by Ian Christe
Slipknot members wore rubber costumes reminiscent of horror-film monsters and used bar-coded numbers instead of names. Alongside the shock value was a scrap of meaning: The repulsive masks were intended (as with the eyeball-clad avant-garde group the Residents) to breed anonymity and subvert the cult of the rock star. Of course, as with Kiss, the masks only created a huge mystique around the band. Following trickling sales of the self-released 1996 LP Mate, Feed, Kill, Repeat, the band joined Ozzfest, and the breakthrough 1999 Slipknot CD clicked with a pissed-off public and went platinum—the first million-selling honor for the longtime metal indie label Roadrunner. “Every day that we do this, I become more of what I’ve tried so hard to be my whole life,” says Crahan. “I’m getting the opportunity to live my dream, and I’m getting to be what I really am. I don’t exactly know what that is. But I know I love it. I come home and draw pictures with my kid, and then I go out onstage and set my DJ on fire.”
With popularity came the expected public attacks. After student Robert Steinhaeuser shot thirteen teachers, friends, and a policeman in Germany in 2002, media critics fingered Slipknot’s lyrics as a cause— particularly a song allegedly titled “School Wars.” Slipknot indignantly defended itself and asked for a fact check. “It is ludicrous to place the blame on our band or any other form of music,” read their official statement. “Slipknot does not have a song called ‘School Wars,’ we have never written a song called ‘School Wars,’ and we certainly would never encourage people to kill others. We are a blanket of hope for our kids, not a scapegoat for attacks like this, and while we send our most sincere condolences to those affected by this, we will not take responsibility.”
Too harsh for MTV and radio, in the metal tradition Slipknot turned its Ozzfest success into a well-publicized, hard-touring cottage industry. The costumed antiheroes created a circuslike spectacle of aggression, turning their stage into an amplified mosh pit that completely immolated the safety barrier between band and audience. “If you’re not convinced that a band can go out and win kids on the road, then you shouldn’t sign them,” says Roadrunner Records’ A&R director, Monte Conner, who also brought Soulfly and the Korn-like Coal Chamber to the former label of King Diamond and Death. “Traditionally the way Roadrunner sells records is by bands on the road, not through radio. There is very little MTV for a band like Slipknot. They’ve gotta just sell it.”
In true heavy metal fashion the focus was on the fans— disgruntled young people growing up during an Internet-driven financial boom, fully expecting to be left holding the bag when the bubble burst. “The crowds sing the fucking words,” says Crahan, “and you can tell that the words mean everything in life to them. We’ve got the jocks sitting right next to the scumbags and the total metal dudes sitting next to the hip-hop guys. No matter how sore I am, when I see those faces in need of a break, I make sure I indulge as hard as I can.”
As the collision of metal and nonmetal styles intensified and headed toward destinations unknown, the changing terrain of metal became a curiosity even to veterans of the underworld. Legions of new fans began appearing at Ozzfest looking like vampiric ravers from Japanese cartoons, combining the baggy pants of urban homeboys with the gothic white face paint of black metal. “I don’t know what that is supposed to be,” says Type O Negative’s Peter Steele, “but it’s pretty interesting.”
Beyond nu metal, pop music at the end of the 1990s was about coalition building—whether between genders and races or by mixing underground influences with mainstream genres. As the prevalence of computers gave hungry young musicians unprecedented perspective on the world around them, boundary bouncing became evident in the technometal of Prodigy, the rap-rock of Beck, and the punk-folk of Ani DiFranco. In 1997 headbanger authority Metal Maniacs reported that Moby, the first techno DJ to reject anonymity and develop a star persona, was shocking summer music festivals in Europe with a live metal-oriented band that reckoned from Slayer in terms of deathly attack.
It seemed that a union of the club dance floor and the mosh pit was inevitable—the ultimate crossover between heavy metal and disco. As samplers and drum machines found their way into guitar stores and became the new standard media of musicmaking in the late 1990s, so did Korn, Limp Bizkit, and System of a Down arrive at metal with MIDI-based sequencing already on the mind. It was a completely renovated approach to headbanging. As a by-product of nu metal’s reliance on rap music, the defining musical traits—repetition, highly processed production style, and pastiche songwriting—were also the essence of digital music production, brought into bedroom-based home studios in the 1990s via computer programs such as Cubase, Logic Audio, and Pro Tools.
Instead of carving decibels with giant mountains of equipment as did Judas Priest, nu metal bands used digital guitar effects that emulated the enormity of vintage amplifiers through algorithms. “We kept up with what was available in terms of technology,” says former Judas Priest singer Rob Halford. “Now it’s all done with Pro Tools, it’s all done with computers. It doesn’t really matter how you get to the point that you’re aiming for. You just use the gear that you want. You no longer need to go into a full-blown studio—you can make a record in your bedroom. A lot of what musicians need is atmosphere, and emotional support to get the right things happening. Studios are terrifying places for bands—when they go in, they just kind of lock up and are fearful of it. Now they have access to all this sophisticated but easy-to-use software and recording gear. You don’t need to spend gazillions of dollars to do what you require.”
Life after Napalm Death: Nick Bullen and Mick Harris of Scorn (Earache Records)
There was certainly precedent for machine-assisted metal. The Birmingham, England, band God-flesh, formed in 1989 by Justin Broadrick after his exit from Napalm Death, proved that the definition of heaviness could waver into stark industrial turf far outside the colorful grasp of Van Halen and Mötley Crüe. Dressed like communist Chinese factory workers, the pioneering two-man band bludgeoned intrepid listeners with the sound of a monolithic machine press. After their digital sampler was dropped during the first American gig, Broadrick frantically rebuilt the basis of his band’s repertoire from memory in forty-eight hours. Afterward he traveled with backup disks of his precious data—weathering both technical and cultural storms to create a new direction for metal.
For many years, most headbangers resisted technical changes, allowing commercial electronic acts to steal their thunder. In the early 1990s the wholesale cultural sampling of heavy metal was commonplace, as when Düsseldorfs Die Krupps released a CD of Metallica standards. Best described as “Metallica on Sprockets” A Tribute to Metallica contained robotic versions of “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” “Nothing Else Matters,” and seven more technotallica takes on music that was already drum-machine tight in original headbanging form.
Toying with sacred cows, there were converts to the digital sound. With computer technology, the precision of top bands could be counted on a microchip-controlled time clock and no longer needed to be cultivated through live practicing and playing—a huge departure from metal tradition. Mick Harris, the longtime leader of Napalm Death, baffled peers as he abandoned his drum throne in favor of a sampler and a mixing deck to form Scorn. “I just think they’re scared that people won’t accept them if they take in new ideas,” he says. Offering a sound track for bassist Nick Bullen’s films, Scorn brought metallic intensity to the electronic arts. “When we were young and looking for music,” says Bullen, “Joy Division, Birthday Party, and Throbbing Gristle were the bands that were around for people like us. And then we’d go out with girls who’d be into funk and rap, and they’d get us into that as well.”
The adventurous Brutal Truth and Napalm Death also threw electronic elements into their roaring morass of sound, mainly with side projects like Meathook Seed, Blood from the Soul, and Malformed Earthborn. Influenced by the angst-laden scrapings of Skinny Puppy and Nine Inch Nails, these groups used drum machines, sampled sequences, and distorted g
uitar and vocals to create a psychedelic techno-metal hybrid. Though the Cleveland-based Nine Inch Nails was initially discounted by metal fans, leader Trent Reznor later moved to Los Angeles and created the crucial blueprint for any band combining angst and samplers. Ministry then took the drum-machine discord of NIN and added synthetic layers of goth rock and hot-rod kitsch. Another Reznor protégé and later Ozzfest headliner, Marilyn Manson brought the shock tactics of Alice Cooper to a supersonic extreme and was consequently for a short while blamed for every teen problem from school shootings to computer espionage.
The next major step toward bringing heavy metal together with machines came from the slick Los Angeles death metal band Fear Factory, who took technology to heart in 1994 and reinvented itself using emerging digital studio techniques. “We recorded Demanufacture on tape,” reports singer Burton Bell, “but went into computers as well, so everything would be synched up digitally. I sample my voice. I’ll just do one chorus as best I can—layer it—and when the chorus comes up again, we just pop my vocals in from the sampler. It saves time, and I just have to sing it once. Even the guitars are done that way. The only thing that’s completely live all the way through [is] the drums.”
Following several Ozzfest appearances, Fear Factory in 1999 had a Top 40 radio hit for fifteen straight weeks with its remake of Gary Nu-man’s icy “Cars,” perhaps the ultimate new wave anthem. Celtic Frost had faced serious criticism for covering a Wall of Voodoo song in 1987, but twelve years later the boundaries of heavy metal were far more abstract. “When we started doing this, we were thinking that the metal crowd wouldn’t accept it,” says Fear Factory guitarist Dino Cazares. “But they did. First you have to think about what you like and what joy you get out of creating things.”
Ultimately even music from the techno underground could embrace the spirit and power of heavy metal music while leaving behind its guitars and other sacred artifacts. By the mid-1990s the digital equivalent of metal was flourishing in three discrete movements from outside the headbanger lineage: DHR, gabber, and tech step. They could scarcely be called heavy metal but were products of an age when the most durable and resilient materials were made of synthetic plastics instead of Birmingham steel. On Berlin’s politically inspired Digital Hardcore Recordings, or DHR, the aggressive Atari Teenage Riot, Bomb 20, and Ec8or thrived on a formula of hectic looped drum samples, noise, and guitar layers—topped by activist male/female vocal duos screaming anticorporate agitprop like “Delete Yourself” and “Hunt Down the Nazis!” Atari Teenage Riot, formed by DHR head Alec Empire, gave this routine an imposingly militant visual style—a kind of terrorist chic. “I could see how they might be the Slayer of what they do,” says Kerry King, whose guitars Atari Teenage Riot sampled on at least three tracks.
Besides speed metal, DHR borrowed much of its hyperspeed aggression from gabber, an extreme dance style popular in the cheap dance halls of industrial Rotterdam, Holland. In the perpetual blam, blam, blam of that electronic overdrive, tonality and melody were reduced to a 230-beat-per-minute kick drum—often mixed with thrash metal guitar and vocal samples. Gabber was every bit the techno equivalent of extreme metal, attracting Dutch religious protesters and introducing such extravagant personalities as the Headbanger and also Dark Raver—a DJ who wore a cloak and bopped fans on the head with a plastic ax. Not surprisingly, gabber was often the first point of crossover between death metal and techno, as bedroom producers matched suffocating guitar riffs and squawking techno-tronic punch. Earache Records encouraged such blurring of genre lines, even opening its vaults for the Hellspawn compilation, in which acts including Morbid Angel were remixed so that their guitar, vocal, and drum tracks fit a techno pattern.
Even gabber’s one-dimensional pounding was of fleeting interest in comparison to the twisting, elephantine bass riffs and monster breakbeats of tech step, the heaviest variation of drum and bass. This English music was a baffling, digitally driven gift of the 1990s: a frantic mutation of techno, dub reggae, and hip-hop, based on obvious digital manipulation of a cold, aggressive palette of huge, wobbling, analog synthesizer bass lines, booming bass drums, and snapping snares. Like early Death and Voivod, tech step was propelled by frenetic and awkward rhythms and tinged with ugly postnuclear ambience. The crushing bass riff of Fierce and Nico’s “Crystal” in particular recalled Celtic Frost’s ugly classic “Visual Aggression.” Ex-Napalm Death and Godflesh member Justin Broadrick saw the connection between heavy metal and tech step. During Broadrick’s brief tenure as a jungle DJ, his record bag was packed with disks from the No U-turn label—whose album art resembled steroid-laced computer rendering of Judas Priest’s Screaming for Vengeance. Likewise, the most famous and versatile of British jungle producers, Goldie, named his record company Metalheadz.
After taking hold of Europe in the 1990s, even the heaviest-hitting techno music was slow to cross over to the American metal scene. Ten years earlier metal had looked at hardcore punk and seen an ally, and recently it had done the same with rap music. Metal kept itself vital by accepting new influences while communicating dense, iconoclastic ideals and resisting homogenizing commercial pressures—values shared with the DJ-driven techno underworld. Yet techno music was too loose and subjective. It was repetitive instrumental music meant for dancing. Metal still thrived on stories, with protagonists and high drama.
Though scattered nu metal bands like Static-X, Linkin Park, and System of a Down earned multiple-platinum albums by embracing the techno thump, ultimately the culture clash between the live-band ethic of heavy metal and the DJ-driven culture of club music remained too great for a full-scale transformation. After thirty years of mutation, tossing away guitars remained an upgrade away for the metal massive. Nonetheless, the eventual future transmutation of metal and techno loomed mighty and inevitable—the sound of the future.
As musicians found heavy new electronic sounds, the advent of computers also changed the operating habits of metal fans. While accelerating the speed of communication, the Internet was little different from the system of fanzine and mail-trader relationships used by the metal community for years. Many early heavy metal websites were simply trading lists reformated for Web browsers. Competing on the Internet for heavy metal dollars by 1999 were Relapse, Red Stream, and Blackmetal.com. On any given day the eBay auction site offered tens of thousands of heavy metal collectibles for sale.
The importance of the Internet, along with the superstore trend in American retail, had one unfortunate effect, dimming the niche power of the independently owned mom-and-pop heavy metal record store—a traditional metal meeting place. “Many of them are really struggling,” says Matt Jacobson of Relapse Records. “We’ve had a number of key stores, that I would consider tastemaker stores, that have gone out of business or are close to doing that. I think the ones that are going to survive are the ones that are smart enough to realize they have to cater to the niche. I think there’s room. It’s definitely sad anytime you see stores like the Heavy Metal Shop or Ace’s, places that have been a staple in the American heavy metal scene forever, start to bow out.”
Even Napster-style file sharing of MP3 format songs was a hightech version of tape trading—though that analogy would soon be hotly contested. With Metallica now an insanely lucrative industry, the legal staff of Metallica, Inc., was increasingly active. In 1999 the band’s lawyers negotiated settlements with Victoria’s Secret to halt sales of “Metallica” lip liner and with Pierre Cardin to bar a “Metallica” tuxedo. They sued Neiman Marcus and the hapless maker of a “Metallica” nail file and won injunctions against a host of radio stations to block unauthorized advance play of “I Disappear,” a slightly techno-tinged single from the Mission: Impossible 2 sound track.
METALLIC TECHNO
Testing the limits of heavy metal, techno artists like Atari Teenage Riot and Panacea used samplers and drum machines to construct mechanized music every bit as damaging as Slayer’s. Without guitars or even vocals, metal-influenced digital musicians pointed
the way to a heavy future, constructed via computer. These early electronic acts struggled to overcome their own novelty value, with mixed results. Though they found a respectable niche on the rave scene, the heavy metal world was not yet ready for all-electronic overdrive.
Atari Teenage Riot, Bum Berlin Bum (1997)
Godflesh, Godflesh (1988)
Goldie, Incredible Sound of Drum n’ Bass (2000)
Panacea, Twisted Disignz (1997)
Scorn, Evanescence (1994)
Various Artists, Battlegrounds (1995)
Various Artists, Hellspawn (1998)
Various Artists, Renegade Hardware Presents Quantum Mechanics (1998)
Various Artists, Torque (1997)
Most notoriously, in April 2000 Metallica took on the Internet music-sharing site Napster and several universities over the issue of unauthorized downloads of MP3-encoded songs from the band’s albums. Siding with the RIAA, Lars Ulrich became the music industry’s face in the battle to keep tighter control over the distribution of music. This despite Metallica’s reputation having been enhanced over the years by cool moves like allowing DAT recorders to tape concerts from a special sweet spot behind the soundboard. Not to mention that the band also streamed free previews from its own website and made new music widely and freely available for download on selected other locations. There was even an overwhelmingly obvious parallel between Napster and Metallica’s mechanism for success: tape trading. As the Internet business weekly Industry Standard reported, “How much outrage will fans swallow from a band that built its following on bootlegs?”
“Money good. Napster bad.” Anti-Metallica animation (Camp Chaos)
To the Ozzfest audience in particular, who were bred to believe that free MP3s were a God-given right, Metallica was not down with the program. Type O Negative’s Peter Steele takes a cynical view of the music industry’s attempt to shut down Napster. “I just think it sucks,” he says. “There is nothing original. Everything is there just to make a buck. It’s not about the music—it’s just about making money, which is really sad. I’m glad that this MP3 thing is happening, because it’ll put the record companies out of business. Even if it hurts us, I will gladly cut off my nose to spite my face because I hate the record companies so much.”