SCOTT IAN: [S.O.D.] was a sociological experiment. I used to read Maximum Rock and Roll, and you always heard people like Jello Biafra (Dead Kennedys) picking on the New York scene and calling it fascist. We figured, “Okay, like the Bonnie Raitt song says, let’s give them something to talk about.” So we had a little fun and went over the top by saying shit that we didn’t really mean because we thought it would be funny to see their reactions. It was really a one-joke thing and it blew up. But being the guy that created it, I never wanted it to be a real band. I was already in a real band. And eventually, S.O.D. became everything I didn’t want it to be. We were saying, “Speak English or Die” and “Fuck the Middle East” and a lot of people misinterpreted it and really thought we held those views, which we certainly didn’t.
DAN LILKER: With S.O.D. there was the concept to mesh hardcore and metal. It was hardly original. D.R.I., C.O.C., and Suicidal were just a few of the bands doing it already. But we were the first band coming from the metal side to do it, which is why it got all the recognition and people were like, “Holy shit! Never heard this before.” If you look at [my next band], Nuclear Assault, it was more long-lasting, and it took the music more seriously. We were like Slayer one second and Minor Threat the next, with all this other stuff mixed in.
JOHN JOSEPH: At the time the crossover thing started exploding, we never really rehearsed, and I was like, “If we’re going to do this, let’s do it full on, and practice all the time.” So that’s what happened. I started booking shows and we started blowing up. I liked metal, but I couldn’t relate to the shit they were singing about. I was singing about what I knew. And that’s why you can feel every groove of The Age of Quarrel.
HARLEY FLANAGAN: The Age of Quarrel sucked. Our [1984] demo, [later released as Before the Quarrel] was better and I never thought we captured our live performance in the studio, even on the next album, [1989’s] Best Wishes, which was even more metal. People base their whole perception of Cro-Mags on The Age of Quarrel, and we had a lot of bad blood recording that. I blew out my bass amp and I had to play through the board without effects on my bass, and it sounded like dog shit. The manager, [Chris Williamson], said, “Don’t worry about it. We’ll do the bass tracks over through an amp.” I played my runs like shit and I did a lot of them in the wrong places. I didn’t care because I thought I was gonna get to do it over. Of course, I never did. Also, when we were recording, John had a cold and that was the sound that he became legendary for, but it was really him at his worst. And during that session, a friend of mine got in a fight with these metalheads, supposedly because they said the Cro-Mags sucked and they liked Anthrax. One of the metal guys tried to gouge my friend’s eyes out, so my friend bit the dude’s thumb off, which got spit out into the sewer, so he never found it. Then, this one hardcore dude outside grabbed what he thought was a metalhead and started kicking him in the face, holding him by his leather jacket—and then he realized it was a chick. We’d go from recording back to our life on the streets, and then go back in and try to record again. I guess we captured the intensity of our lives in those songs, but the highlight definitely wasn’t our performances.
GENE HOGLAN: There was so much violence before the crossover scene blew up. Once, Dark Angel played an all-day hardcore festival in San Diego with Dr. Know and Ill Repute. I was always goading our singer, Don Doty, into calling the audience names and getting in their faces. Before that show Don came to me and said, “Dude, do you realize we are really outnumbered here. Do you want me to do that shit onstage?” I was like, “Yeah, it’ll be awesome.” So here’s a bunch of longhairs yelling at a bunch of skinheads, “You fuckin’ suck. You’re a bunch of fucking assholes.” They put up with it for about a song and a half, and then somebody got kicked in the face and all hell broke loose. We were brawling onstage with a crowd full of angry punk rockers. It was 10 longhairs against 150 pissed-off punks. I refer to this incident as “the night Gene’s balls blew up” because I jumped off the stage to help my drum tech, who was being absorbed into this crowd of punks, and this guy grabs me and knees me in the nuts as soon as I got offstage. Usually when that happens you go down. But I had so much adrenaline going, I just punched his fucking face off. I didn’t even notice my balls were swollen like grapefruits until after the cops came. Thank God they did or who knows what would have happened.
MIKE CLARK: We played the Whisky [a Go Go] in 1987 with Fuhrer and Black Flag, and there was a police riot on Sunset Strip in front of the venue. The guys from the Rainbow and the Roxy came down and they were backing the cops. There were a lot of built-up hostilities on both ends and there was a lot of bloodshed. That led to a seven-year ban of Suicidal playing Los Angeles, which really sucked. The closest we could play before 1994 was Ventura, San Diego, or Orange County.
MIKE DEAN: We never liked violence and we didn’t like skinheads. On the sleeve of 1987’s Technocracy, [drummer] Reed [Mullin] wrote something like, “The best thing about skinheads is that they’re biodegradable.” We got death threats for that. In Miami, at this place beside the Jackie Gleason Theater, we had all four of our tires slit and our van windows broken by skinheads while we were inside playing the show. But I guess the rest of the skinhead community got drunk and forgot about wanting to kill us. Somehow we dodged a bullet on that one.
Hardcore diehards will point to the Bad Brains’ 1982 energetic, positive, and aggressive self-titled album (originally only available on cassette) as their breakthrough moment, but it wasn’t until 1986’s I Against I that the band was embraced by headbangers, thanks to the crisper, crunchier riffs of guitarist Dr. Know and the slicker, brighter production of Ron St. Germain, which gave the band a more metallic tone that served as a major influence for Living Colour, Faith No More, System of a Down, and countless others.
DARRYL JENIFER (Bad Brains): We always tried to be progressive. It’s not something we contrived. So by the mid-eighties we gained a certain amount of popularity and we started to think more. We were keeping it moving. So the riffs became more metal because we were really trying to bring more funk and bounce to the rock.
DR. KNOW (Bad Brains): The metal thing was popular at that point in time and we were all somewhat influenced by that.
H.R.: One of the priorities is being able to teach people the new concepts firsthand—having the sisters and brothers come to the shows, see the group and also the improvements of our students and our loved ones, hear their approaches and their ideas and also their new languages. A lot of people in the early days came from Ethiopia, and they couldn’t really speak English too well, and their handwriting was kind of scribbly. But now, through the years of work and its teachings, including myself, we can abide in our humble abodes and also through these concerts and have a very groovy, right-on, soul-responding communication that’s just hip. Some people are not hip, they’re just squares. So we’re trying to avoid the squares, show them that they can take a square, turn it into an A-plus response, and get an A-plus performance.
DARRYL JENIFER: If you notice, H.R. can be a little eccentric. But he’s always got his own motivations, and a lot of times he’s trying to protect his brothers. He chased [legendary photographer] Annie Leibovitz off the tour bus when she was shooting us for Esquire. He stood up and said, “That’s it. You and your people get your stuff, we got a gig. Get off the bus.” And he stood there like the enforcer. The lady was pregnant. I was embarrassed. So they leave, and he goes, “I’m sorry Darryl, I know they were bothering you and we gotta play a show tonight. The last thing you probably want is a camera in your face.” A lot of times, he thinks like that. He’s got different ways and deeper missions and, of course, he’s weird and wacky. But there’s still a lot of positive and deep insightful things that this dude possesses.
One of the most controversial New York–based crossover bands came from the bowels of Brooklyn. To some, Carnivore embraced all the political incorrectness that S.O.D. had only joked about. The group was fronted by hulking, self-deprecating bassist and voca
list Peter Steele, a sanitation worker for the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, whose dark sense of humor was often mistaken for racism, misogyny, homophobia, and anti-Semitism.
JOSH SILVER: Peter liked to annoy people and get a reaction—[and] whenever you write a song [like] “Jesus Hitler,” you’re going to get some kind of response. He liked to push buttons, and humor was his coping mechanism.
KENNY HICKEY: When Carnivore played L’Amour they used to throw out . . . lamb’s heads during their show because [their friend] Sal Abruscato’s father worked in a meat factory. The raw meat was dripping blood and it stunk. The owners of L’Amour banned it. So Peter goes up to the mic at the next show and goes, “[L’Amour owners] Mike and George [Parente] said we can’t throw out meat at this show, so we’re going to throw out fifty White Castle hamburgers.” Peter was Henny Youngman dressed up like Herman Munster. He was a one of a kind.
HARLEY FLANAGAN: He was one of the more talented guys to come out of the New York scene. He was a total longhair; then he showed up at CBs one day with his head shaved and combat boots on, totally skinheaded out. We all laughed about that.
KENNY HICKEY: Peter cut his hair short because he’d just filled out all these forms to try to be a cop in Nassau County. He thought he was going to give up the rock-and-roll thing and become a policeman. But of course, he started Type O Negative instead.
Once places like CBGB, L’Amour, and Ruthie’s got too small for crossover shows, promoters packaged hardcore bands with major thrash acts at bigger venues. Motörhead and Venom were some of the first groups to take crossover acts on the road; generally, the response was good. Then bands from other subgenres of metal booked gigs with popular crossover acts—but with mixed results.
JOHN JOSEPH: We terrorized metalheads who would come up with attitude. We did a show with Helloween and they started erecting fake castles onstage. Our skinhead fans ate these motherfuckers alive. It was a straight Spinal Tap situation. We were getting ready to sound-check and they told us we had to set up in front of the stage. I said, “Are you fuckin’ kidding?” and I started throwing kicks at the castle, trying to dismantle it. These guys started panicking. We were contracted to co-headline, so we compromised and wound up playing on their castle. It was hysterical. We went on first but it was mostly Cro-Mags fans there. So you had this band that had this real pompous rock star attitude, and after we got offstage everyone left and there was one row of metalheads in the front row and a big fucking empty club.
BILLY GRAZIADEI: Anthrax acted like they were all down with hardcore. So our manager gave them a Biohazard T-shirt, and [drummer] Charlie [Benante] said, “Oh, great. Another T-shirt I can wax my car with.” When we heard that, we wanted to fuckin’ kill them. Our manager said, “No, you don’t fuckin’ understand. They probably get fifty T-shirts a day.” We were like, “We don’t give a fuck. We’re Biohazard. Don’t disrespect us like that.” Of course, years later we were all friends.
JOHN JOSEPH: We did a lot of shows with Megadeth, and if Dave Mustaine wasn’t on drugs he was the nicest guy in the world. But the first time I met Dave I was helping out the Bad Brains and Dave was fucked up, and he was a complete asshole. The show was at the old Ritz in New York, and the Bad Brains were headlining and then it was Megadeth and Slayer. So Megadeth had to walk through Bad Brains’ dressing room to get to their dressing room. Dave comes in talking like, “Fucking bitches, suck my fucking cock”—just being vile. And the Bad Brains had their wives and kids there eating hummus and cake and being all peaceful. So I was like, “Yo dude, can you fucking chill out with that shit. There’s kids here.” Dave goes, “Man, fuck you! Who the fuck are you? You’re just a fucking roadie.” I didn’t tell him who I was, but I was thinking, “Yeah, you’re going to get taught a lesson in a minute.” Then when Megadeth got offstage, Dave picks up a big tub that all the beer goes in that’s full of melted ice water, and he throws it in the air all over everybody in the Bad Brains dressing room. So I grabbed his fucking hair and slammed his head into the wall, and H.R. got in his face and goes, “You want fucking violence? We’ll show you violence!” You do not want to fuck with H.R. when he’s pissed off. I went, “Just give me the word and I’ll deck this dude.” But H.R. said, “No, we’ll let him go this time.” Then, sure enough, Cro-Mags are touring with Motörhead and Megadeth not long after. I was thinking, “Let’s see if that motherfucker remembers me” because he was really high when he did that shit. And Dave comes in and goes, “Hey, man.” He was sitting in the middle of the floor of the venue on the road cases and he says, “You want to come and smoke some bud?” So we’re sitting there and he rolls up a few, and he’s like, “You look really familiar—do I know you from somewhere?” And we’re all like, “Nah, man. Never met you before.” And Harley and our [guitarist] Doug [Holland] are cracking the fuck up. Finally I was like, “All right, I’m going to give you one hint and if you don’t get it I’m never telling you.” So he goes, “All right,” and I say, “Remember this? ‘Fuck you. You’re just a fucking roadie.’” He turned white and was real apologetic.
KURT BRECHT: Even after things caught on and people started coming to shows and buying our records, we still didn’t make any money. I lived in the van as long as I could, then I had to move into a tree in Golden Gate Park around the time we did Crossover [in 1987]. One night after we played a huge show in LA with Slayer, we drove back to San Francisco and they dropped me off in front of my tree. The reason I was in the tree was because no one could see me up there, so they couldn’t fuck with me. Most of the bums slept on the ground, which is really dangerous. Anyone can come up and attack you. I would hear somebody if they were climbing up the tree.
MIKE CLARK: I noticed things were taking off big-time when we were headlining, and even more when we were on the radio. Because getting radio play back then was pretty much impossible, and then they started playing “Waking the Dead” statewide. That’s when I noticed, “Okay, there’s other bands like us, now,” which is the best compliment you can ask for, basically.
By 1992, crossover had hit critical mass. Suicidal Tendencies’ Controlled by Hatred/Feel Like Shit . . . Déjà Vu went gold, as did 1994’s Lights, Camera, Revolution. And Biohazard’s second album, Urban Discipline, eventually sold more than one million copies worldwide. The Brooklyn band was a bit of an anomaly, mixing syncopated beats, crushing metal riffs, and flailing solos with barked hip-hop-influenced vocals. But the band came from the streets and embraced the ideals and lyrical themes of hardcore, which gave them cred. Moreover, Biohazard didn’t just surface out of a sea of flames and broken bottles to claim the crossover throne. The band formed in 1987 and shared stages with Cro-Mags, Carnivore, and Agnostic Front long before breaking into the mainstream.
EVAN SEINFELD (ex-Biohazard, Attika 7): When I was seventeen, I roadied for Carnivore, which was probably the single biggest influence on Biohazard because Carnivore played thrash metal, but they were somehow fused with the hardcore scene because they had the best skank parts, slow parts, and dance parts. One day I went down with Carnivore to the rehearsal studio to see Agnostic Front. They all had shaved heads, tattoos, and were more punk than Carnivore, but they were starting to play a metal style. I was totally sucked in. I thought, “Wouldn’t it be great to have all of these styles in one band.”
BILLY GRAZIADEI: I was playing in hardcore bands in Manhattan and I was just about to try out for a band called Breakdown when a buddy of mine said, “Oh, I know a metal dude who is looking for a guitar player. He works at Crazy Eddie’s [electronics store] down the street.” Back then, I was doing security at Flip, a famous punk rock/metal clothing store. So I met Evan and we bullshitted for a bit. I played some guitar for him and we decided to form a band. We got together with a drummer who wanted to bring in guitarist Bobby [Hambel]. But Bobby had gotten drunk and had gotten in a fight with a cabbie, then a bunch of other cabbies stopped and jumped him. So we had to wait for Bobby to heal before he could join us.
EVA
N SEINFELD: I was a street kid from Brooklyn, but I got what Biohazard wanted to do because after I went away to college to SUNY Oneonta, my friend Ian gave me the Cro-Mags demo and it totally made sense. That, and Agnostic Front’s [1984 album] Victim of Pain blew me away. I knew I wanted to do something that had that vibe, but mixed with Carnivore and early Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, and Iron Maiden. The rap thing wasn’t contrived at all. Me and Billy were kind of shy about our vocals, so we started this rhythmic delivery because it sounded hard and you didn’t have to worry about sounding too happy if you were singing. We were definitely not happy guys. We wanted our music to portray our anger, our dismay, our dissatisfaction with the world. When I heard metal, I really wanted to say fuck the world—not just fuck the world, but blow it the fuck up! Biohazard was perfect for that.
BILLY GRAZIADEI: We didn’t exactly fit in anywhere. When we played with bands like Exodus and Slayer, we got the vibe that we weren’t metal enough. Then, we would play with hardcore bands and we were too metal. We were outcasts. So we just did our own thing and created our own style, which eventually became popular.
JOHN JOSEPH: A lot of people hated on Biohazard when they started blowing up. But I always thought, “God bless the dudes” ’cause they were a good band. And they were good guys. You can’t hate on people just ’cause they have success.
Louder Than Hell: The Definitive Oral History of Metal Page 29