by Ian Christe
DOOM METAL
The slow-moving antithesis of metal’s typically speedy evolution, doom metal began with Black Sabbath and was kept alive through the decades by devoted bands like Witchfinder General, Trouble, and Cathedral—bands whose emotional qualities more than made up for their lack of flash. The resurgence of Black Sabbath at the close of the 1990s was significant enough to shepherd the resurgence of undiscovered greats like the Obsessed. As an earthy counterpoint to nu metal, doom didn’t have the commercial clout, but its heavy heart won over more than a few die-hard acolytes. These bell-bottomed throwbacks could be spotted lingering around the periphery of any metal event, tuned in to a slow frequency best described as timeless.
Slow Rides
Burning Witch, Crippled Lucifer (1998)
Cathedral, Endtyme (2001)
Candlemass, Epicus Doomicus Metallicus (1986)
Corrupted, Uenândose de Gusanos (1999)
Dream Death, Journey into Mystery (1987)
Earth, Earth 2 Special Low Frequency Version (1993)
Eyehategod, Take as Needed for Pain (1993)
Melvins, Bullhead (1991)
The Obsessed, The Obsessed (1990)
Pentagram, First Daze Here (2002)
Saint Vitus, Born Too Late (1986)
Sleep, Jerusalem (1996)
Trouble, Psalm 9 (1984)
Trouble, The Skull (1985)
Metal storytelling’s love of ancient warriors and the demon world turned ratings gold on television shows like Xena and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. On Late Night with Conan O’Brien, sidekick Andy Richter impersonated Ozzy Osbourne, while Craig Kilborn on Later fussed over the Scorpions. In one of the weirdest pop-culture moments, Ahmet and Dweezil Zappa—whose father’s band, the Mothers of Invention, had influenced Tony lommi—playfully jammed Sabbath’s “The Wizard” on Late Night with Conan O’Brien, with schmaltz pianist John Tesh playing strap-on keyboard.
Over at Universal Studios the reins to the annual haunted house were handed over to Rob Zombie, whose creation caused five-mile traffic backups on the Hollywood highways. Metal had prepared a generation for data-drenched information overload. Simultaneously, PlayStation video games borrowed names and plots from metal songs, and pro wrestlers basked in the most macho visual elements borrowed from the heavy metal theater. Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water,” still a bona fide metal anthem, reappeared on HBO as Tony Soprano’s favorite driving music. Metal even cracked into the lucrative world of jock rock, as the multiple—World Series—winning New York Yankees’ relief pitcher Mariano Rivera put batters to sleep to the thundering tune of Metallica’s “Enter Sandman.” Megadeth began writing material expressly for use at sporting events. According to Dave Mustaine, “We did ‘Crush ‘Em’ specifically to get rid of Gary Glitter’s ‘Rock and Roll Part 2.’ I hate that song.”
Heavy metal was being institutionalized. Following the 1990s success of Nirvana, Starbucks, Nintendo, and Microsoft, a consortium of Seattle high-tech tycoons pooled $600 million to build the Experience Music Project (EMP), designed by architect Frank Gehry and billed as the largest music museum in the world. “Paul Allen, he’s one of the owners of the Seattle Seahawks and one of the Microsoft Ten,” says Metal Church’s former singer, David Wayne. “He located our guitar cross from our first album cover, he bought it, and he’s putting an exhibit to Metal Church in the museum.” When the EMP opened in July 2000, Metallica performed at the opening festivities, and the Metal Church relic was on display within a Lucite box—along with notes de scribing how the photographer had first buried the prop in his backyard to get that desired mossy and decaying effect.
Let there be metal: Ronnie James Dio striking a Michaelangelo pose (Deborah Laws/Metalflakes.com)
Without one single watershed media moment, the United States collectively became a metal nation, as teen metalheads grew up and made room for countless millions more. Thanks to Ronnie James Dio, the devil-horned hand salute became an allpurpose symbol for the little bit of heavy metal in everyone. “My grandmother would always give us the evil eye,” he says. “It’s called the malocchio in Italian, and it’s also protection against the evil eye, like a little antenna. When I joined Sabbath, Ozzy had always done the peace signs, like President Richard Nixon. And I was not about to follow in his footsteps, so drawing on what my grandmother always did, I started to do it, and it became the symbol. You can probably go to a Backstreet Boys concert these days and they’ll probably stick the damn thing up there.”
Meanwhile, VH1 reported a 40 percent higher rating on its Behind the Music series for the episodes profiling the rise and fall and ultimate rebirth of Quiet Riot, Mötley Crüe, and Poison—all of whom toured again successfully at the close of the 1990s. The channel soon programmed more hard rock and heavy metal music, making frequent studio guests of Rob Halford, Lars Ulrich, Blackie Lawless, and Skid Row’s singer, Sebastian Bach. The Metallica episode of Behind the Music even benefited from the rare cooperation of former guitarist Dave Mustaine. “When they asked me to do it, I knew I had one chance to tell the truth,” he says, “and I did. I said that I deserved to be fired. Truth.”
The litany of metal’s incursions into pop culture continued, with glam metal parodies surfacing in comedy skits and credit-card ads. Homages to heavy metal by pop bands abounded. Perhaps the ultimate mainstreaming of metal was a Burger King television spot using Judas Priest’s “You’ve Got Another Thing Coming” that promised, “Miss this deal, you’ll be banging your head.” A Volkswagen commercial played on the camp value of old metal, depicting a soccer mom who relished her days as a Krokus groupie. Reflects Hirax singer Ka-ton W. DePena, “What was cool about all the speed metal and thrash metal, all that heavy shit, is we don’t have anything to be ashamed of. Can you imagine if you were in Poison? God, it’d be hard to go to the grocery store!”
Apart from the spoofs, heavy metal retained its dignity. Without retreating from its simpler efforts of the past several years, Metallica capped off its second decade with a high-minded return to the majesty of early albums like Ride the Lightning and Master of Puppets. While synthesizers made string sections available to underground musicians, Metallica had access to the real thing. The band adapted twenty songs chosen from its entire career for a classical music collaboration. “You never quite know with us,” says Lars Ulrich, still ever the booster. “We have a tendency to make things up as we go along. We never set any barriers or limits or fences around any of the shit we do.”
Dubbed Symphony & Metallica, the project reunited Metallica with Michael Kamen, the composer who arranged “Nothing Else Matters” with a small string ensemble for the Black Album. This time the full 104-piece San Francisco Symphony Orchestra was in tow for the duration. A frequent pop collaborator, Kamen had orchestrated work for Pink Floyd, Aerosmith, and Bryan Adams as well as the movies Brazil and Die Hard. He proposed the project to Metallica. “I’ve been with orchestras that were skeptical to play rock and roll, even rock as relatively gentle and melodic, compared to Metallica, as Eric Clapton or Pink Floyd,” the conductor told BAM. “But I’ve seen many times now orchestral players looking on with admiration as they watch Clapton’s fingers go up and down the guitar neck just as if they were watching Pinchas Zukerman. There’s a great respect among musicians for proficiency and the power of statement.”
Ever since the Beatles, rock bands had toyed with classical music with rather mixed results. In fact, early in the career of Deep Purple, Lars Ulrich’s idols had collaborated with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra on a symphony in three movements written by keyboardist Jon Lord. As part of a fondness for times past, heavy metal musicians in particular romanticized the image of the classical music composer tearing out his hair to find the perfect dramatic chord. In 1993 Metallica colleague Glenn Danzig branched away from his visceral rock formulas to create Black Aria, a heavily synthesized orchestral outing with female choral vocals. As was true of his records with the Misfits and Samhain, Danzig played most of the parts h
imself. “It’s easy, but it’s hard,” says Danzig of his neoclassical work. “You’ve got to hear it in your head, and you’re not just hearing drums, bass, guitar, and vocals. I’m hearing every single little part, this thing and that. It’s complex: keyboard, real people backup singers, gongs …”
Everyone from Accept and Yngwie Malmsteen to Master’s Hammer and Emperor nodded to Western classical music. With the impact of metal on young music students, it was safe to say the transfer went both ways. The thirty years between Black Sabbath and post-black-metal bands Opeth and Dimmu Borgir comprised a legitimate musical tradition of easily recognized standards and innovations—blast beats, original tunings, and vocal techniques—all learned, copied, and bettered by each successive wave of young players. As metal musicians matured and found their way into university music departments, especially in Europe, it was possible that metal would develop into a neoclassical institution, complete with allusions to the Swedish death metal school.
The music of Metallica, with its somber constructions and eye toward the eternal, already possessed the gravitas for symphonic arrangement without sounding pompous or pretentious. At least, that was the idea. Two Metallica classical performances in Berkeley, California, in April 1999 were recorded for posterity and released later in the year as S&M, Symphony & Metallica. Reactions wobbled. “I think it should have been a bit more present,” says Ronnie Dio. “I think the orchestra was buried behind what they did. If you’re going to use an orchestra, go for it!”
Beyond the events themselves, however, there was an immense majesty to the orchestral undertaking that vindicated two decades of trials. Certainly the arrangements were not equally inspired for every song, but the movement of downward-cascading strings falling onto the machine-gun double-bass drums at the beginning of “For Whom the Bell Tolls” brought old fans to tears. After all, Lars Ulrich and James Hetfield—once lost and lonely children who hurried to finish “Hit the Lights” for the first Metal Massacre album—were now grown men commanding a sea of musicians successfully through their terrain.
Kirk Hammett and peers (Filip Malinowski)
The vast differences between the naïvely intrepid spirit that created the Master of Puppets instrumental “Orion” and the mature hand that orchestrated that song for a symphony were sobering. At long last here was a soothing gesture, a requiem for the obscurity of the struggle, the nobility of the garage days, and of the many leather-jacketed scientists who defined the metal experience. Over its career Metallica had encouraged its audience to embrace life with vigor, to express anger at injustice, and to relax and savor due rewards. Now it endeavored to bring home powerful beauty—and was awarded a sixth Grammy, for a sweeping symphonic rendition of Cliff Burton’s “The Call of Ktulu.”
A congratulatory move by an increasingly self-gratifying band, S&M brought Metallica into a serious mode lacking over the prior playful half decade. “My attitude with Metallica over the last eight years is simple,” says the band’s old friend John Bush. “They should do whatever they want. I think if this is what they want to do, then God love them. They experiment with all this different stuff, maybe because they’re bored or maybe because they just don’t know what to do anymore, because they’ve done everything. You’ve got to have the utmost respect for Metallica. They’re important. We all need them, because they’ve been there for metal, and they will always represent that. Whether it’s Motörhead or Kid Rock, it doesn’t matter—everybody needs Metallica.”
DEATH
IN METAL
The popular resurgence of heavy metal underscored the absence of many faces. Metallers, forever obsessed with morbid subjects, were growing old enough to face death. Aside from the martyrs Randy Rhoads and Cliff Burton, the sacrifices of Dead and Euronymous of Mayhem, and even the suicide of Kurt Cobain, metal at the turn of the century faced its mortality. “There were so many bands when we first came to the States,” notes Celtic Frost’s Tom Warrior, “and I always wonder what happened to those musicians. I know lots of them were already in severe financial problems at that time. Who knows who recovered and who didn’t? Are they dead? Are they flipping burgers somewhere? There’s AIDS and drugs— it’s not too absurd to wonder if they’re still alive.”
Sadly, a number of headbangers turned in their denim and leather prematurely:
One of the earliest thrash metal casualties was DAVE HOLOCAUST of the gusto-laden Ohio band Destructor, who was stabbed by a stranger in January 1988 at the band’s practice space, just after the release of the metal-psyched Maximum Destruction LP.
Bassist ROB STERZEL of Deceased was struck and killed by a passing van while fixing a flat tire on his car by the side of the road in 1988.
The technically adept death metal band Atheist lost its ultra-proficient bassist, ROGER PATTERSON, in a car accident in Louisiana on February 12, 1990, as the band returned from a triumphant tour supporting Candlemass.
Talented Savatage guitarist CRISS OLIVA was killed by a drunk driver near his home in Clearwater, Florida, on October 17, 1993.
DAVE PRICHARD of Armored Saint was felled by leukemia in 1990, after struggling with the disease during the creation of Symbol of Salvation. “He was a pillar of strength,” says singer John Bush. “He never made it an issue. Hardly anybody really knew, and I think he wanted it that way. He was adopted, and he had to find somebody with a match to give him a bone-marrow transplant. When you have a bone-marrow transplant, either it takes or it doesn’t, and if it doesn’t, you’re done. That’s what happened, and that was pretty brutal.”
Founder PAUL SAMSON of the NWOBHM stalwarts Samson died at home in England at age forty-nine during the afternoon of Friday, August 9, 2002, following a protracted fight against cancer. He had recently completed work on a new Samson album.
Former Riot vocalist RHETT FORRESTER was shot through the heart and killed in January 1994, at age thirty-seven, the victim of an apparent carjacking at an Atlanta traffic intersection. He was stopping only briefly in Georgia to visit his mother, La Fortune Forrester.
After a half dozen unsuccessful stints in rehab, STEVE CLARK of Def Leppard died of an overdose of alcohol, antidepressants, and painkillers in 1992, during the recording of Adrenalize.
According to Blaine Cook of the Accused, CHIBON BATTERMAN, aka Chewy, the former bass player, died a drug-related death in the late 1990s.
DAWN CROSBY sang and wrote politically charged lyrics for the hardcore-influenced thrash metal bands Detente and Fear of God and once shared a house in Los Angeles with Dave Mustaine. She also shared his affection for alcohol: Crosby died of acute liver failure in December 1996.
In July 1999 a rough lifestyle caught up with forty-one-year-old original Megadeth drummer GAR SAMUELSON, credited with expanding the band’s lyrical scope beyond witchcraft and headbanging. “The press release said that it was complications to the liver that were undiagnosed,” says Dave Mustaine ruefully. “It could have been cirrhosis, it could have been hepatitis, it could have been HIV or even full-blown AIDS. There’s only so many things that can happen to a liver.”
ROBBIN CROSBY of Ratt was entirely debilitated by full-blown AIDS and spent the latter half of the 1990s convalescing. He blamed the infection on his rampant heroin use during the heyday of the Hollywood glam era. He died of AIDS-related complications in June 2002, at age forty-two, and friends and former bandmates paddled into the waves on surfboards to spread his ashes off the San Diego coast.
In April 1998 WENDY O. WILLIAMS shot herself at home in Storrs, Connecticut. A rarely acknowledged influence, her band, the Plasmatics, was the most visible punk nightmare of the early 1980s—their public nudity, onstage use of chain saws and shotguns, and ethos of destruction was unrivaled before Marilyn Manson. “I can only say the best about Wendy,” says Plasmatics guitarist Richie Stotts. “I learned how to make hummus from her, and she was really a sweetheart. I never saw her drink or smoke pot. She always encouraged me in whatever I wanted to do.” A lighthearted 1982 collaboration with Lemm
y on Tammy Wynette’s “Stand by Your Man” may have hurt Motörhead, but it earned Williams a place in the hearts of metal fans.
Wendy O. was not alone among metal suicides. TOTTSUAN of the groundbreaking Japanese grindcore band S.O.B. also took his own life in 1994, reputedly throwing himself in front of a subway train in despondency after several drug arrests. Corrupted performed its hundred-minute epic Llenándose de Gusanos live in his memory. Norwegian drummer GRIM, of Immortal and later of Borknagar, committed suicide by ingesting a quantity of pills on October 4, 1999.
There were also plenty of close calls, such as Voivod guitarist Denis D’Amour’s recurring problems with thyroid cancer and Testament vocalist Chuck Billy’s battle with germ cell seminoma, a rare form of cancer. Testament guitarist James Murphy also battled a brain tumor.
In January 2000 Chuck Schuldiner of Death underwent experimental brain surgery after spending a year fighting pontine glioma, a rare form of brain tumor. He had earlier put to rest the name of his band, Death, returning with a new singer in the optimistic but defiant Control Denied, which titled its debut Fragile Art of Existence. According to Schuldiner’s sister, the $100,000 brain operation was financed partially through a deal that signed away “Evil” Chuck’s royalties to NYU Medical Center’s Tisch Hospital—a strange twist of fate considering the lyrical nature of Scream Bloody Gore, Leprosy, Spiritual Healing, and the four other Death albums covered by the agreement. Schuldiner finally succumbed to the disease on December 13, 2001, at the age of thirty-four.