Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: What are your name? And welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
Speaker 2: there's Chuck. It's just the two of us, and I
Speaker 2: think we should greet all the metal heads listening by.
Speaker 1: Saying, shwing, Wow, you ready for this one?
Speaker 2: Huh? I am. I'm pretty psyched. I'm not going to lie.
Speaker 2: I haven't been this nervous since maybe we did soccer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree. I mean, we might as well issue
Speaker 1: the cover the CoA for the entire two parter. We're
Speaker 1: gonna miss a lot. This is about heavy metal, and
Speaker 1: anytime you're doing a big genre like this, it's really
Speaker 1: hard to satisfy everybody. So we will not name specifically
Speaker 1: your favorite band most likely.
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, there's a pretty good chance. We are
Speaker 2: also probably going to walk by some amazing fact. Yeah,
Speaker 2: don't call us stupid. When you email in to tell us,
Speaker 2: just tell us be like, guys, get this. Yeah, that's
Speaker 2: the kind of email we like to get.
Speaker 1: That's the kind of email that gets read on the air.
Speaker 1: It's like, Hey, I know you can't get to everything,
Speaker 1: but you missed this kind of really cool thing. Let
Speaker 1: me tell you about it.
Speaker 2: Way to use a carrot rather than a stick.
Speaker 1: Chuk So it is just really intimidating. I agree because
Speaker 1: and I want to chat just at the jump here
Speaker 1: about our metalness because I am not a metal head.
Speaker 1: My metal experience is largely from high school as a
Speaker 1: gen xer in the eighties hair metal.
Speaker 2: So same here, buddy.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's good. So my top five metal bands, and
Speaker 1: I've gotten since into like Black Sabbath and stuff like
Speaker 1: that a little bit more. But my top five metal
Speaker 1: bands look like this, and that tells you a lot
Speaker 1: about what kind of metal fan I am. Sabbath number one,
Speaker 1: Ozzy number too, okay, Motley Crue, then Rat, and then
Speaker 1: the Scorpions.
Speaker 2: Oh really, Rat huh they were pretty good.
Speaker 1: Rat's awesome.
Speaker 2: Scorpions were good too. That whole Winds a Change thing, Man,
Speaker 2: that's a stirring song.
Speaker 1: That's probably my least favorite. But those are the bands
Speaker 1: that I love. I listen on, you know, I got
Speaker 1: sometimes you get a free serious XM a couple of
Speaker 1: weeks or whatever.
Speaker 2: Lucky.
Speaker 1: I got very addicted to the hair Nation channel.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, man, that stuff still plays really well.
Speaker 1: It does. I love it, and I even like all
Speaker 1: the kind of corny stuff from then, like put on
Speaker 1: that White Lion song and watch watch Me Go to
Speaker 1: Town that song. Wait, yeah, I love that.
Speaker 2: Yeah that is good. Yeah, I know all those songs too.
Speaker 2: I would even take a little further and say I
Speaker 2: like Dokin. Okay, I want to make a joke about
Speaker 2: liking Winger, but there are some Winger songs that I
Speaker 2: kind of liked, but like Far and Away and I
Speaker 2: Will I Will die on this hill. The best hair
Speaker 2: metal band of all time was Poison. I mean, no
Speaker 2: questions asked.
Speaker 1: Would you say Poison?
Speaker 2: Poison? You know why?
Speaker 1: Go ahead? What now? You tell me why, and then
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what's funny?
Speaker 2: Okay, fair enough. So the reason why I say Poison
Speaker 2: is the best hair metal band of all time is
Speaker 2: because they were highly talented, but they were also totally
Speaker 2: in on the cheesiness of the whole thing too. You
Speaker 2: think they did not take themselves too seriously. You can
Speaker 2: make an argument that every rose has its thorns pretty
Speaker 2: meant pretty seriously. Yeah, But I mean, like I want
Speaker 2: action tonight, Yeah, nothing but a good time. Like those
Speaker 2: dudes were not like trying to be serious. There's no
Speaker 2: shout at the devil or anything like that. They were
Speaker 2: just partying. Yeah, I mean they were the perfect hair
Speaker 2: metal band to me.
Speaker 1: You can't write a song called unskinny Bob and claim
Speaker 1: to be like a serious band, right exactly. That's a
Speaker 1: good point, Like Gasoline, you want to help me, that's
Speaker 1: right exactly.
Speaker 2: Okay, So what was funny?
Speaker 1: What was funny is is at some point we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about, you know, how sort of white male
Speaker 1: most metal is. And Olivia, who helped us with this,
Speaker 1: you know, was able to source some some women in metal,
Speaker 1: including full bands, and she didn't find Vixen. I was like,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, that was Vixen, And then I typed
Speaker 1: into Google search female heavy metal or hair metal bands
Speaker 1: and instead Vixen and Poison.
Speaker 2: That's hilarious. You got that one wrong, Ai.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was pretty funny. What are your top five?
Speaker 1: Do you have a working top five? And not the
Speaker 1: joke that you sent me via text?
Speaker 2: Yeah? So mine's actually changed in the last couple of days.
Speaker 2: I have to say, Oh, it used to be time, wasn't.
Speaker 2: I listened to most of my metal in like eighth
Speaker 2: ninth grade, probably around the same time you did. I
Speaker 2: was like Metallica just unquestionably is my number one metal band.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, I think and Justice for All is maybe
Speaker 2: the perfect metal album.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I like that early stuff. I like to Ride
Speaker 1: the Lightning and Master Puppets. That was good.
Speaker 2: I do too, but I didn't like those until I
Speaker 2: was old. Actually, within the last several years I started
Speaker 2: listening to those two. I was like, damn, these are
Speaker 2: really good too. It's just different. It's way less produced, yeah,
Speaker 2: way more you know, like it's just more thrash, right yeah.
Speaker 2: But so that kind of goes to show you my taste,
Speaker 2: Like I like Metallic as their most produced good album. Okay,
Speaker 2: So that's that's there. They're unquestionably my favorite. Black Sabbath
Speaker 2: is probably number two or a close at their Heels
Speaker 2: Nipping at their Heels as Poison, Okay. I really like Helmet,
Speaker 2: which is the alt metal band from the nineties.
Speaker 1: Oh, I love Helmet.
Speaker 2: Okay, Helmet was great. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I guess I didn't really think about alt metal, but sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, so yeah, I'm having to include them this. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I think kind of a revelation, like I'm I'm having
Speaker 2: to include alt metal here right right, I can't. Maybe
Speaker 2: Anthrax would probably be number five, right, especially in eighth grade,
Speaker 2: I loved Anthrax.
Speaker 1: So not Iron Maiden. That surprises me.
Speaker 2: Oh god, why did I do that? Yeah? No Iron Maiden. Okay,
Speaker 2: I'm sorry. You're right, Chuck, thank you. I was even
Speaker 2: going through my my Apple music folder still look to
Speaker 2: refresh myself. I've got like five Iron Maiden albums in
Speaker 2: there too, so I'm not sure how they got left out.
Speaker 2: Let's say Maiden's number two then.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's great. I have been listening to the Iron
Speaker 1: Maiden lately. You know, I was an MTV kid, so
Speaker 1: I know that was my big influence. So I know
Speaker 1: the Iron Maiden songs that had big videos, but I
Speaker 1: never really dove in and kind of the same with
Speaker 1: Judas Priest, even though I have gotten way more into
Speaker 1: them lately and I think I mentioned I'm going to
Speaker 1: actually see them later this year. And that was the
Speaker 1: other thing is like I was way more into other music,
Speaker 1: like in the eighth, the ninth and tenth grade, that's
Speaker 1: when I was really started listening to like in Excess
Speaker 1: and The Smiths and Ram and The Cure. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: that was my jam. But like if you were an
Speaker 1: MTV kid and a radio kid like you. You kind
Speaker 1: of listened to all that stuff, but I wasn't the
Speaker 1: one going to see those you know, I never saw
Speaker 1: Ozzie live and stuff like that. Like those those kids
Speaker 1: in my high school kind of scared me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well they could be kind of scary. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: think that's one of the reasons they were into it
Speaker 2: for sure. Yeah. So just to update my list though, Okay,
Speaker 2: Talk is still number one. Yeah, Black Sabbath or sorry
Speaker 2: I remade, still number two. Sabbath is in there somewhere.
Speaker 2: But there's a couple new bands that I'm like. These
Speaker 2: guys are really good. Gojira, which is a French I
Speaker 2: think they like they transcend a bunch of different sub genres.
Speaker 2: So let's just say they're a French metal band and
Speaker 2: they're very good. They actually played at the Summer Olympic
Speaker 2: opening ceremonies. You remember the dudes who were like thrashing
Speaker 2: when ye like standing on the bilink. That's Gojira. Okay,
Speaker 2: I really like Godflesh. I don't know how I missed
Speaker 2: them because I was into industrial in high school too.
Speaker 1: They're they're industrial medal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love them right, Yeah, And then I'm really
Speaker 2: now into High on Fire. Have you heard of them?
Speaker 1: I heard of them, but I don't know anything about it.
Speaker 2: They're amazing, Okay, I like everything. I've heard of them,
Speaker 2: and they're playing in Baltimore in mid August. Oh you
Speaker 2: me and I are seriously you got to go maybe,
Speaker 2: Oh I like them that much?
Speaker 1: Now, yeah, you just you're being COI because you don't
Speaker 1: want all the High on Fire people to be.
Speaker 2: Like, where's Josh. All right, let's get down to business,
Speaker 2: shall we.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like I said, Livia helped us out with this,
Speaker 1: and so she starts off with the definition from the
Speaker 1: Encyclopedia Britannica, which you know, it's kind of silly, but
Speaker 1: sometimes we do that because like it's kind of hard
Speaker 1: to define metal, as we'll see. And I have a
Speaker 1: lot of nitpicks with a lot of these bands that
Speaker 1: I don't consider metal that are in this material.
Speaker 2: But oh yeah, a lot of them. I mean there
Speaker 2: are a few, but a lot.
Speaker 1: We'll see as we go. Okay, all right, maybe you
Speaker 1: just keep a time or a dinger or something.
Speaker 2: Clicker, clicker there, there you go.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But Britannica says it's a genre that includes a
Speaker 1: group of related styles that are intense, virtuostic, and powerful,
Speaker 1: and includes distorted electric guitar. The virtuostick really rings to
Speaker 1: me because one thing like, there's no metal band that
Speaker 1: doesn't have a great guitar player, maybe two, maybe three, you.
Speaker 2: Know, yeah, no, I agree, And are you taking a
Speaker 2: shot at me with the maybe three part?
Speaker 1: No, not taking a shot like Iron Maiden has three.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they have three guitarists, man, and you can hear it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you can totally tell, Like, yeah, Maiden, it is pretty great.
Speaker 2: We'll talk a little more about Maiden in depth in
Speaker 2: a second, right, But I think you just kind of
Speaker 2: laid it out there, like there's that's as tight a
Speaker 2: definition as you can really kind of corral all of
Speaker 2: metal into. Just because there's so much varied stuff. It's
Speaker 2: like a really fractured genre of music. Yeah, there's subgenres
Speaker 2: of subgenres, and there's probably subgenres of subgenres of subgenres.
Speaker 2: Like that's how niche some of this stuff is. Like
Speaker 2: if the average person came along and listened to you know,
Speaker 2: some similar subgenres are closely really related subgenres, they would
Speaker 2: not be able to tell the difference. Some of the subgenres,
Speaker 2: like are pretty different, and the average person could tell
Speaker 2: the difference, but when it gets super niche you really
Speaker 2: have to be a fan to be able to be like,
Speaker 2: oh no, this is this is technical thrash, yeah, death core,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, for sure. There is another little bit from
Speaker 1: the Grammys, because now the Grammys has awards for this
Speaker 1: kind of thing, where they mentioned dark lyrics that may
Speaker 1: focus on social issues or fantasy and myth. That's kind
Speaker 1: of important because I found when I was nitpicking and
Speaker 1: these are just this is just Chuckstam opinion. But sometimes
Speaker 1: the difference was very small as far as like, you know,
Speaker 1: all the trappings of metal, but I still don't consider
Speaker 1: it metal because maybe a very nitpicky reason, but you know,
Speaker 1: if you're singing it's heavy gets are and you're singing
Speaker 1: about Lord of the Rings, chances are you're heavy metal.
Speaker 1: Except your led Zeppelin to me, is not heavy metal.
Speaker 1: They're hard rock as far as I'm concerned.
Speaker 2: No, led Zeppelin is always has always said like, we're
Speaker 2: not heavy metal. We never have been. We're like blues rock,
Speaker 2: hard rock, maybe heavy rock. I don't know, but they've
Speaker 2: always said we're not heavy metal, even though like most
Speaker 2: metal historians will point to them, at least to some degree,
Speaker 2: is one of the founders or progenitors of heavy metal
Speaker 2: for sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and also want to point out the Grammy's miss something.
Speaker 1: They said that when they were focusing on the lyrics
Speaker 1: dark lyrics that may focus on social issues or fantasy
Speaker 1: and myth, they forgot or girls, girls, girls.
Speaker 2: Right for sure, because hair.
Speaker 1: Metal not a lot of social issues, not a lot
Speaker 1: of fantasy, not a lot of myth. That was a
Speaker 1: specific period in the eighties where they were mostly singing
Speaker 1: about girls, and sometimes in a very gross way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. I mean it's definitely the world's definitely
Speaker 2: evolved past the hair metal view of the world.
Speaker 1: Yeah for sure.
Speaker 2: Still fun poison, still just wants nothing but a good
Speaker 2: time everybody.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So we did talk about led Zeppelin. There's actually what's
Speaker 2: known is the Unholy Trinity of hard rock, and led
Speaker 2: Zeppelin's considered one of them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agreed.
Speaker 2: And yes, no one's going to say, like, I don't know,
Speaker 2: they're not hard rock, it's just are they Are they
Speaker 2: heavy metal or were they just help helpful and laying
Speaker 2: the groundwork for heavy metal? And like you said, one
Speaker 2: of the things that led Zeppelin did. They were singing
Speaker 2: about Lord of the Rings before, you know, before Orlando
Speaker 2: Bloom was even born.
Speaker 1: Right, Uh yeah, I mean there's a guy that Libya
Speaker 1: found named Jack Mannon of the Metal Hall of Fame
Speaker 1: who said that, you know, they have lyrics related to
Speaker 1: the occult high fantasy like Lord of the Rings of War,
Speaker 1: distorted guitar, a loud, long haired, you know, great lead singer,
Speaker 1: and like again all those things is fair are fairly metal,
Speaker 1: but I just I don't know, there's something about it.
Speaker 1: They're just more hard blues rock to me.
Speaker 2: For sure, And a lot of other groups from the
Speaker 2: sixties you would kind of lump led Zeppelin in with
Speaker 2: because they were all starting to experiment with really distortion
Speaker 2: heavy guitar. Yeah, but they were blues rock for sure,
Speaker 2: like Cream the Yardbirds, which actually like gave birth to
Speaker 2: led Zeppelin, it turns out. Yeah, Jimmy Hendrix was another one. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he has a metal tie in though. Lemmy Killmeister was
Speaker 2: a roadie for Jimmy Hendrix before he went on to
Speaker 2: found the band Motorhead.
Speaker 1: I was today years old, did not know that?
Speaker 2: Isn't that a great little fact?
Speaker 1: Yeah? That's really great.
Speaker 2: Man, can you imagine those two together on acid?
Speaker 1: No? Yes, Actually, Deep Purple is the second of the
Speaker 1: Unholy Trinity of Rock. They were formed the nineteen sixty eight,
Speaker 1: but again a little more like prog rock to me.
Speaker 1: I think by their fourth album, which was Deep Purple
Speaker 1: in rock is when they replaced their singer with a
Speaker 1: guy named Ian Yllen and their basis with a guy
Speaker 1: named Roger Glover. They got a little heavier then. But
Speaker 1: you know, they they might be classified as a proto
Speaker 1: metal because of their guitar player, Richie Blackmore, who was
Speaker 1: a legend who went over to be He went on
Speaker 1: to be the to form the band Rainbow, which was
Speaker 1: definitely metal.
Speaker 2: Is it. I've seen people say no, it's definitely hard rock,
Speaker 2: because I was like, no, this sounds a lot like
Speaker 2: metal to me. I like them.
Speaker 1: I thought Rainbow was metal. But again, these are just
Speaker 1: our nitpicking definitions.
Speaker 2: But that's a good I mean, that's a good point.
Speaker 2: That's a good demonstration, like you can really get metal
Speaker 2: fans arguing by just saying confidently, like no, Rainbow's metal.
Speaker 2: People will start arguing with you, for sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And then Sabbath comes along and to me, they're
Speaker 1: very much sort of the birth of metal, And I
Speaker 1: think a lot of that has to do like the
Speaker 1: difference between them and led Zeppelin. To me, even though
Speaker 1: there are a lot of similarities, is Ozzie's voice was
Speaker 1: just he had a very sinister, kind of creepy sounding voice,
Speaker 1: and their music just sounded more sinister than led Zeppelin.
Speaker 2: And that just sounded like they were like the stuff
Speaker 2: they sang about. Yeah, especially today, you're like, yeah, that's metal.
Speaker 2: But when you look back at what the time they
Speaker 2: were coming out of, we're talking like the free love,
Speaker 2: hippie sixties. Oh yeah, they came right out of that.
Speaker 2: And so a lot of people point to Black Sabbath
Speaker 2: not just as like the birth of heavy metal, but
Speaker 2: the end of the sixties, like the thing that said like, hey,
Speaker 2: we're going in a much different direction and it's not
Speaker 2: nearly as pleasant and colorful as you guys have been
Speaker 2: taking things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, of course we're talking about the dearly departed,
Speaker 1: recently departed Ozzy Osbourne. Yeah, rip Tony Iomi guitar player
Speaker 1: Geezer Butler was a bassis in bill Ward on drums,
Speaker 1: and they were originally a blues band called Earth Blues Company.
Speaker 1: Eventually you become Earth only Earth or from Birmingham, England.
Speaker 1: As you'll see, that'll be a recurring motif here. And
Speaker 1: the name Black Sabbath came from the fact that it
Speaker 1: sounds like Geezer Butler.
Speaker 2: Again.
Speaker 1: Their bass player had sleep paralysis.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it does sound like that, doesn't it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what happened?
Speaker 2: He dreamt that there was a dark figure standing at
Speaker 2: the foot of his bed, and so he wrote a song.
Speaker 2: They named it. He wrote a song about that, and
Speaker 2: they named it Black Sabbath. And the Black Sabbath is
Speaker 2: taken from a Bors Karloff movie about a talking boat
Speaker 2: that wins a regatta for a group of orphans. Karloff
Speaker 2: does the voice of the boat. And they ended up
Speaker 2: having to change their name because some other band was like,
Speaker 2: hey man, we're Earth, and then I'm sure another band
Speaker 2: was like, no, we're Earth, and then it just kept
Speaker 2: going on from there. Either way. Sabbath saw the writing
Speaker 2: on the wall, so they were like, well, our favorite
Speaker 2: song in the song that everybody like, so Mosta's Black Sabbath.
Speaker 2: Let's just call ourselves that. So their debut album was
Speaker 2: Black Sabbath by Black Sabbath, featuring the song Black Sabbath.
Speaker 2: They were one of those.
Speaker 1: That's right, and they you know, I'm gonna sort of
Speaker 1: pepper in some you know, rolling Stone ticket for what
Speaker 1: it's worth. But they have a list of their top
Speaker 1: one hundred metal bands, and fun fact, either Ozzi or
Speaker 1: Saba or I'm sorry metal albums, either Ozzie or Sabbath
Speaker 1: have four of the top fifteen.
Speaker 2: Not bad, not bad at all. No, Ozzy's definitely a
Speaker 2: medal god. Which is interesting because Black Sabbath as a band,
Speaker 2: just like led Zeppelin, it said we're not heavy metal,
Speaker 2: or we weren't heavy metal, right, it's not what we were.
Speaker 2: And again most people are like you you are sorry
Speaker 2: to well, you're definitely metal.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But apparently Rob Halford, the lead singer Judas Priest, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I guess he was on WTF with Mark Maron at
Speaker 2: some point and he said, hey, Sabbath has always said like,
Speaker 2: we weren't the first metal band. Well, Judas Priest was
Speaker 2: founded the same year. Yeah, so we'll gladly take that
Speaker 2: title is the first metal band. And you can make
Speaker 2: a pretty good case if Sabbath says no, give it
Speaker 2: to Judas Priest. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't think I realized they formed at the same time.
Speaker 1: That's interesting. And I also think Ozzie's post Sabbath career
Speaker 1: is just Ozzy Osbourne was as metal as metal gets.
Speaker 1: So there may be a little bit of like kind
Speaker 1: of joining those two things together.
Speaker 2: That's possible, Yeah, for sure. Yeah, Heydy gone like the
Speaker 2: way of George Benson or Chuck Man g Own. People
Speaker 2: might leave, might leave. Uh oh yeah, that's right. Wow,
Speaker 2: they're just popping up all over the place, or doing
Speaker 2: the opposite of that, I guess.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're popped there. Yeah, lank laying down right.
Speaker 2: So most people, though, say they'll give Black Sabbath a
Speaker 2: pass on their first debut, their debut album say like, okay,
Speaker 2: that was kind of bluesy, and it is, but it's
Speaker 2: still pretty metally. But they're like your second album Paranoid, Sorry,
Speaker 2: that is definitely metal. War Pigs is about as metal
Speaker 2: as metal gets still to this day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean Paranoid is ranked as the number one
Speaker 1: metal album of all time by Rolling Stone, So there
Speaker 1: you go.
Speaker 2: Well, then there's no arguing with that.
Speaker 1: I agree, and I think we should take a break
Speaker 1: and maybe come back and talk about a very unfortunate
Speaker 1: kind of legendary incident that happened to Black Sabbath early
Speaker 1: in their career. Right after this, all right, so we're
Speaker 1: back with part two of six of the Heavy Metal Duology,
Speaker 1: and I promised a little bit of talk about a
Speaker 1: famous incident, a very sad one involving Black Sabbath early
Speaker 1: in their career, and that is when Tony Iomi, their
Speaker 1: brilliant left handed guitar player, was a teenager. He worked
Speaker 1: at a steel mill in Birmingham, England. He was on
Speaker 1: his last ship. Apparently he was heading out on tour
Speaker 1: with the band, and he came home on a lunch
Speaker 1: break and almost didn't even go back, and his mom said,
Speaker 1: get your butt back there. You got to finish your job, boy,
Speaker 1: and he went, okay, mom, and he went back and
Speaker 1: proceeded to lose the ends of his middle finger and
Speaker 1: ring finger on his right hand. But remember he's a
Speaker 1: left handed guitar player, so if it was the other
Speaker 1: way around, he could still hold the pick and probably
Speaker 1: be okay. But this is the hand that is on
Speaker 1: the neck, so he was missing a large, large portions
Speaker 1: of his digits that make that pretty vital.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I also read that this was the first time
Speaker 2: he used a metal press because the guy who normally
Speaker 2: did it was out, and so they had Tony Iomi
Speaker 2: cover his shift for the first time ever, like last
Speaker 2: shift ever before he goes out on tour. Like, that's
Speaker 2: just crazy that that happened. But that was actually a
Speaker 2: gift to metal in a lot of ways because he
Speaker 2: had to basically adapt. Apparently Django Reinhardt lost like some
Speaker 2: fingers or a hand or something crazy like that.
Speaker 1: It was a fire that basically he only had use
Speaker 1: of two fingers on his fretting hand.
Speaker 2: Okay, well, somebody told that story to Tony Iomi and
Speaker 2: it inspired him to just get back in there. He
Speaker 2: made prosthetics himself for his fingers. Apparently they worked so
Speaker 2: so so instead he had to adapt by he loosened
Speaker 2: the strings by downtuning, so everything had a deeper, like
Speaker 2: heavier sound to it. The same notes that standard tuning
Speaker 2: would produce, it had a deeper sound. He wasn't necessarily
Speaker 2: doing it for the deeper sound. He was doing it
Speaker 2: because the looser strings were easier for him to bend
Speaker 2: with what he had left of his fingers. That was
Speaker 2: a huge development that came out of the loss of
Speaker 2: those fingertips.
Speaker 1: Yeah for sure. Also he switched to lighter strings, he
Speaker 1: couldn't play as fast. So that's why Black Sabbath has
Speaker 1: that terrific just sort of grungy slog. And it's not
Speaker 1: like kept that kind of fast metal. It's because Tony Iomi,
Speaker 1: you know, he, like you said, he made these things
Speaker 1: out of wax and leather, and if he played fast enough,
Speaker 1: they would fly off his finger, and so he had
Speaker 1: to kind of slow it down, and that's why they
Speaker 1: had that sort of deep, sludgy grind.
Speaker 2: Yeah. One of the other things I love about Sabbath
Speaker 2: too is they like their studio albums contain like mess ups,
Speaker 2: like blatant mess ups, like they'll just like miss the
Speaker 2: beat on drums or something like that once in a while,
Speaker 2: and they just kept going and released it on the album.
Speaker 2: I love that about them.
Speaker 1: I'd listen right before we recorded. I have the one
Speaker 1: hundred and eighty gram versions of their their debut, which
Speaker 1: has the most terrifying album cover of all time. To me,
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, oh, I think so. And Masters of or
Speaker 1: I think Master of Reality or is it Masters I
Speaker 1: can't remember, And then I ordered I realized I didn't
Speaker 1: even have paranoid, so I ordered.
Speaker 2: Oh, really nice stat nice work, Chuck. Yeah. Yeah, that's
Speaker 2: that's something. We'll talk a little more about album art later,
Speaker 2: but that's definitely something that's missing in the day and
Speaker 2: age of like listening to stuff digitally. Yeah, you don't
Speaker 2: have that record album to like look at while you're listening,
Speaker 2: and that's like part of the experience, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But I will say that I noticed recently I was
Speaker 2: listening to Somewhere in Time Iron Maiden album, and the
Speaker 2: album art on my iPhone moves now, so Eddie, like
Speaker 2: they show him like shooting the guy who's just out
Speaker 2: of frame. You just see his hand. Wow, eyes light up,
Speaker 2: like it's really cool. We're downloading the album just to
Speaker 2: see that alone, let alone for the music. So I'm
Speaker 2: glad that that developed, but it's still not quite the
Speaker 2: same as holding like a record album like cover and
Speaker 2: looking at it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. The seventies also included, of course, Judas Priests.
Speaker 1: As you mentioned, Iron Maiden started in nineteen seventy five
Speaker 1: with a different lead singer. That's if you're not super
Speaker 1: into Iron Maiden and you just kind of remember the
Speaker 1: eighties music videos with the great Bruce Dickenson up front
Speaker 1: their first two records, Killers and Just I think it
Speaker 1: was self titled, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Iron Maiden and then Killers and they were both
Speaker 2: it was Paul Diano was their first lead singer.
Speaker 1: I like those records.
Speaker 2: Let's talk a little bit about Maiden right now. You
Speaker 2: want to, Yeah, you want to get into it, yeah,
Speaker 2: because it's really pretty much impossible to overstate the influence
Speaker 2: that Iron Maiden had on you metal, you.
Speaker 1: Know, yeah, Like no, I agree, Like if you if you.
Speaker 2: Ask some of the people who make up the Big
Speaker 2: four of thrash bands Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer, and Anthrax, they're
Speaker 2: basically like, we wouldn't we wouldn't exist if it weren't
Speaker 2: for Iron Maiden. Like, we loved Maiden so much we
Speaker 2: decided to form our own band. We were inspired to
Speaker 2: form our own band, and it just keeps going down
Speaker 2: the line. Band after band after band started out loving
Speaker 2: Iron Maiden. It's such a great entree into heavy metal
Speaker 2: music because it's so listenable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally melodic.
Speaker 2: The lyrics are really interesting, Like the themes of the
Speaker 2: songs are really varied. And I was evidence of this.
Speaker 2: The poster art alone can't get you into Iron Maiden.
Speaker 2: Like I had my room covered in Iron Maiden posters
Speaker 2: before I listened to them at all.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean we should talk about that for a second.
Speaker 1: Then their mascot is Eddie. If you've ever seen an
Speaker 1: Iron Maiden album cover or poster or live video where
Speaker 1: they have big, you know, giant Eddie walking around and
Speaker 1: stuff like a puppet, I guess he's their mascot. And
Speaker 1: he was drawn by a guy named Derrek Riggs, and
Speaker 1: he was originally he was called Eddie the Head and
Speaker 1: then just the Head, but in their British accent, the
Speaker 1: ed they like dropped their h's.
Speaker 2: Oh is that right?
Speaker 1: It just became ed and Eddie is how they eventually
Speaker 1: wound up with Eddie.
Speaker 2: Very nice, and he's been on every single of the
Speaker 2: seventeen albums that they've released, most of the singles, apparently
Speaker 2: not all. I don't know why, but he's usually kind
Speaker 2: of like altered to represent whatever that particular album is about, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, Like he was an inmate in a
Speaker 1: mental institution for peace of mind. I do love the
Speaker 1: cover of Power Slave when he's he's a pharaoh in
Speaker 1: the desert. Pretty cool.
Speaker 2: Apparently when they toured that album, they had like a
Speaker 2: thirty foot like actual build of that as the backdrop
Speaker 2: for their stage show.
Speaker 1: Of course they did.
Speaker 2: Why would you not exactly, you know, but yeah, Eddie
Speaker 2: was bossed, just Eddie alone, And he's a good example
Speaker 2: of why the loss of like an album cover is
Speaker 2: really like a big deal, because man, it doesn't get
Speaker 2: any better than Iron Maiden album covers.
Speaker 1: No agreed. They came out in nineteen seventy five, and
Speaker 1: I believe it or not, def Leppard was also debuting
Speaker 1: along with Motorhead and they were grouped together as what's
Speaker 1: called the new wave of British heavy metal, and that
Speaker 1: was sort of happy happening concurrently with the punk scene,
Speaker 1: which is interesting because punk and metal to me are
Speaker 1: very different, but there are some sort of tendrils that
Speaker 1: work through both of those kinds of music.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's where those first two albums definitely, they
Speaker 2: were definitely influenced. Paul Deano was definitely influenced by punk,
Speaker 2: so it was a lot more it was a lot
Speaker 2: closer to hardcore than the albums that Bruce Dickinson helmed.
Speaker 2: Starting with their third album, Number of the Beast, which
Speaker 2: is when the band just broke through and became metal Gods.
Speaker 2: That was back in nineteen eighty two.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Dickinson brought that sort of operatic flourish the theatrical
Speaker 1: like some of us. I was listening today and sometimes
Speaker 1: he literally goes like from and that kind of thing,
Speaker 1: which is like, you gotta love it. He really leaned into.
Speaker 2: It, for sure, and like, I don't know how I like,
Speaker 2: I'm not such a fan that I know who actually
Speaker 2: writes the songs. I've always presumed Bruce Dickinson did, but
Speaker 2: usually it turns out to be like the guitarist or
Speaker 2: something like that. But they're songs are really really interesting
Speaker 2: and they're really varied, like they cover history a lot,
Speaker 2: like there's a song about World War two pilots called
Speaker 2: Aces High, the song about Alexander the Great, about white
Speaker 2: Europeans and Americans overrunning Native Americans in North America run
Speaker 2: to the Hills. That's on number of the.
Speaker 1: Beasts two great song.
Speaker 2: They have some really like uplifting, encouraging messages in their songs,
Speaker 2: like can I play with Madness in Wasted Years? They
Speaker 2: even have a song about the loneliness of a long
Speaker 2: distance runner and that's what it's about. Yeah, and it's
Speaker 2: really it's a great song, like it they follow the
Speaker 2: pace and like the slow down and then the speed
Speaker 2: up again once he gets a second win. Like, oh,
Speaker 2: it's a really well done song, but it's about a
Speaker 2: long distance runner running a marathon by himself. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of the things I haven't gotten around to yet
Speaker 1: in my recent documentary Binge is I know there's a
Speaker 1: really good Iron Maiden documentary that came out I think
Speaker 1: last year or semi recently, and I haven't checked that
Speaker 1: out yet, but that's on the list, like even higher
Speaker 1: now sure.
Speaker 2: And if you're like, well, okay, how big is Iron Maiden,
Speaker 2: Well we've got a few stats for you, one chuck back.
Speaker 2: In twenty twelve, the Queen's sixty year Jubilee, the UK
Speaker 2: held some polls to say, like to figure out what
Speaker 2: the best of the best was of the last sixty years.
Speaker 2: The best British record album of the last sixty years,
Speaker 2: voted by citizens of the UK was Number of the
Speaker 2: Beast Iron Maiden.
Speaker 1: So just best record.
Speaker 2: The best record the Beatles were from Britain. Don't forget
Speaker 2: all of those guys who were the progenitors of heavy
Speaker 2: metal were from Britain. Iron Maiden's Number of the Beast
Speaker 2: was voted the number one record in the last sixty
Speaker 2: years in Great Britain.
Speaker 1: All right, here's my statement on that. Okay, I don't
Speaker 1: doubt you. I just want to know a little bit
Speaker 1: more about the robustness of this pole and like, Okay,
Speaker 1: it's shocking to me that that would be number one
Speaker 1: over like the Stones or the Beatles or letwipl or
Speaker 1: just bands that were just way, way, way more popular.
Speaker 2: I totally get you, and I triple check that to
Speaker 2: make sure that that was not just like some misinformed
Speaker 2: fan like that.
Speaker 1: I just want to see the I want to see
Speaker 1: where they took this poll, like how it was done.
Speaker 1: That's why I don't want to know.
Speaker 2: But they they got almost ten percent of the vote,
Speaker 2: so it's pretty good.
Speaker 1: You're like it was in the parking lot of an
Speaker 1: Iron Maiden show.
Speaker 2: So they've also sold one hundred and thirty million copies
Speaker 2: of their seventeen albums. I means bad. Even Lady Gaga's
Speaker 2: a fan.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, I mean I think she was knocked out
Speaker 1: by their fandom or standem because she was like what
Speaker 1: I see in an Iron Maidens fan base is what
Speaker 1: I want for myself. Like they are so wholly dedicated,
Speaker 1: and that's something I think that's true for a lot
Speaker 1: of metal bands, but they seem to be even more
Speaker 1: so than a lot of metal bands.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I mean like world wide. If you go
Speaker 2: to South America, they can fill a stadium every night
Speaker 2: for a month. Like people around the world love Iron Maiden.
Speaker 2: I just think it's great because they're a great band.
Speaker 2: There's not a bunch of controversy. Controversy, they're not like
Speaker 2: preoccupied with like bringing the full the full power of
Speaker 2: Satan to bear on his non believers, like right, They're
Speaker 2: just actually a lot of their stuff is pretty encouraging,
Speaker 2: at the very least super interesting. So they're they like,
Speaker 2: they're just a good band to be beloved worldwide.
Speaker 1: I think totally agree. I still think I'm Judas Priest more.
Speaker 1: I was listening to British Steel today and they're they're
Speaker 1: both great. They're kind of side by side for me.
Speaker 2: Actually, Okay, I have to like add to my original
Speaker 2: top five maybe even current top five. I really like
Speaker 2: Motorhead a lot. Yeah, I don't own a Motorhead T shirt.
Speaker 2: I really haven't heard much beyond their Asus Spades album,
Speaker 2: but I love what I hear a Motorhead. I like
Speaker 2: their whole jam. They're another band that says like, we're
Speaker 2: not heavy metal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true, but they were kind of the progenitors
Speaker 1: of speed metal. I think in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1: You know, the Scorpions came out in sixty five, and
Speaker 1: Hanover I know, recommended the sales of Sharon as a
Speaker 1: very amazing YouTube thing to go watch if you want
Speaker 1: to see some pre eighties Scorpions. Okay, def Leppard came
Speaker 1: out in seventy seven. See this is where Olvia has
Speaker 1: a couple listed like Van Halen and Blue Oyster Cult
Speaker 1: and Aerosmith and ac DC that I don't think any
Speaker 1: of those bands are metal.
Speaker 2: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa whoa. You don't think Van Halen
Speaker 2: is metal?
Speaker 1: Not at all?
Speaker 2: Oh, I disagree with you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think they're not metal at all.
Speaker 2: All Right, I'm gonna say that I think that they
Speaker 2: qualify as metal.
Speaker 1: Interesting, have you ever heard David Lee Roth I have?
Speaker 1: I have ice cream?
Speaker 2: Man. Yes, I know that they have other stuff, but
Speaker 2: I'm saying, like, think they're like the stuff that sounds
Speaker 2: like metal is metal.
Speaker 1: I don't think it sounds like metal at all. I
Speaker 1: just think they're a rock band.
Speaker 2: Have you heard Panama?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that didn't sound metal to me at all.
Speaker 2: I'm just kidding, Okay. I can't think of a single
Speaker 2: metal metal song of theirs.
Speaker 1: I think it's mostly just.
Speaker 2: Just Eddie van Halen's playing that. I'm like, that's metal, man.
Speaker 1: Oh see, not to me, that's just virtue virtuostic, right,
Speaker 1: rock guitar lead to me? I mean. And also, just
Speaker 1: you know, they didn't sing about those things. There was
Speaker 1: no darkness, there was no you know, the way they dress,
Speaker 1: like Eddie van Halen wore overalls on stage.
Speaker 2: Hey, Randy Rhodes wore a polka dot like Chippendale's vest. Right,
Speaker 2: So let's not get into that, all right.
Speaker 1: So anyway, just my opinion, I knew that, But let's
Speaker 1: talk about just the I mean, I guess this is
Speaker 1: a nice segue into the words heavy metal, because, like
Speaker 1: I said, people can nitpick this stuff to death what
Speaker 1: heavy rock was or when it transitioned into metal. There's
Speaker 1: a sociologist named Dina Weinstein that Livia found that tried
Speaker 1: to kind of root out the origins of the little
Speaker 1: literal phrase heavy metal. It was born to be Wild
Speaker 1: by Steppenwolf, you know, heavy metal, thunder, But that wasn't
Speaker 1: talking about music. That was talking about cars and.
Speaker 2: Stuff, right, I don't know. Could it could have influenced
Speaker 2: it to some degree or whatever, but it doesn't seem
Speaker 2: like the direct answer. Yeah, yeah, it's me. William S
Speaker 2: Burrows apparently puts up a pretty good argument for the
Speaker 2: guy who coined heavy metal, or at least put it
Speaker 2: out there, and that it was adopted to eventually describe
Speaker 2: that genre of music. It's not at all what he
Speaker 2: was doing. He had a character from his Nova trilogy
Speaker 2: called Uranium Willy, the heavy metal Kid. Okay, I don't
Speaker 2: know enough about William S Burrow's writing to know if
Speaker 2: like Uranium Willy was like metal in the metal sense. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but he also had a drug called heavy metal that
Speaker 2: appeared in some of his other works, not Naked Lunch,
Speaker 2: but in other works. That to me makes a You
Speaker 2: could make a pretty good argument that I would buy
Speaker 2: that that ultimately maybe led to the use of heavy
Speaker 2: metal to describe heavy metal. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think both of those things had put it out
Speaker 1: into this public consciousness as two words that can be
Speaker 1: said together, but for my money, you got to go
Speaker 1: with Lester Bangs. This was in nineteen seventy and I
Speaker 1: think he was running for Rolling Stone at the time.
Speaker 1: But the legendary rock critic and writer, in one of
Speaker 1: his reviews in nineteen seventy said he was complaining it
Speaker 1: was a negative thing. He said, all the heavy metal
Speaker 1: robots of years past, of the year past. When he
Speaker 1: was talking about the albums of nineteen seventy, he was
Speaker 1: talking about nineteen sixty nine. And he proceeded by a
Speaker 1: few months a guy named Mike Saunders, eventually known as
Speaker 1: Metal Mike, who described Humble Pie as a noisy, unmelodic,
Speaker 1: heavy metal laden poop rock band.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you for changing s to poop. Yeah, but
Speaker 2: deserve the moral purity of our podcast.
Speaker 1: They both use the words heavy metal to describe music,
Speaker 1: I think for the first time in nineteen seventy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but they were, Yeah, they were negative reviews. That
Speaker 2: that's possible, I think. Dina Weinstein says like that's a
Speaker 2: real possibility. But she put something out that I thought
Speaker 2: was pretty interesting too. She pointed out that a lot
Speaker 2: of these bands came from Birmingham, England, and Detroit, Michigan,
Speaker 2: which apparently were very similar at the time. They're very polluted, dirty, industrial,
Speaker 2: working class cities, and that the fans of heavy metal
Speaker 2: also hailed from those areas too, where areas like them,
Speaker 2: and that they would be familiar with like the feel
Speaker 2: of heavy metal like that, not the feel, what's the
Speaker 2: word I'm looking for, the.
Speaker 1: Sensibility, No, more like the.
Speaker 2: Just like what the term can kind of bring to mind,
Speaker 2: you know what I'm saying and associating that with music. Yeah,
Speaker 2: somebody from you know, super nice Town, USA who's experienced
Speaker 2: with metal is the nails holding their white picket fence together.
Speaker 2: They might not be able to be like, yeah, heavy
Speaker 2: metal really describes this music, but the kids in Detroit
Speaker 2: and Birmingham probably could. And I thought that was an
Speaker 2: interesting point.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. Absolutely. Oh geez, look at where we are.
Speaker 1: Why don't we take another break, Okay, and we'll come
Speaker 1: back and talk about how the genre started to grow
Speaker 1: and sort of split into subgenres right after this.
Speaker 2: This is gonna be fun, okay, Chuck. So, the early
Speaker 2: seventies or the mid seventies to early eighties gave us
Speaker 2: the British Wave, the New British wave of heavy metal
Speaker 2: right laid the foundation. You would call most of that
Speaker 2: just heavy metal, like it's just so classic. They don't
Speaker 2: even fit into subgenres. They just gave the world heavy metal.
Speaker 2: From that point, it just started to split. And one
Speaker 2: of the ways that it started to split was by spreading,
Speaker 2: and it didn't spread through radio. Radio was afraid of
Speaker 2: heavy metal almost from the outset. So bands were forced
Speaker 2: to basically say, let's just get out on the road,
Speaker 2: Let's go to our fans rather than relying on other
Speaker 2: people to help boost our popularity. And so touring in
Speaker 2: massive tours became just a part of being a heavy
Speaker 2: metal band, especially in the early eighties. Throughout the eighties,
Speaker 2: and they would make stage shows that people would talk
Speaker 2: about four years afterwards, like we talked about the Iron
Speaker 2: Maiden nineteen eighty three Power Slaver eighty four or five
Speaker 2: Power Slave Tour and what their stage show looked like,
Speaker 2: Like that's the kind of stuff they were doing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. The eighties. Of course, that's when hair
Speaker 1: metal comes onto the scene, and that's when I'm an
Speaker 1: MTV that's when I started getting into it a little bit.
Speaker 1: Despite my early alternative music leanings and also loving like
Speaker 1: Billy Joel at the time, stuff like that. Sure, so
Speaker 1: I was all over the place. But you know, Rat
Speaker 1: comes along, Motley Crue comes along, your band Poison Cinderella
Speaker 1: another band that I love. I mean, we could go
Speaker 1: through them, La Guns, White Snake, Hanoi, Rocks, Slaughter, Skid Row,
Speaker 1: Doc and Wasp Warrant Warrant, Quiet Riot, Twisted Sister. And
Speaker 1: we have to mention this band because it was kind
Speaker 1: of the beginnings of some really dark metal. And that
Speaker 1: has a band called Merciful Fate, Yeah, from lead singer
Speaker 1: King Diamond, who later after Merciful Fate. I think the
Speaker 1: Merciful Fate was nineteen eighty to eighty four, and then
Speaker 1: after that King Diamond, which is obviously stage name, went
Speaker 1: on to form the band King Diamond, and they were
Speaker 1: very dark, sort of darker metal and used what's known
Speaker 1: as corpse paint, like the black and white makeup paint
Speaker 1: on a space. Yes, and very influential early I guess
Speaker 1: dark metal.
Speaker 2: Yeah for sure. The other band that typically gets pointed
Speaker 2: to is the basis of death metal in particular is Possessed.
Speaker 2: They were from San Francisco, Okay. They released an album
Speaker 2: called Seven Churches in nineteen eighty five. That was another
Speaker 2: one that I was like, where was I What was
Speaker 2: I doing? Yeah, this is right in my wheelhouse? Like
Speaker 2: how did I not hear possessed? How did I not
Speaker 2: hear a venom? Like? I did not this stuff did
Speaker 2: not cross my path. And this it's like actual legit
Speaker 2: death metal, but it's from nineteen eighty five. Death metal
Speaker 2: wouldn't really start to take off until the later eighties
Speaker 2: early nineties. Yeah, and we should just say death metal
Speaker 2: is like that, like you know, the growling like lyrics
Speaker 2: that you just can't understand. You have to read the
Speaker 2: lyrics while you're listening. Yeah, that is death metal. That's
Speaker 2: like the key characteristic of death metal that anybody could
Speaker 2: come along and be like, oh, that's different than the
Speaker 2: other stuff I'm listening to because of.
Speaker 1: This, Yeah, for sure. And you know why you didn't
Speaker 1: know about it is because you had to know the
Speaker 1: person who knew about it, because it wasn't on the radio.
Speaker 1: Stuff like that wasn't even on MTV. I mean, maybe
Speaker 1: maybe you might see something like that as a deep
Speaker 1: cut on Headbanger's Ball later on, hosted by the Great
Speaker 1: Ricky rockman. But otherwise you just had to know the
Speaker 1: dude who was like, hey, man, have you heard this?
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so they gave birth to Morbid Angel. Autopsy
Speaker 2: Cannibal Corpse is a very very famous death metal band
Speaker 2: from the late eighties and it just keeps going on
Speaker 2: and on and on. Our longtime listener, I think she
Speaker 2: still listens. I haven't talked to her in a while.
Speaker 2: Alisa White Gloves from the band Arch Enemy, Uh huh,
Speaker 2: she listens, or she used to. But Arch Enemy is
Speaker 2: a melodic Swedish death metal band. Yeah, it's just a
Speaker 2: bunch of subgenres put into one. But if you listen
Speaker 2: to Elisa singh she's doing that death metal like guttural singing. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's just part of death metal, no matter what that
Speaker 2: genres carved into.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, not fully my thing. I was into
Speaker 1: a little bit of industrial metal that camera around in
Speaker 1: the mid eighties. Ministry, of course is the band that
Speaker 1: comes to mind from Chicago, who were a little more
Speaker 1: of a synthpop They were not what they became for
Speaker 1: sure early on, but they kind of led the way
Speaker 1: for the industrial music scene in the mid eighties. When
Speaker 1: their eighty six album Twitch came out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's I went in that direction toward industrial
Speaker 2: in addition to new wave stuff like I really like
Speaker 2: Nitzer Ebb and met Beat, Manifesto, Skinny Puppy. None of
Speaker 2: those will qualify as metal, but I guess Ministry kind
Speaker 2: of bridge. That was the bridge between metal and just
Speaker 2: straight up industrial. Godflesh they were another one that was
Speaker 2: no question industrial metal. And again, go listen to Godflesh's
Speaker 2: I Guess first album. I can't remember what it's called,
Speaker 2: but it's like a black background with a white minimalist
Speaker 2: kind of face all up in your face, and you'll
Speaker 2: be like, wait, this is metal, And if you listen
Speaker 2: to it, you'll say, yes, this is metal. There's a
Speaker 2: drum machine and you're like, okay, well that seems like cheating. No,
Speaker 2: they use a drum machine because no human being could
Speaker 2: play drums at this slow a pace and not like
Speaker 2: fall asleep or die from boredom. Right, So they have
Speaker 2: a really slow tempo but with traditional like distortion and
Speaker 2: guitars and singing that you would associate with metal, and
Speaker 2: you put it all together and it is really good.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I saw a cool interview with the great Mike
Speaker 1: Patten of Faith No More and mister Bungle, one of
Speaker 1: the greatest singers ever in any genre, and he was
Speaker 1: singing the Praises of Godflesh and I went and listened
Speaker 1: to a little bit of it and I was like, man,
Speaker 1: this is like very very heavy stuff.
Speaker 2: It is. Oh, it's super super dark. But they were
Speaker 2: from Birmingham too, so this is like, so Birmingham is
Speaker 2: to metal what Manchester was to britpop. Yeah. Yeah, Like
Speaker 2: it just was this center And what's crazy is it
Speaker 2: was a center for a really long time. I think
Speaker 2: there's still bands coming out of Birmingham that are no bad. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The Grammys got on board in nineteen eighty nine
Speaker 1: and all the wrong ways. They introduced the Best hard
Speaker 1: Rock slash Metal Performance and Metallica's and Justice for All
Speaker 1: very famously lost out to Jethrotl. They had a comeback
Speaker 1: album called Crest of a Knave and everybody immediately was like, Grammys,
Speaker 1: You've never seen more out of touch with what's going
Speaker 1: on in the world and so pretty qui. They were like, oh,
Speaker 1: maybe we'll split the categories and the next year it
Speaker 1: was hard Rock, a hard Rock Award and a Metal Award.
Speaker 1: But they even mess that up. Like, you know, bands
Speaker 1: like Soundgarden one the metal category and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: and like they're not metal either.
Speaker 2: Well, the Grammys aren't really known for being super in
Speaker 2: touch with underground stuff. And that's it's interesting because the
Speaker 2: reason why groups like Soundgarden won the Metal Grammy at
Speaker 2: the time was because grunge just took over. It actually
Speaker 2: pushed metal right out of the limelight or like basically
Speaker 2: starting January first, nineteen ninety, grunge just took over and
Speaker 2: it stayed that way for years, and the metals started
Speaker 2: to kind of come back in a way. New metal
Speaker 2: came along in the mid to late nineties, so like
Speaker 2: you had slip Knot and cornco Park, I guess qualifies
Speaker 2: I'm not either, but I know a lot of people are.
Speaker 2: Like a lot of people got back into metal thanks
Speaker 2: to these guys. They basically they were like, hey, you
Speaker 2: like you like grunge, you like alternative, We're gonna help
Speaker 2: transition you back to metal. And then there was a
Speaker 2: something called the New wave of American heavy metal starting
Speaker 2: in the early two thousands that took back over from
Speaker 2: new metal and brought it back to like legit serious metal,
Speaker 2: like as I Lay Dying, Lamb of God, and of
Speaker 2: course High End Fire and a bunch of other bands
Speaker 2: that are still coming out in America and around the world.
Speaker 2: So metal came back. Whether you like new metal or not,
Speaker 2: you can thank them for bringing metal back from obscurity
Speaker 2: in the late nineties early two thousands. Thank you, Corn, Yeah,
Speaker 2: thanks a lot. Corn.
Speaker 1: Alt metal was a thing too in the in the
Speaker 1: late nineties and kind of early two thousands. I think
Speaker 1: people consider a Tool kind of an alt metal band,
Speaker 1: a band called System of a Down. I listened to
Speaker 1: some Tool, but they're another band that has a very
Speaker 1: very very hardcore loyal following, yeah, for sure. And then
Speaker 1: progressive metal that kind of I've been around in the eighties,
Speaker 1: like a band like Queen's Reich, who I never really
Speaker 1: liked that much, could probably be considered prog metal, as
Speaker 1: well as a band called Dream Theater, who are also
Speaker 1: very popular and very have fans that are like super loyal.
Speaker 2: I remember listening to Queen's reck Operation mind Crime as
Speaker 2: like a twelve year old and being like, I don't
Speaker 2: get it. Yeah, this is where the crime way too
Speaker 2: grown up for me, right exactly?
Speaker 1: You know what the crime is? These lyrics.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Pantera was another one that actually kept metal alive
Speaker 2: during the grunge years. They I did not know this.
Speaker 2: Pantera started out the Cowboys from Hell, started out as
Speaker 2: a glam rock band, spandex, big hair and everything, and
Speaker 2: eventually they shifted into more of a metal sound, and
Speaker 2: they were one of the pioneers of what's called groove metal,
Speaker 2: which is essentially what it sounds like. It's catchier metal.
Speaker 2: I think there's more refrains to it, and I'm just
Speaker 2: speaking musically. It's not it has nothing to do with
Speaker 2: like jam bands or anything like that. It's just as
Speaker 2: far as metal goes. It's probably the groovyest version of
Speaker 2: metal you could you could do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's pretty accurate.
Speaker 2: A couple other things, Chuck. Did we talk about the
Speaker 2: Big Four?
Speaker 1: Yeah, we talked about the Big Four earlier of thrash bands,
Speaker 1: which of course Metallica, Megadeath, Anthrax, and Slayer.
Speaker 2: Were you into Slayer or Megadeth or Metallica or Anthrax, No,
Speaker 2: I was.
Speaker 1: I got into Metallica at one point when I lived
Speaker 1: in New Jersey because a friend of mine listened to them,
Speaker 1: and so I listened to Master Puppets and Ride the
Speaker 1: Lightning and Injustice for All like those are great records,
Speaker 1: a little bit of Anthrax here and there, but those
Speaker 1: generally weren't my thing. Definitely never really listened to Megadeath.
Speaker 1: I know Dave Mustaine has a has a reputation in
Speaker 1: the industry. He was let go of from Metallica, yeah,
Speaker 1: and hasn't stopped complaining about it for forty three years.
Speaker 2: I saw an interview with him that he's where he
Speaker 2: said like I own that, Like I was, like I
Speaker 2: had to quit drinking because I was so just agro
Speaker 2: and violent whenever I did. But yeah, he was not
Speaker 2: happy about it. But metal fans are happy because he
Speaker 2: went on to found Megadeath basically to spite Metallica, and
Speaker 2: they became huge in their own right. But I was
Speaker 2: never into them. I really want to be into Slayer,
Speaker 2: Like I have Rain and Blood on my phone, which
Speaker 2: is not a super metal thing to say, but it's
Speaker 2: the truth, and I just like I can listen to it,
Speaker 2: but I'm not like, damn, this is good, Like I
Speaker 2: just can't get into Slayer. I've never really been into
Speaker 2: Mega Deaths, but despite trying to.
Speaker 1: When he left, he said, I'll show you, guys, I'll
Speaker 1: go on to found a band that will never be
Speaker 1: as good or as popular as you will be.
Speaker 2: It's got Seriously, I hope it doesn't stick in his
Speaker 2: crawl because that is that would be hard to get over.
Speaker 1: I think he's kind of well known in the industry.
Speaker 1: There's a couple of metal people that a lot of
Speaker 1: metal people don't like. Dave Mustain is one, and then
Speaker 1: Lars Ulrich, the drummer from Metallica, is another. Even Metallica fans,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of them that are like, god, Lars,
Speaker 1: just shut up. Interesting.
Speaker 2: What do you think about Yeah, he does, Yeah, because
Speaker 2: some of them are so like vocal about their opinions
Speaker 2: and how awesome they are and how terrible other bands are.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Sure, yeah, I'm sure. How about this, Let's say we
Speaker 2: wrap it up talking a little bit about black metal,
Speaker 2: and then we'll move on to part two.
Speaker 1: What do you think that sounds good?
Speaker 2: Okay, so we can't wrap before we talk about black metal,
Speaker 2: which was something that also emerged out of thrash, or
Speaker 2: actually I think it emerged out of death metal, to
Speaker 2: tell you the truth. But where death metal is like guttural,
Speaker 2: black metal is screaming. Essentially, it's just a higher pitched
Speaker 2: of not understandable lyrics. You have to read the lyrics
Speaker 2: along with it. But it is so death metal is
Speaker 2: like gory and like just go look at Cannibal Corpses
Speaker 2: Butchered at Birth album covering. You'll get an idea of
Speaker 2: what death metal is about. Yeah, black metal is legit
Speaker 2: the kind of satanic metal that the censors of the
Speaker 2: nineteen eighties and the pastors of the satanic panic were
Speaker 2: actually scared of that didn't exist yet. Black metal is
Speaker 2: that so.
Speaker 1: Does like is Merciful Fate and King Diamond do they
Speaker 1: are they thrown into that group.
Speaker 2: I think the progenitors of black metal were Venom all
Speaker 2: the way back in nineteen eighty one. They were actually
Speaker 2: part of the new wave of British heavy metal. They
Speaker 2: like they had a picture of Baphomet in an upside
Speaker 2: down star on the cover, right, so I could see
Speaker 2: suburban parents being actually scared of Venom. Bathory from Sweden
Speaker 2: they were another one from nineteen eighty four, and then
Speaker 2: Mayhem is the one that like took black metal into
Speaker 2: like the actual like this is kind of scary realm
Speaker 2: and because they actually did stuff in real life that
Speaker 2: involved like death and suicide and murder and church arson
Speaker 2: and stuff like that. It was like the Norwegian black
Speaker 2: metal in particular there scene at least it was kind
Speaker 2: of dangerous. It's really just you can't say that that's
Speaker 2: not true.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, like you said, there was a literal murder
Speaker 1: in the band Mayhem, and I will issue a huge
Speaker 1: trigger warning and encourage you not to go look this up.
Speaker 1: But you can't talk about Mayhem without talking about the
Speaker 1: worst album cover of all time. Down of the Black
Speaker 1: Hearts is a photograph. It was a bootleg album but
Speaker 1: became very famous because it showed a photograph that the
Speaker 1: band took of an image of their lead singer right
Speaker 1: after he had died by suicide by shotgun. And it's awful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: no other way to describe it, but just horrific.
Speaker 2: It's essentially a close up and it's exactly what you
Speaker 2: would think it looked like. But like that was their
Speaker 2: album cover, a bootleg, like you said, true, but the
Speaker 2: picture was taken by one of Mayhem's band members, Uronymous,
Speaker 2: and apparently arrange the scene to make it a better
Speaker 2: looking photo, and hadn't even like contacted the cops yet
Speaker 2: to say like, hey, my friend killed himself. He was
Speaker 2: taking pictures of it instead, so like this was like
Speaker 2: this was this is black metal. Well there, it's also
Speaker 2: rife with white supremacists and I'm not so I don't.
Speaker 2: I'm sure positive that there are black metal bands out
Speaker 2: there that are not down with all of that. Yea,
Speaker 2: they are still really good, but I would guess that
Speaker 2: they're not the majority. And I don't mean to put
Speaker 2: down the whole thing and sound like a pearl clutching
Speaker 2: like parent, because I'm not. I'm just trying to get
Speaker 2: across like how like legitimate what these guys are saying is,
Speaker 2: and like if you read the lyrics, they're like, Wow,
Speaker 2: this is really nuts, man, it's cool. And I don't
Speaker 2: actually know where these guys fall, like if they're white
Speaker 2: supremacists or anything, but I know that they are exemplary
Speaker 2: of Norwegian or Scandinavian black metal called Emperor, and they
Speaker 2: have a song called The Loss and the Curse of Grace.
Speaker 2: I think it's got a great video, like it's it's
Speaker 2: a really cool song. Read the lyrics along with the
Speaker 2: song and you'll be like, Okay, I understand black metal
Speaker 2: that's a great entree to it. I think, all right,
Speaker 2: I'll do it, Okay, but I don't I'm not really
Speaker 2: into the sound because I've read that it's deliberately meant
Speaker 2: to be noisy and put off people like me. Squares, Yeah,
Speaker 2: just let's just say it. Yes, squares who are from Scandinavia.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, all right, that's a super sized part one.
Speaker 1: I think we'll probably have the supercized part two. And
Speaker 1: there's also going to be a fun little short stuff
Speaker 1: this week. So I guess we should just call this
Speaker 1: metal week. And we don't do listener mails at the
Speaker 1: end of a part one, right, No, no.
Speaker 2: We don't.
Speaker 1: So take us home, baby.
Speaker 2: Okay you ready. Yeah, we are gonna stop. We are
Speaker 2: gonna stop. We are gonna we are gonna we are
Speaker 2: gonna stop. Stop stop stop, we are gonna stop here.
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