How about a Friday night music thread? brendancalling made us a Metal playlist to start us off! It’s the long-promised, long-awaited, perhaps long-dreaded metal playlist! I’ve been a metal fan pretty much all my life, beginning with when I learned about AC/DC (more hard rock than metal, and not included in this playlist) and, soon …
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And, with that thought in mind, I started this playlist off with some songs by the Beatles and Jimi Hendrix that you could call “pre-metal” or “metal adjacent.” If you’re hesitant to call a “Helter Skelter” metal, well—1980s hair-metal band Motley Crüe had a huge hit with their rendition, spending 4 weeks in the top 40 after its release.
Black Sabbath. Their first four albums were majestic—one thing to listen for is drummer Bill Ward, who brings his jazz sensibility to the endeavor. Also, guitarist Tony Iommi has rubber fingers on his fretting hand, after losing two of ‘em in a factory accident and being told he’d never play again. These guys grew up in England in the aftermath of WW2, which is probably behind one of my favorite descriptions of the band, by their singer Ozzy (paraphrased because I can’t find the exact quote): “Everyone around us was all peace and love, and we just wanted to be scary.” And Black Sabbath brought it—although the critical reader will find their themes are often very Christian and against evil.
Ozzy got kicked out of Sabbath in the 1980s, and went on to forge a hugely successful career as anyone who’s watched reality TV can attest. But before my one Ozzy track, I dropped in some Van Halen, which is not entirely a metal band but is certainly metal adjacent. Their guitar player, Eddie Van Halen was in his heyday then—the man revolutionized rock guitar in so many ways, and everyone was aping his schtick and production. Ozzy’s first guitar player, Randy Rhoades, died in a tragic accident, but when you listen to the cut, do note the similarity in production between good-time party boys Van Halen and scary Ozzy. That slickl production, helped the genre first cross over into pop. Sure, your mom and dad freaked out about his album covers, but he was making the sounds the big rock stations liked—so there he was, in regular rotation. Even after he ate the bat!
Next up, the legend Ronnie James Dio, who got his start in the 1950s as a doo wop singer in the Ronnie and the Red Caps. Dio, in particular, had a real obsession with occult themes—they show up constantly in his lyrics. At least I think so—you see, while nothing at all personally like the Idiot from Alaska, Dio’s lyrics can only be described as “Palinesque word-salads.” I rarely have any idea what he’s talking about. Regardless, “Last in Line” and “Stand Up and Shout” are rockers, with powerful themes of self-identity and self-empowerment. “You’ve got desire/so let it out/you’ve got the power/stand up and shout.” The backbeat in both songs is relentless.
I included two early cuts by one of my favorite bands, Judas Priest. One of them is a Joan Baez cover. The other is their classic, “Breaking the Law.” Judas Priest is a fascinating band. On their earliest albums, the Queen/Freddie Mercury influence is extremely strong, before they adopted the black leather and metal studs that came to define the band’s look. So maybe it’s not all that surprising that their singer, Rob Halford, came out as gay in the early 1990s. [A funny aside is that the story prompted gasps from the media and worry that the fans wouldn’t accept him, and the fans responded “yeah, we kinda figured this out years ago.” Metalheads can be very accepting.] Halford has an exceptional vocal range: check out the falsetto in “The Ripper.”
Today, Rob Halford isn’t just the “Metal God” as he’s been called (more like metal grandpa with the Santa beard he sports these days). He’s also a queer icon and a role model for weirdo kids everywhere. He’s released two metal Christmas albums, and just this year put out a single with Dolly Parton. Also—Judas Priest is DEFINITELY one of the models for Spinal Tap, and if you haven’t seen that movie, you should.
Speaking of vocal range, as well as sheer instrumental virtuosity, Iron Maiden’s singer Bruce Dickinson may be THE sound of 1980s metal, backed by the twin guitars of Dave Murray and Adrian Smith. Their bass player, Steve Harris, is a legend—he’s not playing with a pick. That’s all fingers. Maiden usually pursued historical and literary themes—I didn’t include it, but their 13:38 minute epic version of Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” really needs to be heard, because it’s fucking amazing. And check out the intro to “Alexander the Great,” nearly two minutes of steadily building harmonized guitars before the singing even begins. Same with “The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner,” based on the novel of the same title. As a runner, this is one of my favorites. I mean, those lyrics: “I’ve got to keep running the course/I’ve got to keep running and win at all costs/I’ve got to keep going, be strong/Must be so determined and push myself on…”
And now we get to the heavier stuff. I’m gonna start y’all off with Motörhead, whose singer Lemmy Kilmister (Praise upon his name) always described the band as rock-n-roll. Which… yeah, but they were always metal as hell. First of all, you need to know Lemmy supposedly saw the Beatles. He was a roadie for Hendrix. He played bass for Hawkwind, a lesser known but hugely influential space-rock/psychedelic band. After getting kicked out—Hawkwind was all about the acid, while Lemmy was a speedfreak—he started Motörhead, a band of which he told the media ““If Motörhead moved in next door to you, your lawn would die.”
I never saw Motörhead, and it’s one of my biggest regrets because I love everything about the band. I love how ugly they are, I love how there’s not a drop of glamor about the band, and the lyrical content is great. I’ve included three songs here: “Ace of Spades,” their only real “hit”; “Orgasmatron,” an indictment of the world; and “1916,” which is not at all what you’d expect—a truly heartbreaking song about the child soldiers of WW2. Honestly, I could write about Lemmy and Motörhead all day. There’s a lot to say. In many ways, Lemmy is a hero to all of us metalheads: “Born to lose, live to win.”
A lot of you have probably heard (or heard of) Metallica. They had a big hit in the early 1990s with “Enter Sandman,” which personally I think is crap. Their heyday was their first three albums, when Cliff Burton played bass and kept them from getting cheesy. So I included “Disposable Heroes” (an anti-war song) and “Fade to Black,” about suicide. Heavy stuff—like I said, when punk and metal fused together, things got interesting.
Metallica really changed everything when those second two albums—”Ride the Lightning” and “Master of Puppets”—came out. Metal wasn’t stupid anymore. The lyrics were relevant. But also the intensity was ratcheted up exponentially, and the talent was undeniable. You’ll notice there’s an emphasis on rhythm and odd time signatures—it’s really tight, precise music. I think my favorite example is Testament, and of course, Anthrax, who teamed up with politically conscious hip-hop heroes Public Enemy to do a crossover version of that band’s underground hit, “Bring the Noise.”
And finally, a lot of these bands are made up of white guys (although there are a lot of Latinos playing metal as well). And it’s true—there aren’t tons of black people forming metal bands, which is why I’m always psyched to showcase Ice T, who many of you may know from TV’s “Law and Order: SVU.” Ice T made his career in hip-hop—some of you may remember the hysteria over “Cop Killer”—and has never been shy about sharing his political opinions. A lot of folks don’t know he’s also a freak about metal. His band Body Count released “No Lives Matter” in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests, and it is so angry and so honest it hurts. That whole album is a banger. “Black Hoodie” will break your heart: “All these people out here tripping off police brutality/Like this shit is something new/Give me a fucking break/I’ve been talking about this shit for over 20 years/And now you can kill a motherfucker just because of how he’s dressed/Are you fucking serious?”
That’s probably enough for now. But I wanted to end with one extreme bands, even though I promised not to: Vektor, who Wikipedia describes as “heavily themed around scientific, philosophical, futuristic and astronomical topics.” “Tetrastructural Minds” is the perfect example of the band’s ferocious technical expertise. Yeah, it’s an acquired taste (as I warned), but I don’t think there’s one standard time signature in the whole danged song. Worth a listen even if it’s not your taste—and yes, they pull it off live. They used to live in Philly (not sure if they still do) and I’d sometimes hear them practicing from outside the house where they presumably lived.
Boy, this has been a long blurb. I feel like Leonard Bernstein on his old TV show explaining classical music. So with that… let’s go!