a bootleg Mayhem live album, Dawn of the Black Hearts. Then he made necklaces out of pieces of Dead’s skull. That’s evil!
This cold b****rd took advantage of Dead’s death to promote Mayhem’s evil image, and even for the rest of the band, it was disgraceful and appalling. Euronymous would not live to see his bitter actions pay off, but we’ll get to that soon.
Metal can sometimes be about looks, but this isn’t like goth where only the uniform matters. I can enjoy gothic metal while having short hair and regular trousers. Long hair and corpse paint are for men who listen to black metal, which I’m definitely not. The most blasphemous thing anyone can do to metal is dress the part even though they don’t like metal. This goes for heavy metal band shirts. I wear a Trivium shirt because I like Trivium!
This new wave of black metal has spawned some of Andrew’s favorite bands including Darkthrone. This band started as death metal (a rarity for a Norwegian band) for their debut, Soulside Journey. Then there was a Blaze… in the Northern… Sky.
A Blaze in the Northern Sky is the first black metal album to come from Norway. Guitarist Zephyrous appears in the artwork, corpse-paint and all. The album begins with an atmospheric intro, monk-like chanting, then a raspy voice saying the name of the album, and finally, the relentless black metal kicks off. The Hellhammer/Bathory influences were more powerful than ever.
Under a Funeral Moon releases more black metal with much less death metal. Then in Transylvanian Hunger, the death metal was completely gone, blown the f*** away by the overpowering black metal. After two more albums, a demo album Goatlord was released which contained death metal instrumentals recorded right after Soulside Journey with new vocals recorded a few years after by Fenriz. Later on, Darkthrone went crust punk, heavy metal, and power metal in their influences.
An album was released in 1992, the debut of Burzum, whose main man Varg Vikernes would prove himself to be a real murderer after 4 albums. His music ranged from thrashy black metal to ambient atmospheric music, all set in mythical medieval fantasy. Andrew says it’s “like Game of Thrones without all the sexism.” I personally think Game of Thrones is like black/death/power metal with dashes of Type O Negative.
1992 was a year of fire for Norway; members of the Norwegian black metal scenes were burning churches, more than the recent times of deathcore hooligans after listening to Winds of Plague’s “Drop the Match”. The Norwegian churches were burnt to discard their pagan origins. The churches were made of wood, as if they’re just asking for a modern remake of the Big Bad Wolf fairy-tale.
Then 1993 was a year of death…of a notorious member of the scene (hold on… 1991 (Blood), 1992 (Fire), 1993 (Death)! They fulfilled Bathory’s motto in just 3 years!!!). August 10 was the day that changed everything. Varg killed Euronymous, delivering multiple stabbings and leaving him naked and dead, with his blooded clothes in the bottom of a lake. Varg was arrested and charged with murder, arson, and theft. He was sentenced to 21 years in prison, but served two-thirds of that sentence. In the first few years of his jailtime, he recorded two dark ambient albums. All he had when making those albums was a synthesizer and a tape recorder. After his release from prison, Varg made a few more albums, each in a different style; black metal or dark ambient.
So, Varg has been known as a racist and a murderer. For the “racist” part, he’s not alone. I won’t go into too much detail here, but there are bands that are part of a different scene, National Socialist Black Metal. These bands make music that fit well in illegal protests, often taking politics and punk-ish anarchy. Bands include Iskra and Panopticon (also the name of my favorite Isis album).
However, Andrew and I agree on what’s the worst thing Varg has done; wearing a Venom Black Metal T-shirt! What’s bad about that?! HE NEVER LISTENED TO THAT ALBUM!!! HE JUST LIKED THE SHIRT!! BLASPHEMY!!!
Now we all have experienced some of our favorite bands having a member who was involved in something illegal. If a member of a band I like has done something illegal while I’m listening to them, I still have trust in them, but if it’s in the past, then it’s not for me. Iced Earth’s Jon Schaffer is in FBI custody at the moment after participating in the Capitol riot just over a month before writing this review.
The only black metal band I actually like is Enslaved because of their recent progressive sound. Other bands besides Enslaved entered the 90s scene including Immortal, along with Cradle of Filth and Emperor who released their debut albums in February 1994 that started the genre’s symphonic side, reminiscent of goth (NOT gothic metal). Cradle of Filth has also suffered controversy over a T-shirt of theirs getting people arrested for wearing it in public. Besides all that burning, murders, and other crimes making black metal (in)famous, new genres starting appearing as well. This is…
The 80s and 90s were the decade when heavy metal really started broadening out into different subgenres but first let’s talk about the first “unacceptable” thing, though it’s not as much as the second one that will come later. When first talking about doom, Andrew points out that it’s not to be confused with a few other things called “doom”, like the “Doom Song” from Invader Zim. I can definitely see that difference; the song is just “6 months” of a robot singing the word “doom” so many times in a high squeaky voice. If I was there, I would end up with a never-ending headache, and there’s NO F***ING DOOM!!! That’s not the reason for me to hate, though. It’s actually because I got in an incident with my mom that could’ve gotten her injured or killed but thankfully it didn’t, and it was during an Invader Zim episode I was watching (that was NOT the one with the “Doom Song”). Not wanting the cartoon to be blamed for another murder (which again never happened, otherwise I would lose my mom be in jail), I stopped watching that show, but soon came back to watching it in an uncommon basis. I tore out the part of the book that mentioned the show and the “Doom Song”.
Anyway, while genres like thrash and grindcore for speed, doom is the opposite. The main influence for older doom bands was Black Sabbath, specifically Tony Iommi’s slow riffing and Ozzy Osbourne’s high despair-ridden singing. The first doom band was Witchfinder General with their 1982 debut, Death Penalty. The “American doom holy trinity” followed with Trouble, Saint Vitus, and Pentagram.
Doom would expand into its own subgenres, including the sludge of the Louisiana trio; Eyehategod, Crowbar, Down (here’s also the post-sludge of Neurosis, Cult of Luna, and Isis, but we’ll get to that in the post-metal chapter), the epic doom of Candlemass with its debut album title establish the name (in Latin), and the stoner doom of Cathedral. So, while guitarist Justin Broadrick left Napalm Death for Godflesh, vocalist Lee Dorrian left Napalm Death for Cathedral. They made 10 albums throughout their career, from 1991’s Forest of Equilibrium to 2013’s Last Spire. After that last album, they ended the band and formed the doom-punk band Septic Tank, not to be confused with Septicflesh.
The mix of death metal and doom, death-doom, started with the Peaceville 3 from England; My Dying Bride who have already been either death-doom or gothic doom except for an experimental failure of an album, Paradise Lost who had that similar balance of styles but had a goth-rock phase for a few albums, and Anathema who are now alt-prog rock. They would inspire the genre Andrew thought wouldn’t co-exist, gothic metal! American band Type O Negative (RIP Peter Steele) started the gothic metal game before it carried over to Finland with bands like Charon, Sentenced, and HIM.
A gothic metal band using both male and female vocals is Lacuna Coil, possibly inspired by Within Temptation’s debut Enter. Within Temptation would be one of the most popular symphonic metal bands along with Nightwish (Farewell, Marco Hietala). Nightwish also had the fantasy themes of power metal, a genre I used to like with bands like Blind Guardian, Edguy, HammerFall, Dragonland, and the band to start it all for me, DragonForce.
Alestorm mixes power metal with folk and pirate themes. Folk metal is quite common in Finland. In fact, almost every metal band nowadays is in Finland. Another reason why I wanna move there! It was a lot of fun listening to the more epic genres I used to love, but there will be more modern metal genres Andrew talked about in the next 5 chapters. So, let’s drop this epic act and head into the groove move of…
Punk rock has been said to kill off prog in the late 70s but in reality, punk has never really replaced anything, whereas progressive rock started morphing into progressive metal. Then at the start of the 90s, a bigger impact started happening. An explosion of grunge bands appearing such as Nirvana, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam had spawned, from the DIY scene started by Black Flag in the early 80s that became as violent as extreme metal.
What I’m surprised about is how those grunge bands were part of a label called Sub Pop. SUB POP!!! If they didn’t wanna switch pop, they should’ve chosen Metal Blade! There’s also a female grunge movement called Riot Grrrl, which is aggressive though not as much as Arch Enemy. One example is the fanzine and band Bikini Kill, whom one of the members made a comment that would inspire the greatest grunge hit of all time…
Lead singer Kathleen Hanna wrote “Kurt smells like Teen Spirit” on a wall in his home. Nirvana lead vocalist Kurt Cobain thought it was a revolutionary slogan, so he named a Pixies-style song he was working on, “Smells Like Teen Spirit”. The song and its album, Nevermind, became Nirvana’s big breakthrough, and only then he found out the source of the name “Teen Spirit”, a deodorant brand.
Sadly, both Nirvana and Kurt Cobain didn’t last long afterwards. After escaping drug rehab, he went back to his home in Seattle where he wrote a long suicide note and killed himself with a gunshot through the head, almost exactly 3 years after the similar suicide of Mayhem’s Dead. Andrew made up a rumor that Dave Grohl took photos of Cobain’s corpse. If that was true, one of those photos would end up on the cover of a posthumous live album and Grohl would be killed by Krist Novoselic.
Andrew’s metal journey started similarly to mine, began with alt-metal before going to “real” metal. Andrew’s first band to listen to was, in fact, Nirvana. More about that soon… While many grunge bands like Nirvana, Alice in Chains, and Pearl Jam are more proto-metal than heavy metal, one exception is Melvins. Their influential mix of Black Sabbath and punk would inspire metal genres such as doom, hardcore, post-metal, and stoner rock. Grunge’s creation marked the destruction of glam.
Now we look back at a time before Andrew became into grunge and then metal. Andrew heard a lot of Beatles and Queen from family. Andrew discovered Jimi Hendrix via Wayne’s World. Then after Nirvana, it was onwards to thrash, death, and groove, including Andrew’s first concert in December 1995, watching industrial-groovers Fear Factory.
Andrew first learned about mosh pits in fourth-year art class, when a friend introduced the concept of mosh pits which is “basically, sort of fighting”. Moshing is way more of hardcore dancing than fighting. It was a descendant of when girls screamed their lungs out in a Beatles concert.
The term “moshing” originated from H.R. of the Bad Brains mispronunciation of “mash” as in “mash it up”. In turn, YouTube duo Smosh got their name after founder Anthony Padilla misheard the word “mosh”. Andrew had a few injuries from mosh pits. In a Sub-Zero concert, Andrew lost half of each upper front teeth after receiving a massive punch in the face.
Stage-diving is like pool-diving but more dangerous. The audience is the water. In 2013, rapper/poet George Watsky climbed up a high lightning rig 35 feet above the stage and jumped off, injuring himself and two others and putting the Vans Warped Tour to a halt. Since then, bands had to sign forms to not cause their audience harm. They should’ve started sooner due to Randy Blythe’s arrest the previous year for accidentally, kinda on purpose, throwing a teen off the stage to his death.
Then we have headbanging, a natural beat-by-beat dance-nodding. In 1992, Andrew did crazy headbanging while listening to Nirvana’s Nevermind and ended up with a strained neck. Years later at the Camden Underworld, when “Painkiller” by Judas Priest came on, Andrew headbanged so long and hard and slamming head-first on the ground. Andrew survived and won a partner.
Headbanging would actually result in famous bands breaking up. Tom Araya from Slayer ended up having spinal disc replacement surgery in 2010 after years of headbanging, and that, along with the passing of Jeff Hanneman are two reasons for the recent split of Slayer. Philip Anselmo from Pantera also ended up having back surgery in 1994 after years of headbanging. He had to medicate himself with painkillers and later heroin. In 1996, he almost died of a heroin overdose but he got revived.
Pantera started as an unknown unbearable glam metal band. Then for album #4, Philip Anselmo became their new vocalist and had a heavier sound. Their fifth album, Cowboys from Hell marked the invention of groove metal, a genre that would be further established in Vulgar Display of Power and subsequent albums. One of their songs was used in a SpongeBob episode. However, with Phil Anselmo’s near-death experience and later deserted the band. Their next band, the short-lived Damageplan ended tragically with guitarist Dimebag Darrell being shot dead onstage. Anselmo proved his callousness towards Pantera with a racist ending of a Dimebag memorial show in 2016.
Sepultura started as blackened thrash, then just regular thrash. Chaos AD shows them ended the groove zone, with Roots sealing that deal. One of Andrew’s favorite gigs to attend was Sepultura’s 1996 concert at London’s Brixton Academy, though it would immediately be the band’s last with Max Cavalera (more on that soon). Fear Factory, the first band Andrew saw perform live, mixed death metal with industrial. Sadly, this band and groove-thrashers Machine Head, along with many others Andrew loved have gone sh*t and are now…
See what I did there? No, they never descended into doom metal, and doom is not a bad thing at all. What I’m saying is, there were many bands that many metalheads including Andrew loved that fell from their metal grace into something so unlike their styles, such as Metallica. If people thought that band was selling out in Ride the Lightning (it was just a ballad, guys, chill!), those metalheads would faint when they find out what happened Metallica over a decade later…
Metallica was the first real metal band Andrew loved, since 1994, first seeing live in 1996, which happened to be the year that they tumbled down the rocky road. Their style began changing with their 1991 Black Album, which is actually self-titled but that name got adopted from fans referring to the album’s all-black cover. So, after 8 months and a million dollars spent, was it worth it?
While their previous album, And Justice for All, gained the band exposure thanks to the “One” music video, fans did not approve of the complex arrangements and lengthy songs (I probably would), so they decided to strip things down into something more straight for the next album.
The first track and single of the Black Album, “Enter Sandman”, is my second favorite Metallica song (first being “Master of Puppets”, even though I’m not a total fan of that band (maybe someday)). This mix of clean and heavy is more prominent than anything else you could find on the radio. More songs come in including a f***ing love ballad, “Nothing Else Matters”.
This was the band’s ultimate breakthrough album. They sold 16 million copies of the album in just America (100 times more than they spent, and slightly more than Motorhead’s albums in total). While they lost their earlier fans, the gained many more new ones (ratio: one to a thousand). It was more than a sell-out, a new journey for the band and the new fans they’ve won.
The controversy became worse when the band decided to change their style even further. First off, they cut their hair short. You know a metal band would change their style if they changed their hair from long to short. Look at Nifelheim, they’re balding while growing out the rest of their hair!
That’s right, they were going for a less metal style. Load and Reload are, in some ways, metal, just not as heavy or fast. They were more influenced from alt-rock, country rock, and blues. I’ve listened to and reviewed the Reload album, and I can agree with Andrew that it’s less bad than most people think it is. Nearly half the songs are very good, but the rest is terrible boredom.
Then Metallica went back to metal, but not the way we wanted. The years before their next album involved a lawsuit against Napster for sharing a song that wasn’t supposed to be out yet, Jason Newsted left the band and joined Voivod, and James Hetfield went into rehab. After rehab, they started recording the album, but Hetfield’s work time was limited, causing more delays.
The two worst things from the band appeared as a result; the terrible St. Anger with an overlong solo-less nu metal style and an unchained snare, and a film after one of the album’s songs, Some Kind of Monster, that chronicles the harrowing rehab and production along with F***ING THERAPY!!
Metallica started return to their earlier thrash form 5 year later with Death Magnetic, produced by Rick Rubin, known for producing Slayer’s Reign in Blood, receiving positive reviews. However, even riffs have a limit, or at least that’s what Andrew thinks of the album. The recent Hardwired... to Self-Destruct marked a deeper return to their roots while staying to the current heavy metal, though the multi-faced person in the cover might scare younger children.
A lot has happened for Slayer since Reign of Blood. South of Heaven and Seasons in the Abyss added more variety to their tempo than just speedy aggression. 1994’s Divine Intervention shows the band becoming fast again, heading into hardcore/death-ish territory. The “SLAYER” was carved on one fan’s arm and another fan’s back with photos taken to appear in the liner notes.
Their next album, Undisputed Attitude, is a controversial punk cover album. Even worse, their next two albums, Diabolus in Musica and God Hates Us All, are just unoriginal nu metal. They’re Slayer’s St. Anger! That’s more appalling than when Fear Factory did the same those years. If you ever bring Cannibal Corpse’s Kill into this, that would be invalid because they’ve always been death metal, and the one change there is the break from the gory cover art form other albums, and that change I like.
Christ Illusion and World Painted Blood followed for Slayer, and they would end up being their last albums with guitarist Jeff Hanneman. He was bitten by a spider, in 2011, that gave him a flesh-eating disease that prevented him from playing guitar, and he could do was drink heavily, leading to his death in 2013. With that, Slayer was reaching their end. After one more “perfectly decent” album without Jeff, Repentless, they had recently done a farewell tour, then it’s all over. Slayer is gone, partly because of a life-changing spider bite.
Machine Head also went the horrid nu metal route. After their first two albums, Burn My Eyes and the More Things Change, their next two, The Burning Red and Supercharger sounded more like Coal Chamber in the riffing that could p*ss long-time fans off. Their next 4 albums after that returned to their usual groove/thrash, but then Catharsis was once again f***ing nu metal.
You know how right after that Brixton Academy concert, Max Cavalera left Sepultura? That was because he didn’t like how the band fired their manager, his wife Gloria, and he already went through the sad time of losing his stepson, Dana Wells, in a car crash. He has since formed Soulfly. Both bands released nu metal albums that never reached Roots’ granted greatness. Newer bands came in and followed that kind of style, making it their own. Oh, the d*mn horror of…
This horrific genre, worse than glam, did not help metal’s downfall in the second half of the 90s, a time when Metallica went short-hair alt-rock, death/grind is gone or different, the groove/thrash greatness would never be the same, and heavy metal giants ended up playing for small crowds, as much as store capacities during the ongoing pandemic.
Andrew and I agree that nu metal is the most f***ing appalling subgenre in all of metal. This atrocity has originated from combining hip-hop with metal, something that was seen as taboo at that time. Isn’t it surprising how the main inventor of that combo that shouldn’t co-exist is none other than the legendary Reign of Blood producer, Rick Rubin?
Rubin is responsible for the first couple rap rock/metal collaborations, a Run-D.M.C. version of Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way” and Slayer guitarist Kerry King playing a guitar solo on Beastie Boys’ “No Sleep till Brooklyn”.
Public Enemy is known as “the most metalhead-friendly hip-hop act”. One of their songs, “Bring the Noise” has referenced both Bono and Ono, and Anthrax. The latter they referenced likely because of Anthrax’s badly rapped “I’m the Man”. Could they match? Apparently, with their crossover remix of “Bring the Noise”.
For alt-metal, Faith No More paved the road, White Zombie used extensive sampling, and Rage Against the Machine soared high. Then came Korn, the start of mixing death metal down-tuning, teen-ish whining, and lyrics of trauma and depression.
Coal Chamber don’t really act as metal as they are, driving an ice-cream van to please kids. Limp Bizkit is as bad as their name. As said before, nu metal has infected Sepultura and Machine Head.
And now… Linkin Park, the most successfully overrated band of all. The thing is, I used to listen to a lot of Linkin Park when following my brother’s footsteps before switching to “real” metal. Even now, I like a few of their songs and was shocked by Chester Bennington’s untimely suicide. RIP…
Andrew doesn’t mind a couple band like Deftones and System of a Down. Slipknot is an important band in the nu metal generation, and they went big at the time when Andrew was listening to the nearly equally mainstream but awesome…
Ah yeah, metalcore! A modern descendant of metal that has somewhat hit the mainstream, making up for that cr*ppy nu-metal. Inspired by the crossover movement of hardcore and thrash in the 80s, the early 90s saw the rise of hardcore bands taking on bolder usage of metal.
Bands like Integrity started moving in, along with Earth Crisis with their 1993 song “Firestorm” advocating the vegan straightedge movement to say no to the drugs of punk. Violent screamo band Reversal of Man would make a parody of that song, titled “Get the Kid with the Sideburns” (I can just visualize a screamo parody of the DragonForce album Sonic Firestorm, “Punk Kid Sideburns”). Earth Crisis has made a motto that is “REJECT THE ANTHROPOCENTRIC FALSEHOOD” (which sounds like a mashup of God Forbid’s Reject the Sickness, The Ocean’s Anthropocentric, and Veil of Maya’s False Idol).
While Earth Crisis went from Slayer-infused hardcore straight into the nu metal sh*t (for one album), another band still had that former style, Converge! Their first album, Halo in a Haystack was released with only 1000 copies, and it’s their only bad album, being mostly plain hardcore. Their second one, Petitioning the Empty Sky was much better, with more metallic punches to their hardcore. It was originally released, then they added a few more tracks to make it kind of a full-length. When Forever Comes Crashing is my favorite 90s Converge album with their metal elements pushed even further.
They reached their breakthrough with 2001’s Jane Doe, a heavier dense album that found the band’s balance between hardcore and extreme metal and has propelled the band into global acclaim. Jane Doe is my favorite Converge album, tied with their 2004 album You Fail Me. Well, what can I say? They’re true metalcore masters!
Cave In also had a similar metalcore sound to Converge, but only for their debut album, Until Your Heart Stops. Starting with their second album Jupiter, they ended up in spacey alt-prog rock similar to Radiohead, instead of mixing Slayer-like metal with Black Flag-like hardcore. If you wanna ask bassist/vocalist Caleb Scofield to head back to metalcore, you can’t, sadly. He was killed in a car crash recently, leaving behind two Cult of Luna-like bands, Old Man Gloom and Zozobra.
On the year I was born, 1999, two awesome mathcore standouts were released; Botch’s We are the Romans and The Dillinger Escape Plan’s Calculating Infinity. Andrew has talked quite a bit of The Dillinger Escape Plan, including the controversial Reading concert where lead vocalist Greg Puciato pooped into a bag and chucked it into the crowd as a reminder of “the sh*t happening later today”, referring to Puddle of Mudd and Hoobastank. Andrew has also noted a few “verb the noun” bands like Horse the Band and Betraying the Martyrs. Those last two sentences I was guessing because the page was torn out due to the opposite side saying the worst thing Andrew ever said in the book, which I’ll show here along with my reaction:
If you’re new here, you might be wondering, “The author hates Trivium… What’s the big deal?” I’ll tell you what the big deal is… Trivium is my #1 current favorite metal band! The author I followed and commented throughout the book hates my favorite band!!! I WAS SO F***ING P*SSED!!!! THAT was the reason why I halted from buying this book for two years before buying in that online sale!! Now here I am, ranting about that one part that set me off! Commenting on that part didn’t help lower my fury, instead making it worse! During then, it was late at night, like around 1am, and my dad wanted to me to go to bed. Between the anger of that one part and the fact that I was only two pages away from finishing that chapter but my dad didn’t care, I got into a small fight with him (I never usually fight). Don’t worry, we’re OK, we reconciled, and it’s all good in the end. Well, it wasn’t really the end yet; the next morning, I tore out the page of the book that had that part and got rid of it, then I took my first ever break from anything metal or metal-related for the rest of that month. So yeah, that was the story behind what I thought was the now-gone worst part of the book.
In the next page, Andrew started talking about two of my other favorite bands, Lamb of God and Mastodon, and never said anything bad about them, along with another reminder of how killer the best albums by Converge and The Dillinger Escape Plan are, and so I regained my trust. We also agreed that deathcore is the worst ever mix of hardcore and death metal. It’s too hardcore for Andrew and too death metal for me, though I like a bit of deathcore when it’s more progressive and/or symphonic. While there was all that melodic/hardcore metalcore Andrew and I love and hate, incoming was a different stylistic explosion…
There has been talk about…labels. There are some d****ebags out there who claim Napalm Death is just “grind” with “grindcore” being a mix of that and hardcore. WRONG. He should buy and read this book before anything else! Wikipedia always base an album’s genres on reliable sources, and a few times those sources are wrong, yet they add them in. In all honesty, labels should be dependent on what they REALLY sound like, not what should be believed.
Labels are a good thing to appreciate because without them, how would you call all these metal genres that have inflated in the 80s and 90s? However, you would know that different group of different are coming, the “posts”! There’s post-punk, post-hardcore, post-rock, post-thrash (the groove metal played by Pantera and Machine Head), and finally, post-metal.
You could claim Judas Priest can be “post-Black Sabbath”, but the “post-metal” ship has sailed for them. Post-metal is more of a metal descendant of post-rock and shoegaze with epic structures as long as classical symphonies. They can easily be a synonym of experimental metal!
The true inventor of post-sludge is Neurosis. Beginning as a thrashy hardcore band, they dropped their thrashy act for more ambient influences that would later form as the genre we know as post-sludge. Their masterpiece Through Silver in Blood has completely established them as punk-free progressive post-sludge. While their perfect post-sludge would last until at least The Eye of Every Storm, songs like “Locust Star” had made Through Silver in Blood have made that album the best of 1996 (besides Moonspell’s Irreligious, though I also love the one before that album, Wolfheart).
Another epic band of that genre is Isis, who used to have a small dash of the experimental metalcore of Botch in their earlier albums. They lasted through the late 90s and the entire 2000s, then split up in 2010. It was the 2010s when the Islamic terrorist group ISIS were mentioned in the news. That caused an uprising and downfall of shirt and record sales at the same time for the band. They would change their name to Celestial (their debut album title) for a tribute concert to Caleb Scofield.
Post-metal bands are split into two categories; bands with vocals (Battle of Mice, Cult of Luna, Solstafir) and bands without vocals (Pelican, Russian Circles, Red Sparrows). Tool are sometimes referred to post-metal, but their music lies in a more progressive alt/nu metal. It’s like they’re from another planet while staying in this one!
There are a couple bands somewhat related to the genre with “God” in their names; Godflesh, formed by Justin Broadrick who left the grindcore of Napalm Death for brutal electronic-industrial metal, and Godspeed You Black Emperor, a post-rock band whom one of their songs is used in the film 28 Days Later. I think my favorite post-sludge album ever is the Isis album Panopticon (not to be confused with the black metal project). However, the future keeps being buried by the past with…
The 60s began the early hints of metal with occult rock. The 70s fully established heavy metal as a genre. The 80s saw many subgenres spawning from metal; thrash, doom, and power. Then the 90s showed the genre’s downfall. In the early 2000s, just like Huey Lewis once sang, we “gotta get back in time!” Metal has gone retro.
While the mainstream is still around, the extreme underground of 80s metal has made its comeback. Nu metal has ended up retreating and running away like those Monty Python knights or the lesser-known Linkin Park’s “Runaway” (“Gotta run away, gotta run away!”). Nu metal was gone (for now).
Metal genre combos started coming in like blackened thrash and death-doom. What’s next? Speed/grind?? Industrial goth??? Besides those revival/hybrid movements, bands such as Refused and Carcass are back on and have reached younger audiences, though their creative prime is out of time. Refused would even be part of the recent video game Cyberpunk 2077 as “SAMURAI”.
Imagery has also been revived, thanks to the internet. Now you can dress as if you’re a metalhead who just time-travelled from the 80s.
One of the more common examples of 21st century glam metal is The Darkness, with their single “I Believe in a Thing Called Love”. A 21st century thrash band sound fresh from the 80s is Municipal Waste, along with other thrash bands such as Toxic Holocaust with their modern Venom-like sound.
One retro extreme metal band Andrew likes is Dungeon, who are from London and should be called Dungeon (London), then cover the Misfits’ “London Dungeon” and perform it live in the London Dungeon. They’re not to be confused with Australian power metal band Dungeon, in which their spinoff band Lord would mix that band’s power metal style with extreme metal influence revival. With all that talk about the revisiting the past, why not talk about…
Metal might seem bleak for the more historical metalheads; Lemmy is gone, Black Sabbath retired, and bands that did well on their own like Entombed and Venom have divided into two. Andrew thinks most mainstream metal is “dogsh*t” and the year 2017 is depressing when trying to find new songs, though for me, it ain’t that bad. DragonForce and trivium each made a kick-A album in 2017!
Of course, as mentioned above, the 21st century has metal going nostalgic, trying to revive 70s heavy metal, 80s thrash metal, and 90s black metal. The sad thing, at least for Andrew, is how the internet has taken over the way we get music. Andrew talked about the days of buying Sepultura’s Roots on CD from a local record shop and listening to it non-stop. Yet recently when Andrew was talking to a girl whose favorite band is Sepultura, the girl said that she just listens to them on YouTube. Honestly, if a girl around my age group says her favorite band is Trivium, you bet I would be in a relationship!
With the internet and modern technology, I can access a band’s entire discography in just under a day, under a few hours even! You can still buy hard-copy music form websites like Amazon and, for independent releases, Bandcamp. Yes, it is important to support bands by purchasing records and merch and going to concerts, but *sniff* I’m broke… I’ll still help as much as I can, and I think my time in Metal Academy shows my thoughts on the bands and albums I listen to.
Music has had quite an evolution since the early days of recording. They started as records, then CDs and later MP3s that you could skip or rewind to a certain part any time. There have been over 1000 albums I’ve listened to, and here’s to more in the…
The future is an unknown period of time where we don’t know what’s happening until we get there. Despite heavy setbacks, one thing is for certain; metal's eternal flame keeps burning. So, what is the future of metal? Andrew might know, being not only a historian but also “a practitioner of black magic”. Andrew has made a Ouija board out of letters from a Kerrang magazine, but the spirits have terrible music taste and were the same age as I was when I started my metal taste. The teen spirits only like Green Day and Asking Alexandria. Andrew could sacrifice something metal, but ultimately, cast Scandinavian runes with an Amon Amarth song playing. Andrew drank and drugged until recently passed metal legend spirits got in touch, and the future unravels.
I was around for the first few years of the “future”, so I’ll be the judge, starting with 2018. Edition #2 of this book gets published and Kim Kardashian can be seen reading it. Then all the pop artists who made the d*ck-ish move of wearing their T-shirts began to actually listen to those bands and might just move to those styles, making metal more popular than the 80s. With Saxon, Lamb of God, and Exodus filling stadiums. All this would be my dream come true, but sadly, no. Everything’s still the same, and Lamb of God recorded a cover album under their controversial original name Burn the Priest, but even though their 2020 album isn’t the best, it still deserves the band to hit the stadiums.
2019 – The fictional band Crème Brulee from The League of Gentlemen becomes Fenriz’s band of the week, and they become so popular that by demand, the actors form a real band, later becoming the best-selling band of all time, selling more than Led Zeppelin who grumpily open for them. Motley Crue reform again. Instead of Beyoncé hitting the international charts, it’s bands like Nile, Cradle of Filth, and Trivium. An upcoming Guns N’ Roses album is announced. Again, most of this wasn’t true. Trivium didn’t hit the charts, but their 2020 album deserves them that right.
2020 – No Guns N’ Roses album this year. Iron Maiden become so big that they play the first ever live gig on the moon, 24/6 (not 7), that can be watched through special telescopes. Almost the entire population watches the show and Iron Maiden “become more famous than the sun.” US President Donald Trump become split into “two separate but identical entities,” a truth-telling one with nothing to fear and a lying one stoking fear and paranoia. The two Donald Trumps keep splitting like bacteria and reveal to be “lizards with unrealistic English dialects.” Manowar decides to run for president with the campaign slogan being “Make America Metal Again”. Once again, most of this wasn’t true, and it’s Joe Biden who was running for president, not Manowar.
2021 – Manowar win the election and become president. Their first move is to ban anything that’s “False Metal”. This results in Linkin Park being exiled to Guantanamo Bay. A poet named Gerhard Heintz writes a poem that can make a good song verse, about the bands and genres he “did not speak out”. Sepultura, Darkthrone an ailing reformed Black Sabbath were forced to play live with their classic line-ups. An upcoming album by Meshuggah is so complex that “they get trapped inside the music”. The new Guns’ N’ Roses album is nearly ready. Still not mostly true! Bands like Linkin Park, Meshuggah, and Guns N’ Roses are recording albums for this year, but again, it’s Joe Biden, not Manowar.
I’m just gonna make a quick summary of what Andrew predicted about the years after this one. Varg Vikernes fails to attack a mosque and gets beaten to death by Muslims. Finland becomes the 51st state of America. Dream Theater’s 2023 album (possibly the one after the album that will be come out in this year, 2021) is entirely in musical notation. That year, Guns N’ Roses restart the writing process of their album and announce that it will come out next year, but it doesn’t. Metal became “uncool” and Norwegian Christian groups burn down heavy metal venues and studios. Manowar win second term but are impeached just for not going topless. Due to the European rebellion, metal becomes illegal in Europe, resulting in Judas Priest and the band Europe getting imprisoned. This causes Guns N’ Roses to withhold releasing their new album for another year. Soon, the Metal War comes on, and the rest of the future is unclear with false signs of Guns N’ Roses’ album coming.
It’s not until the billions of years into the future, the expanding universe reaches heat death, and all light, heat, and time die when the Guns N’ Roses album finally comes out. Eventually a new big bang restarts the universe, and well...here we are again. I’m just reading the book and wondering if the universe we live in isn’t the real one.
So, that marks the end of the book, but before we come to the conclusion, I decided to make this extensive flow chart of all the metal genres. Check it out:
The flow chart might not be completely accurate, so if you want me to change anything, please let me know. Anyway, I would like to conclude this review by saying this book, Andrew O’Neill’s History of Heavy Metal is an amazing one! It covers a lot of metal facts that are accurate and a few times inaccurate just for laughs, and a lot of opinions that I think are great, OK, or unacceptable. Andrew O’Neill is a writer, comedian, historian, and metalhead like no other. I’m glad to have my hands on this glorious piece of metal work!
Rating: 4.8/5
The most outrageous thing Andrew O'Neill said in the History of Heavy Metal book, plus my reaction (more info in my book review coming soon):
