What better way than to work through the disappointment and frustration of losing the Worldcup final, the late breaking news that Harvey Pekar has died as well as more personally, having S. back in hospital yet again, than with some slit your wrists Doom Metal? Luckily we’re on the “P” in the metal alphabet, which stands for Paradise Lost and there’s nothing more Doom Metal than them. Like so many of my other favourites I discovered them in the late eighties and early nineties. They were the first band I know that was so heavy and slow, that didn’t attempt to pack as much sound in as small a time as possible, but extended their music, slowed it down, while dropping the usually high pitched vocals an octave or so lower. The end result is a type of metal that saps your strength, slows down your heart beat and turns you inside. No quick adrenaline rush here, but you do get a rebound in energy from their songs, much like a collapsing star can get a gravitational rebound when it crosses a certain limit…
Below are some of my favourite Paradise Lost songs.
True Belief:
Embers Fire:
As I Die:
P also stands for Pestilence, another great Dutch Death Metal band, but they didn’t really fit my mood today. Some other time.
O is for Obituary, another Florida based Death Metal band, who first got together in the eighties — and really what else there was to do in Tampa Florida in the eighties? They played around for a couple of years before releasing their debut in ’89, but what a debut. Slowly We Rot was a masterpiece, one of those records you have to play loud on headphones to get the sound reverbing round your skull and the bass guitar echoing on your ear drums for days after. The title song especially was great, starting off slow and doom laden and then the song speeds up for the vocals and the hall erupts. I dare anybody not to start moshing to it:
From their second album Cause of Death comes “Find the Arise”, another personal favourite:
Only found two good videos this week I’m afraid; more next week.
Two bands today representing the letter “N”. First up, Napalm Death, the UK grindcore/death metal pioneers. Influenced by punk and hardcore like so many other metal bands getting their start in the eighties, theyt took it further than most. In the first video, if you blink you miss their record breaking song “You Suffer”:
They got a bit more “mainstream” later on in their career. Here’s an example of their later style:
The other “N” band is Nuclear Assault, which you could call an Anthrax spinoff as Danny Lilker, ex-Anthrax bassist was a founding member. They of course play thrash metal with their earliest records having a decidedly apocalyptic flavour. No wonder considering the band was formed at the height of the Reagan era, when it really did seem like the missiles would start flying any minute now. Now unlike James Nicoll, who watches Threads as escapism, I still get nightmares thinking to much about nuclear holocaust and some of their songs I just cannot play therefore. This is “Game Over”:
It was my year’s resident metalhead who made me realise back in high school that classical music is something that can actually be enjoyed rather than something that needs avoiding. And to be sure, much of what metal does is stole^wliberated from classical music, especially from opera, especially especially from Wagnerian opera. What after all is more metal than a long spun out story of warring gods, magic rings and chicks in chainmail bikinis?
The one problem is, that while you might think Kreative Destruktion‘s twenty minute song about the Battle of Wesnoth drags on a bit, taking in the Ring Cycle takes twenty hours. It can therefore be a bit hard to keep focused and keep track of the story. Luckily there’s Anna Russell to put you straight on the players and the play both:
Quite a few good metal bands are filed under “M”: Metallica of course, as well as fellow thrash metal giants Megadeth, M.O.D. (Billy Milano’s jokey follow-up to S.O.D.), Manowar (power metal for fantasy readers), My Dying Bride, Motorhead, Morbid Angel, Mercyful Fate and Mucky Pup. Yes, Mucky Pup, the band which shot to fame through a Bloom County song writing contest Burke Breathed ran for Bill the Cat’s then band (don’t ask). This was the result:
Bonus appearance by Adam Curry. Mucky Pup was actually the first hardcore band i’d ever heard, through my brother, who had taped their 1989 album A Boy in a Man’s World. Still can recite most of the lyrics by heart, though the tape was lost years ago and I’ve only recently found a copy of the record again. Fun band, fun music. Moving away from Mucky Pup’s happy hardcore, My Dying Bride with its synth laden, slow, slow doom metal could not be more different. Again introduced to this by my brother, I like them as much as I like Mucky Pup, evne if their musical styles are diametrically opposed:
This goes on for over twelve minutes in the album version… From their 1995 album The Angel and the Demon, this is “The Cry of Mankind”. Love to play this late at night, when it’s dark and all the old fears are waiting at the window… Some people may find it all horribly overblown. A chance of pace now, get ready for some hi-octane NWOBHM courtesy of Motorhead, featured in the best episode of one of the best sitcoms ever, The Young Ones — here’s “Ace of Spades”:
Now some naff metal. Manowar is a band dedicated to fulfilling all the cliches about metal listening, Tolkien reading geeks and their fantasy life, with their songs about awesome adventures and sword fights and heroes returning from the death and motorcycles and stuff, but I can’t help but like them. Especially this, the first song of them I ever heard, during the annual top fifty countdown the sole Dutch heavy metal radio show at the time did. This is “Battle Hymn”
Morbid Angel is the third most selling Death Metal band in the world, which must in part be because they found a winning formula early on and never varied it much. This is one of the better early songs, “Blessed Are the Sick”:
Let’s end with a bit of Megadeth, Beavis and Butthead style:
For the “J” installment of Metal Monday there’s only one band that can be featured, the lawbreakers themselves: Judas Priest. To me Priest is the perfect link between hard rock and heavy metal, sort of halfway inbetween hard rock pioneers like Sabbath and Deep Purple and NWOBHM bands like Maiden, able to match both. Discovered them sometime in the late eighties, when I found a huge stack of their records on a flea market, for a guilder a piece. Not quite in pristine quality when I got them, played them so much over the years the grooves have worn out — long live MP3s.
Now the least interesting thing about Priest is that their lead singer, Rob Halford, is gay, which he only openly acknowledged in 1998, though it really couldn’t come as much of a surprise to anyone, considering the outfits he tends to wear. Heavy metal may unironically celebrate the macho leather look, but Halford is a bit over the top even so. Again, it shouldn’t matter and luckily for most fans it didn’t, but it seems still to come as a bit of a surprise to outsiders. Metal has a bit of a reputation as neanderthal music I guess…
The other thing everybody knows about Priest is that they were accused of putting subliminal messages in their songs to get their fans to commit suicide, to which Halford said that would be the dumbest thing a musician could do, kill of their fans and that they’d rather subliminally influence their fans to buy more albums…
Priest’s music has evolved a lot over the years, though the core qualities remain the same. One of their earliest classics is “Diamond and Rust”, a Joan Baez (!) cover from 1974 here in a great recent version:
1980 album British Steal saw this breakthrough hit, complete with naff videoclip:
From 1990 comes Painkiller, which may be one of the few songs in which I prefer the studio version. The quick pounding drums come through much better that way. Especially with the sound turned up to eleven on headphones. Still haven’t lost the buzz…
And of course, no metal band should be without their serial killer shoutout — The Ripper:
