Louder Than Hell: The Definitive Oral History of Metal

by Jon Wiederhorn

  ZAKK WYLDE: Once, some of the guys in the back were getting blowjobs from some chick. There was this whole running joke that went this chick’s gotta blow the whole crew, the Doom Crew, before she gets to the band. So she’s blowing some dudes in the back. Next thing you know I hear, ba-boo-oom! I go up to the fuckin’ front and the windshield of the bus is shattered. Someone threw a brick at it and took off running. I saw him and chased this motherfucker down, beat the living fuck out of him, and then walked back to the bus. One of my guys goes, “Man, did you talk to him?” And I said, “No, I beat the living fuck out of the motherfucker.” And he goes, “Aw, dude. It wasn’t his fault. His girlfriend was the one who came on the bus.” I go, “Are you kidding me? Well, he shouldn’t have thrown a brick. He should have gotten her out and dealt with her or just left her there.” The poor fuckin’ bastard pays for the two tickets, probably brought her out to dinner. And what does he get? Does he get a blowjob? No. Does he get laid? No. He gets his ass handed to him and his fucking girlfriend sucks off the Doom Crew. God bless heavy metal.

  RANDY BLYTHE: I’m not a big fighter, but I’m definitely accident prone. The last day of the Unholy Alliance tour in 2006 with Slayer I bought a really sharp machete. Some kids asked me for an autograph and the machete came off the belt of my sheath and landed right on my toe. Blood started fountaining everywhere. I asked the fans to get me some Super Glue. If a cut’s not too deep, you can glue the wound right back together, but it was way too late for that. I had to get stitches right away. More recently, we were playing in Osaka, [Japan], and I was visiting with my tattoo artist. I had forty-five minutes before I had to be onstage. He said, “My buddy has a clothing store. He wants to flow you some cool gear.” I went and got some hats and a cool jacket and he asked me to put the jacket on so he could take a picture of me wearing it for the store. So I whipped it on and a tag was hanging out. I busted out my knife to remove the tag. I cut the tag off, closed the knife and I wasn’t paying attention so I closed it on my thumb and split it wide open. I should have had stitches, but I had to be onstage early. I went back to the club bleeding like a stuck pig. Everyone looks at me and shakes their head like, “Oh, there goes Randy again.”

  When Lamb of God arrived in Prague on June 27, 2012, to play a show at Rock Café with Skeletonwitch and All Shall Perish, to everyone’s shock Blythe was cornered by police at the airport, arrested, and charged with manslaughter, stemming from an incident in 2010 in which nineteen-year-old Daniel N. died. After the fan rushed the stage, Blythe allegedly pushed him back into the crowd, where he fell and hit his head. Two weeks later, N. died from injuries sustained from the fall. Even after posting US$200,000 bail, Blythe was held at Pankrác Prison through August 2, 2012.

  RANDY BLYTHE [in a press statement]: If it is deemed necessary for me to do so, I will return to Prague to stand trial. While I maintain my innocence one hundred percent, and will do so steadfastly, I will not hide in the United States, safe from extradition and possible prosecution. The family of a fan of my band [still] suffers through the indescribably tragic loss of their child. They have to deal with constantly varying media reports about the circumstances surrounding his death. I am charged with maliciously causing severe bodily harm to this young man, resulting in his death. While I consider the charge leveled against me ludicrous and without qualification, my opinion makes no difference in this matter. The charge exists, and for the family of this young man, questions remain. The worst possible pain remains.

  For many years, Mastodon front man, guitarist and vocalist Brent Hinds tempted fate. On September 9, 2007, insane partying and juvenile antics almost ended his career. Hinds was swinging around a wet shirt when he accidentally hit someone with it. The guy blindsided him and Hinds’s head smashed against the cement, causing severe internal bleeding. Ironically, the trauma fueled his creativity for the band’s 2009 psychedelic prog-metal epic Crack the Skye.

  BRENT HINDS: I got run over pretty hard by this dude, and if I would have seen it coming it never would have happened. He sucker punched me out of nowhere and he’s a coward for doing it. If he would have said, “Hey, I’m about to punch you,” it would have been a different story. It’s like, “Dude, grow some balls and fuckin’ face me. It was an accident that I hit you. I was fuckin’ wasted drunk.” Me and [Queens of the Stone Age front man] Josh Homme had just played with the Foo Fighters on MTV. We were hanging out with Lemmy. I was just having too much fun. That’s why he punched me. [System of a Down guitarist] Daron [Malakian, who was there], said I hit the back of my head [on the ground] so hard it sounded like someone had hit a homerun. I went into convulsions and seized out and had blood coming out my ears and mouth and nose and brain hemorrhaging and a brain aneurysm. I was holding the fuckin’ Grim Reaper’s hand. It’s a miracle I made it through.

  TROY SANDERS: Bill [Kelliher], Brann [Dailor], and I were in my room real late and we got a phone call and found out Brent was beaten on and had head injuries, and next thing you know our party vibe got turned into us sitting in this deluxe hotel room crying together because we were scared that brain injury means possible death, possible coma, possible motor skills lost for life. It was incredibly scary. That element of the unknown terrified us, and that was the first step of us for the next twelve or eighteen months becoming more solid as a family. It takes those kinds of moments for you to step back and reassess your life personally, and your career and your bandmates and the brotherhood you’ve been sharing for the past nine years.

  BRENT HINDS: While I was out, I had all these dreams. I was asleep for three days. I went a lot of places. It’s really hard to explain because of how vivid it is and all the stuff was—just complete sensory overload. I was there physically, but mentally I was not there at all. I was out in the universe. I’d be in Thailand or Bali or Hawaii or all these paradise-type places and everything was really mellow and I was happy. When I woke up three days after I was sucker punched I looked at everybody in my family and projectile vomited water, blood, and alcohol on everyone. It looked like sangria going everywhere. The fucker who sucker punched me had rings on his finger. He broke my nose so bad I had to wait eight months until the vertigo stopped and I could go back into the hospital under anesthesia and have them rebreak my nose again so I could breathe. It was really crazy how it made me want to play guitar more. I was just really grateful to have a second lease on life. I was like, okay, I’m just gonna play. I’m not gonna change my ways, but I am gonna play more and maybe that will change my ways more.

  TROY SANDERS: Thankfully, Brent was able to overcome his injuries after eight months of truly being in a haze. Thankfully, he was able to pick up a guitar and become as creative or more creative than he ever has been in his life. Physically and emotionally, we were more united as a team and as friends, more so than ever. That’s probably why [2009’s Crack the Skye] was the most cohesive piece of art we’ve ever crafted together.

  From the beginning, Slipknot’s chosen path was infused with darkness. They thrived on hate and relished the acclaim it brought (from their largely disenfranchised fans). Aside from Corey Taylor’s suicide attempt, no one in the band had a public near-death experience. There were broken bones, assorted burns and cuts, and thousands of bruises, but nothing life-threatening. Then, on May 24, 2010, bassist and songwriter Paul Gray died in a hotel in Urbandale, Iowa. An autopsy revealed he had overdosed on a combination of morphine and a stronger but shorter-lasting narcotic called fentanyl. While Gray had a history of heroin use, he had reportedly cleaned up after meeting his girlfriend, Brenna, who was pregnant at the time of his death.

  PAUL GRAY: For Vol. 3: The Subliminal Verses, I wrote a bunch of stuff—like I do every record—but I would spend half the time in the bathroom [doing drugs]. And I’d be trying to play and I’d fall out of my chair a couple times and fall asleep in the middle of tracking a fucking song. It was pretty bad. I was getting depressed that the band might break up. I was like, “What would I do?” This has been the best thing tha
t ever happened to me. So I’ve never wanted to leave this. Maybe that was partly the reason for the drug use. I’d hear someone say, “Fuck it, I’m quitting. I’m out.” That would fucking freak me out. I’d be like, “What the fuck? What are we gonna do now?” And I’d just dig myself in deeper holes. All that had to stop. But once you get to a certain point, it’s fuckin’ so hard going through withdrawal. It’s so bad. It’s not that you don’t want to quit. You just can’t. Going through rehab kept me good for a little while and then we got back out on the road and I just knew too many people and I started using a lot again. I would clean up and then I’d do shit again. I had some near-death experiences and a few stints of rehab here and there. I got left in rehab at the end of the arena tour with Shadows Fall and Lamb of God. It was the same place Lindsay Lohan went. I missed the last six shows of the tour. That’s when I really started going, “Fuck, I need to figure my shit out.” When we got done with the whole Subliminal tour, well, idle hands do the devil’s work. I met my wife and she stayed with me and helped me. But then I’d full-on run with it again. Finally she said, “I can’t sit around and watch you kill yourself.” So we moved back to Iowa and I went to my doctor and got straightened out. I have friends, though, who pushed it just the same way, and they are dead.

  JIM ROOT: I had just driven home from the studio in Nashville to my place in Florida when I got a call from our manager. At the same time, Clown called me. That’s how I found out Paul was dead. We were done with Stone Sour’s 2010 album Audio Secrecy and I got the call the next morning. I was home for less than twenty-four hours before I was on a plane to go to Iowa to say goodbye. Then less than a week after that we were on a plane to Europe to start a European tour. I didn’t even have a chance to sit down and really think about it. We had even talked about getting together to start writing some shit for the next Slipknot record. When Stone Sour was on a festival with Metallica, James Hetfield was really helpful. He came out of nowhere when we were in Greece and sat down and talked to me for about an hour about what happened to Paul. He said, “If you need an ear, if you need somebody to talk to, you know where I am.” They went through the same thing with [late bassist] Cliff [Burton], so James knows. He said in some ways they really didn’t deal with it. He wanted to make sure we didn’t make some of the same mistakes they made throughout their grieving process.

  COREY TAYLOR: James did the same thing with me. For him to reach out was really, really cool. That was absolutely reassuring. He and Lars were both very cool about it. But honestly, it was still uncomfortable to talk about, even two years after it happened. It’s one of those things I wear close to my chest and still try to process.

  ANDY COLSEFNI: [Paul] was staying at that hotel for a couple of weeks and he was going there to meet up with Donnie [Steele] to write music for a new Body Pit CD they were planning after Slipknot’s next tour. Paul must have had this room reserved to try to keep all that [drug] crap away from his wife.

  JIM ROOT: What do we do now? Some people say it will never be the same. Now that I’ve had a little time to think about it [I wonder], do we kill an entire band, an entire culture, over something that took Paul? Paul just wanted to jam. That’s all he ever wanted. He was that dude. He was a talented motherfucker and he would think we were a bunch of fucking idiots if we didn’t keep jamming.

  In 2011, Slipknot did a short European tour, headlining the Sonisphere Festival, among other European festivals. Taylor called the gigs a “celebration” and tribute to Gray. Original Slipknot guitarist and Body Pit bandmate Donnie Steele filled in for Gray on the tour, though he was hidden from the audience’s view. In 2012, Slipknot headlined the Rockstar Energy Mayhem Festival with Slayer.

  COREY TAYLOR: After we were able to grieve for a while we decided that we were going to keep going. And by the time we agreed to headline the 2012 Mayhem festival, we knew we were going to do another record. I’ve already got some ideas and Joey sent me some stuff he’s been writing. But it’s gonna be a couple years before we’ll be able to get together and do it. It’s nothing any of us want to rush into.

  * * *

  DES MOINES REGISTER (September 6, 2012): Des Moines physician Daniel Baldi was charged with eight counts of involuntary manslaughter for allegedly prescribing large amounts of narcotic painkillers to patients who later died of overdoses. One of the eight patients was identified in court papers as Paul Gray.

  * * *

  SLIPKNOT STATEMENT (September 6, 2012): As the loss of our brother Paul Gray is still very fresh for us in the Slipknot family, this new development has us all in a state of anger and sadness. The fact that this person took advantage of our brother’s illness while he was in a position to help others has outraged everyone in our family. We can only hope that justice will be served so this can NEVER happen to anyone else ever again.

  THE END COMPLETE

  The development of metal is like the evolution of a virus. Microscopic organisms replicate inside living cells, and to ensure their survival, they adapt and mutate over generations. Not that headbangers are afflicted with a debilitating disease. On the contrary, the relationship between metal fans and the “metal virus” is symbiotic, and once infected, the host becomes empowered and, for a while at least, thrives on the chaos, aggression, and sense of individuality and community that metal provides. Various metal bands understand the contagious quality of the music they create: Anthrax named its second album Spreading the Disease in 1985; Carcass called its 1989 record Symphonies of Sickness. Then there was Disturbed’s career-skyrocketing single “Down with the Sickness” in 1999.

  The base musical and cultural elements motivating the current crop of young metalheads is different than those that inspired fans of Blue Cheer and Alice Cooper in the sixties, but the core compounds are the same. Those who harbor the metal virus know that the music they love is rooted in intensity, nonconformity, and escapism, regardless of the era in which it spawned. And, unbeknownst to its adversaries, who seem to view metal fans as a single mass of knuckle-dragging troglodytes, metal affects men and women of all races, creeds, and social classes. There are metalheads with academic degrees who seek solace in the stress relief and mathematical intricacies of the genre, and middle-class adults who still cling to the music’s volume and power, either because it keeps them feeling young or because they still revel in the bursts of energy it provides. There are soldiers who rely on metal’s aggression and muscle to give them strength in life-threatening situations and help them survive post-traumatic stress disorder. Then there are those the metal virus feeds upon most ravenously—the young.

  Metal speaks to young people like nothing else can, and it convinces them that, with their favorite bands and albums as an anchor, they can survive pain, depression, and almost any type of adversity and then revel in their rebellion, partying and tearing shit up simply because they can. It doesn’t have to be a life-or-death thing. They might just be regular suburban teens disenfranchised in a society of conformists, jocks, and cheerleaders. Regardless, for each subtype infected or enlightened by metal, it’s the music no one else understands or appreciates, filled with “heroes” the mainstream regards as degenerates or morons because they can’t relate to the thunderous release the music provides. To those untouched by the metal virus, the music is “just a bunch of noise,” it “all sounds the same,” “has no musical value,” or “sends out negative messages that warp minds and promote violence.”

  What the ignorant consistently fail to realize is that the more they dismiss the music, the more passionate metal’s followers become about the force that gets them through the day. Like a virus, metal has grown so rapidly and gone through so many permutations that all metalheads don’t even fit under the same umbrella. You won’t find many Deicide fans listening to Mötley Crüe, while Tool followers aren’t lining up to catch Napalm Death at their local dive.

  But that’s just fine; infection is strengthened by adversity, and the necessary cross-pollination of metal’s subgenres over the y
ears has kept the music vital, even as record labels and other corporate entities struggled to contain, stamp, and commodify it. Metal is an infectious disease; a beast to be respected, not caged. In a way, it’s like the Terminator. “It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop—ever.”

  Throughout the past four decades, fans of other styles of music have repeatedly declared that metal is dead. It was supposed to be supplanted by punk in the seventies, by New Wave in the eighties, and by grunge in the nineties. Yet even during eras when it was least popular, the music continued to evolve and gain power in the underground. Then when the masses were angry enough at the state of the world—and disgruntled by the lack of passion and substance in popular music—metal rose from the dirt to inspire once again.

  Of course, predicting when that will happen is like guessing when massive earthquakes will obliterate major cities. It’s hardly a perfect science. But until then, the current crop of metal will continue to affect and infect. Survivors from past eras will keep kneeling at their respective altars of noise, while new generations of sonic terrorists—be they metalcore, deathcore, avant-black metal, or a subgenre as yet undiscovered—will keep forming and mutating to make their mark and struggle for survival. As long as there is anger, disenfranchisement, corruption, abuse, and angst, the heavy metal microbe will continue to multiply and seek new, willing hosts.