Impure Metal: How Underground Heavy Metal Became Mainstream Heavy Music

[Jim LotFP]

Anyway...my very long winded point is the ONLY measure is what the artist does and what they believe in. If the artist is honest to themselves then it is 100% real. No matter how weak or loud.

I agree with this. My listening tastes aren't solely metal (lots of floofy 70s prog like Genesis, ELP, Yes, and Mellow Candle is just about the opposite of heavy metal as is humanly possible)...

That isn't the point though. Burns isn't pulling "true" and "false" out of thin air. He's presenting the things that these people have really said and/or done in the past and comparing it to what they are saying and doing now. So...

... do the people in question believe what they are doing now? Fair enough, people do change. If so, why is their history (or activities behind the scenes) conveniently ignored, or worse, rewritten ? Are there links between the past and present that have been completely ignored in the article that would explain the behavior of these people? If so, bring it to our attention.

People can do what they want. The problem is when they bullshit you about their motivations and pretend to be something they are not, and that's what I think Burns' articles have been about.

As to why it matters, I rather like this quote I found by Arthur Machen, written in 1927: "The success of the second-rate is deplorable in itself: but it is more deplorably in that it very often obscures the genuine masterpiece. If the crowd runs after the false, it must neglect the true,"

 

[General Zod]

Phenomenal article. Very well written, and surprisingly comprehensive.

Zod

EDIT: After reading that article, I doubt I'll ever buy another Metal magazine.

 

[Cheiron]

Zod. I'm curious why? I read the article as well, and I still think magazines have worth, including BW&BK. In BW&BK I can not only learn a bit about groups, read interesting interviews about various groups I enjoy listening to, but also I can find many new groups. I don't use these magazines as a bible. Which is the only real danger. I don't say 'oh this band sucks' or 'metal is going this way' because what is published in a metal magazine. Instead, I take from it what I will. Anyhow, curious what your opinion is.

 

[General Zod]

Zod. I'm curious why? I read the article as well, and I still think magazines have worth, including BW&BK.

The article (IMO) did an excellent job of illustrating just how beholden magazine publishers are to both the labels and trends. And in retrospect, I'm surprised I didn't recognize this on my own. This is the same reason I stopped buying Cigar Aficionado years ago.

In BW&BK I can not only learn a bit about groups, read interesting interviews about various groups I enjoy listening to, but also I can find many new groups. I don't use these magazines as a bible. Which is the only real danger. I don't say 'oh this band sucks' or 'metal is going this way' because what is published in a metal magazine. Instead, I take from it what I will. Anyhow, curious what your opinion is.

I can see where you're coming from. However, I'm an internet junkie. And as such, 90% of what I read in magazines, I read on a forum or on Blabbermouth two to three months prior. I also prefer the comments of a handful of regular forum posters, to that of a single reviewer, whose tastes I'm not familair with, and whose review may or may not be influenced by the label's advertising dollars.

Zod

 

[DBB]

Phenomenal article. Very well written, and surprisingly comprehensive.

Thank you for reading and commenting. And as you mentioning the orientation of Cigar Aficionado proves, this is in many ways a problem that pervades all forms of printed matter in our society. The problem has become particularly acute in the past 15 years (not saying that it wasn't there before) as the walls between business and news have eroded across the land at a much faster pace.

That isn't the point though. Burns isn't pulling "true" and "false" out of thin air. He's presenting the things that these people have really said and/or done in the past and comparing it to what they are saying and doing now. So..

I should add here that I am also using the statements of people who are in bands to quide my explorations and really attempt to not move beyond the ideas, attitudes and philosphies expressed by the metal musicians who are making music. It is probably inevitable that I cross that line on occassion, but it is one that I have my eye on and try to respect. The strangest thing about the entire ball of wax is that people consistently act as if I am just composing articles based on my on personal whims and fancies without any sort of ideological grounding beyond what *I* think.


And I think that Gavin Ward's observation is spot-on and will only become more and more valid in the coming months:

I don't know if there's integrity in music now. It used to be commercial music that had no integrity 'cause of major labels. Now, independents are making musical moves on the bands, readjusting bands so they work down a path, a marketing plan. They readjust those bands if the path changes. They try to create styles, and if the style changes, they just readjust and tell the band to change the style. We've stayed away from that crap.

These kinds of statements are all over the place throughout the history of modern rock and more strident among metalheads and constitute a way of looking at music that I think is worth preserving and that is the standpoint I'm writing from--not some personal caprice.

Here is another one for consideration:

Did musical integrity have to be an either/or proposition? Perhaps not; sometimes I can hear where an artist has put together a collection of sincere, personal songs, without compromise or commercial considerations, then very obviously added at least one formulaic “single”—a shallow repetitive candidate for mass appeal and radio play—which the business people call the “money track.” Maybe it was just my imagination that even that artist’s genuine music seemed a little tainted by that calculation.

Realistically, maybe it was just good business for an artist to think about such practicalities, but it corrupted the entire fabric of the intention. Again I come back to that same “note,” which, like one voice in a harmony seems to color everything around it. The keystone of any artistic construction is contained in that simple question, what is the intention?

Neil Peart Traveling Music: The Soundtrack to My Life and Times

 

[Some Bastard]

Just finished reading this as well. Phew!

Initially that MacLaurie dude had some good points, but eventually he kind of turned into bizarro Dave Burns. And did Chuck fuck his sister or what?

Personally I think the Neoclassical guy makes the most sense here. And since I've said my bit in the other thread I'm not going to repeat myself here

BTW, how old is everybody here? And what are your metal points of reference?

 

[Occam's Razor]

a nazi is no bizarro Dave Burns, is he?

 

[Some Bastard]

a nazi is no bizarro Dave Burns, is he?

That's kind of my point

It's funny. Hammering on historic accuracy and some background knowledge of the music (something I agree with) and then coming up with a passage like this:

1991 was just another example of what had gone on from the very beginning, starting with the association of Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and Uriah Heep with metal in the 70s (an association that some "metal" scribes like Martin Popoff continue to promulgate), not to mention the way that Jimi Hendrix was somehow written into the history of metal (to give coloured folk a place at the table?).

Is this guy for real?

Fuckin' painful, dude!

 

[Occam's Razor]

The other day, I was wondering how all these true black metal people and nazi pandas got into the music. It is very likely that the majority of these people are what you may call "kids" or at best in their mid-twenties; so it is also likely that their introduction into black metal did not happen through Venom, Frost and the likes, but Dimmu and Cradle - it is hardly possible that the whole necro-stuff is the first that gets your attention when you are new to the scene.

It is funny then how these people claim to have eaten scene-wisdom and authenticity by pails, talking as if they were old veterans and tr00 connaisseurs of music.

 

[Some Bastard]

Hence the question; how old is everybody here and what are your Heavy Metal points of reference?

And no, I don't mean how much 'cred' you have in the 'scene' or how 'tr00' you are. That's all hogwash. I'm just curious how much of Heavy Metal history people here have actually witnessed, and how does that influence one's idea/perception of what is or is not Heavy Metal.

 

[Occam's Razor]

born in 81, listening to distorted guitars in music probably since my ninth year. Socialization with metal via Iron Maiden, Megadeth (Metallica came later) and German metal (Kreator, Running Wild, Sodom and Blind Guardian).

No, I won't let you know about my blood type...

 

[DBB]

I am 33. Got into metal around 84/85 (Maiden, Dio, Accept, Priest etc.) before that the only songs I can remember liking were "Hound Dog" by Elvis, "Ghost Riders in the Sky" by Johnny Cash and some song about Snoopy defeating the Red Baron. About a year or two later came across Metallica and that lead to Hirax, Kreator, Destruction Laaz Rockit, Exodus, Violent Playground, Cryptic Slaughter, D.R.I. The Accused etc. and eventually to the madness that you have witnessed here by a long and bumpy road that includes all the twists and turns life can throw at you.

 

[Occam's Razor]

I feel like sitting at a meeting of the anonymous alcoholics...

What about the Bastard himself? - Was it Golden Earring and Vengeance, or the usual international suspects?

 

[Jim LotFP]

Hence the question; how old is everybody here and what are your Heavy Metal points of reference?

31 years old.

Listened to things like Quiet Riot and Twisted Sister in the 80s, right alongside Weird Al and Sly Fox. It was all the same thing to me and I wasn't even a teenager.

Summer of 91 with the GnR tie-in to T2 I go into that, and that led to The Black Album, a little later Countdown to Extinction and Vulgar Display of Power. None of it meant much to me, it was just neat that people made music that made the little meters on the stereo go all red!

Then I got Napalm Death's Utopia Banished in July 92 and everything changed. I discovered new music by looking at the thanks list of that album and making purchasing decisions based solely on that.

Problem was "traditional" metal didn't exist to me, at all, at the time. Judas Priest and Iron Maiden were just glammy shit like Motley Crue and Cinderella as far as I was concerned. This without hearing an Iron Maiden album (or as far as I know, an Iron Maiden song) until 1998.

That ANYBODY else listened to this stuff was amazing to me. I remember going to my first club show in 93 to see Cannibal Corpse, Unleashed, and Epidemic. Never heard any of them, I just remembered 'Corpse from the Napalm booklet and tickets were five bucks. That was an experience. The people I got to talking to at the show were not the best people to talk to, and they were the only other people I had ever talked to that had even heard of Napalm Death. If it wasn't fast and grind and BRUTAL it was complete garbage, and so over the next couple of years I sat in confusion at shows as Cynic had hecklers and Carcass had to deal with a very hostile crowd on the Heartwork tour.

I remember seeing Metal Maniacs for the first time at the end of 1995 because Cathedral had a little cover photo. People WROTE about heavy metal? In a MAGAZINE? Holy crap!

Ads led me to mailorder and let me know of the existence of things not on sale at my local Turtles. That led to getting free newsprint zines with those orders. I found myself disagreeing with almost everything I read, heh.

Which led to the start of LotFP, which led to hard history lessons that started to stick around 1999.

And here we are.

 

[Some Bastard]

What about the Bastard himself? - Was it Golden Earring and Vengeance, or the usual international suspects?

Born in 69. It all started when I was about 10 years old. I was already pretty interested in music, thanks to my music geek dad. The first artist I was crazy about was Elvis (who - since having died and all - was all over every TV screen). And then Kiss came along. Now this was something completely different! When my parents divorced it was arranged that I visited my dad every other weekend. He took me to my first rock shows. The first Hard Rock show I ever saw was the Pat Travers Band at a festival. Nice!! And when he took me to a Kiss show the support act was a young and relatively unknown British band called Iron Maiden.

Now believe it or not, back then Dutch radio had two shows that played nothing but Hard Rock and Heavy Metal. Beton (or 'concrete') presented by Alfred Lagarde mostly played the old stuff while Stampij (or 'racket') concentrated on the heavier stuff and the NWOBHM. And since they also played Kiss and Iron Maiden I started listening to and taping them. The rest, as they say, is history. I started saving all my pocket money to buy records from the bands I got to know through those shows. Even took on the odd vacation job for extra cash. I also developed an interest in the history of the genre and read everything I could on the subject. The fact that my dad had some Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, Ten Years After and The Who in his collection didn't hurt.

The Dutch magazine Aardschok was still a cheap stitched-together little black & white fanzine. Now remember, this was before the days of extreme metal. Heavy Metal was still mainly a British and European thing. Cirith Ungol or stuff like Mike Varney's US Metal-comps were still considered an exception. When a band was said to sound 'typically American' it meant they played AOR! The heaviest bands back then were Motorhead, Venom and Raven. Bands like Saxon or The Rods, who basically played a kind of biker rock'n'roll were considered Heavy Metal as well, even though their music hardly had any Black Sabbath in it. Black Sabbath with Dio was considered more important than their earlier stuff. It was also OK to like more melodic stuff like Y & T and older bands like Rush and Rainbow. The term 'Hair Metal' still had to be invented.

And then came the first Metal Massacre-compilation, and it turned out the US had a Heavy Metal scene as well. And then came Kill 'em All and Show No Mercy. And Heavy Metal became a kind of sport. 'Even faster than Metallica' or 'even heavier than Slayer' became a reccomendation. It was interesting for a while because it got us Apocalyptic Raids and In The Sign Of Evil and War And Pain and Seven Churches and all that. When SOD's Speak English Or Die came out and bands were spotted with shirts of GBH and Suicidal Tendencies it became 'cool' to like Punk and Hardcore too. Granted, a lot of the Hardcore music I got to know then was indeed pretty great. The earlier records of bands like Minor Threat and MDC and Bad Brains opened up a whole new world for me.
I even played in a Hardcore band for a while with some old Punk guys. It struck me that they had a lot more freedom in their scene. When I happened to like a song by The Doors or Pink Floyd some of the Metal people I knew frowned and said I had to be a 'faker' then. When I was on the road with those Punk guys the music they played in the bus could be Black Flag or the Germs, but just as easily they played Jefferson Airplane or Nancy Sinatra or Slayer or Fugazi or Fishbone. To them their music was an attitude, not a genre. They sometimes snickered when I came with bands like Agent Steel (those high pitched vocals were a bit much for them) but you could like what you wanted. That was pretty refreshing.

It was also the time that Metal got divided in all these subgenres and that there were people who tried to separate stuff with all their talk of 'posers' and what was 'real' or not. I never bothered with that. It was bullshit! And I still liked the old stuff as well.

Like I said, i got to appreciate Punk and Hardcore and lots of other music as well. At a certain point I felt Metal started repeating itself and I started listening to the more 'adventurous' Heavy bands like King's X and Masters of Reality. I never 'got' the often mentioned 'impact' of the whole grunge thing because except for Twisted Sister and the first Guns'n'Roses I never listened to what was called 'Hair Metal' anyway. I was already long aware of the Seattle scene and never considered 'Grunge' a genre. What did Soundgarden, Nirvana and that shite overrated hippie band Pearl Jam have in common anyway? Not much I think. Nirvana were just one of those guitar bands like The Replacements or Killdozer or any one of those bands I already knew from my punk friends. Never got what the big deal was, and I still listened to all the Metal I wanted. Some stupid hype wasn't going to stop me from that!

The other reason I started listening to different kinds of music is the fact that I started playing in bands myself. When you're involved in a musical process you start listening to music differently. You can learn a lot about songwriting and dynamics by listening to The Beatles or some old Motown records. And I don't think that makes me any less 'real' in my love for Hard Rock and Heavy Metal in its many forms. Those are my roots and my musical foundation, I still go to shows and try to keep up with what's being released (but I'm not blind - there is more).

Maybe that's what I don't 'get' about the articles. Mr. DBB, you're obviously a person of some intelligence (not to mention a 'leftist nutter', just like me ). Why don't you apply the views you obviously have on life to music? Life is about change and constant development and Heavy Metal did not materialize out of thin air. It's painful that I have to agree with some of the people you obviously mean to criticize in this article. I really think that intelligent writing and limited views don't mix (in fact, they clash). The idea that there is such a thing as 'true' Heavy Metal is a myth.

 

[Occam's Razor]

We seem to share some things as far as listening to diverse genres goes, even though it's mostly jazz for me - a preference that came from playing the bass.

As for the early music I listened to, I should have mentioned Deutschrock and -punk as well.

Funny to learn that the Dutch word for "concrete" ist the same as in German. But some of your insults are similar to ours as well, aren't they?

 

[Some Bastard]

Oh, I love Jazz. I'm a bass player too.

What's Deutschrock? Scorpions? Eloy? Can? Spliff? The Spider Murphy Gang?

German insults are the best! Nothing beats "Schweinhund"

 

[Occam's Razor]

Deutschrock: probably what you said, but there are more embarrassing things I won't mention - yu won't know them either...just what the radio offered in the 80s.

Do you know there used to be a band called Schweinhund with an album called "Schweinhund for president"?

 

[DBB]

I have a very long reply that was so lengthy that I typed it up in word in order to not lose it, but when I try to preview it I get a message about how unltimatemetal doesn't give me permission. Had this problem with coping and pasting in the past, but hasn't happened again. So I'll try again later. But if anyone can help or assist let me know.

May try emailing it to myself and see if it works on another computer.

 

[Zealotry]

...Am I the youngest one here? I was born in '83 and got into metal in '96 or '97 when a friend slipped some Testament and Slayer onto a mix tape for me.