Bang Your Head: A Fan Looks At Heavy Metal’s History

Director Sam Dunn hangs out with Ronnie James Dio

This review first appeared on Rock Confidential.com in May 2006 under my other byline, Marianne Moro.

Metal: A Headbanger's Journey, an hour and half foray into the world of heavy metal music from a fan’s point of view, screened at the American Film Institute’s Music Documentary Series at L.A.’s Arclight Theatre in 2006. Directed by Sam Dunn, a 30 year old Canadian anthropologist and metal fan, it's chock full of metal stars, near-stars, and (sometimes unintentional) humor. Even if you don't like metal music, there's plenty here to keep you amused. The director’s enthusiasm, in-depth research, and the cross-section of wacky interviewees keep you riveted. A 2-DVD version of the film is available from Warner Home Video Metal:A Headbanger’s Journey is the definitive metal documentary. It’s unusual to see a thoughtful, poignant and sometimes funny film about this much maligned genre. What’s most impressive are the charts that Dunn uses to track the various genres and subgenres. The general public’s perception that metal is one-dimensional music for dummies is disproved here. Dunn’s chart lists a dozen genres, including prog metal, death metal, pop metal, and glam. It’s not until you see the charts on the screen that you realize heavy metal has spawned and mutated into a dozen viable subgenres, each with its own distinct, sound, look and fan base. I won’t get into too much detail about the interviews themselves. The element of surprise plays a part in a few of them, and I wouldn’t want to ruin it for those planning to see the movie. We learn about the tritone, “the devil’s music” and how it was banned in medieval times and later incorporated into metal. The stars range from Bruce Dickinson, Tony Iommi, Rob Zombie, Alice Cooper, members of Slipknot and Lamb of God and the infamous Norwegian satanic metal bands, to Lemmy, Geddy Lee, and Ronnie James Dio. Ronnie offers several good-natured digs at Gene Simmons and explains how he adapted the devil’s horn symbol from his Grandma!! Angela Gossow, the first female vocalist to adapt the Cookie Monster growl, Doro, and members of Girlschool & Kittie round out the female contingent. The hair metal section is mercifully brief. We get an interview with Vince Neil and a KNAC guy commenting on the groupie scene of the time. Professor Deena Weinstein and rock crit Chuck Klosterman provide academic explanations of metal’s popularity. Klosterman, the author of Fargo Rock City :A Heavy Metal Odyssey in Rural North Dakota, bears a slight resemblance to Austin (Yeah, Baby) Powers, and has an infectious enthusiasm for metal that matches Dunn’s. Tom Araya of Slayer gets in the best quote of the movie regarding “God Hates Us All.” And this being metal there are a few unintentionally funny, Spinal Tap-ish moments, courtesy of the Waken Open Air Festival in Germany and the Norwegian black metal groups. The film features quite a cast of characters. I kept waiting to hear from Marilyn Manson, but he wasn’t included. Seems to me he would be a good addition to any discussion about music and evil. Maybe he wasn’t metal enough, who knows? Dunn even talks to a violence researcher about death metal band Cannibal Corpse. For those who don’t know, Cannibal Corpse album covers are low-rent Hieronymus Bosch parodies, with lots of cartoon blood, exploding flesh and skeletons. Aside--when I reviewed music back in NYC, Roadrunner Records sent me postcards with CC’s album covers on them. The music director of the company I worked for, a born-again Christian, would always very discreetly turn them face down when putting them on my desk. No documentary on heavy metal would be complete without a clip of Dee Snider testifying before the senate committee on “dirty” rock lyrics? Snider is a pretty sharp guy, despite his outlandish onstage persona, and Dunn’s interview with him proves this. The metalhead audience in attendance booed heartily when Tipper Gore appeared on the screen. That whole “Washington Wives” fiasco now seems like a bad SNL skit. Amazing how all the PMRC nitpicking about heavy metal has really helped eliminate “naughty” lyrics. Yeah, right. Now we have hardcore rap at the top of the charts, with lyrics that are eons worse than anything Twisted Sister could envision. By the way, you'll never guess who refused to be interviewed for the film-err-who wouldn’t let her husband be interviewed... Official site: Headbangers Journey Dunn also directed the documentary Global Metal

Saxon-Into The Labyrinth CD Review

Saxon’s Into the Labyrinth is brewed with the same formula that’s established them as as one of the “New Wave of Heavy Metal” bands that dominated UK metal in the early 1980s, along with Iron Maiden, Diamond Head, Tygers of Pan Tang and Girlschool, among others. Saxon have remained a steady fixture on the UK and European metal scene since then. One of their early albums was called “Denim and Leather” and that’s a good way to categorize their audience and their sound. Technically speaking, though, Into the Labyrinth's combination of unpretentious anthems like “Live to Rock ” and sinister operatic sagas like “Demon Sweeny Todd” are more for the earthy denim crowd than leather-clad types. Vocalist Biff Byford has a powerful voice that would command your attention even if he sang about gum wrappers blowing across the lawn. He’s in the same league as Halford, Bruce Dickinson, and Ronnie James Dio. In their 32 year history, Saxon did veer off to pop metal for awhile, but quickly regained their senses and returned to their signature sound.

Into the Labyrinth covers all the arena rock/operatic rock/bluesy basics that dominated metal in the early days. There’s nothing groundbreaking here, but that’s not the point. It’s all about taking a tried and true approach and making it better, faster and stronger. The CD opener “Battalions of Steel” begins with an ominous rumble and soaring anthemic chorus, then escalates with Biff Byford’s soaring vocals. His pipes are in great form, no wear and tear here. “Live to Rock” is self-explanatory, and perfect for head banging kids in the front row feigning air guitar “Valley of the Kings” traverses the same territory as Maiden’s “Run to the Hills”. Byford and guitarist Paul Quinn continue to produce the quality evergreen metal on Into the Labyrinth that defies trends and gives the true fan something to sink their teeth into-over and over again. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Heavy Metal And Its Culture: Interview With Deena Weinstein

Deena Weinstein, a professor of sociology at DePaul University in Chicago, is the author of Heavy Metal: The Music and Its Culture and Heavy Metal: A Cultural Sociology as well as numerous zine articles about the subject.

Weinstein first discovered heavy metal music in the 1980s and has been one of the most vocal metal music writers and experts since then, along with Fargo Rock City author Chuck Klosterman, Martin Popoff and Chuck Eddy. This is a reprint of an interview I conducted with Professor Weinstein on May 13, 2005.

JB-How did you come to write the book Heavy Metal and Its Culture?

DW-There were some idiots running around--politicians and politicians’ wives like Tipper Gore saying the most stupid things in the world. They didn’t know what they were talking about. I’d been to a whole number of concerts by then and I thought someone ought to set the record straight, and then I realized none of the metal people could do it. They were already demonized by these politicians and I thought I better do something.

JB- How did you conduct your research?

DW-I attended lot of concerts, and did a lot of interviewing, waiting on line for four hours in 13 degrees for a Slayer concert. That’s a great place to speak to metal fans so that they see you are in the same predicament as they are and you know about the music and care about the music, so they spoke to me at great length.

JB-Did you discover anything surprising about the music or the fans in your research?

DW-Now that I think of it. They were sweetest people in the world. From an outsider’s point of view, they looked rather menacing. but on the topic of metal they just melted to be the nicest most charming people in the universe. So I mean I got to be grand friends with loads of them.

JB-What bands or metal sub-genres do you enjoy?

Late 80s when I was doing all the research, thrash metal my very favorite, I like death and black. There's doom metal like Trouble that I still adore. There are examples of all of it that I really like.

JB-What about rap metal or nu metal?

DW-Good or bad it doesn’t do anything for me. Nu metal, especially things like Korn, had a lot more to do with grunge music than metal

JB-What was the first band could call heavy metal?

DW-Obviously, Sabbath put down a number of moves that others could improve upon. But the band that had all of the verbal and sonic elements of metal was Judas Priest’s second album. Their first album Rocka Rolla was not metal at all. Sad Wings Of Destiny had all of the moves that anyone could consider metal. What do you think? (the first metal album was)

JB- Some of the late ‘60s psychedelic bands had a pretty metal sound, like Vanilla Fudge when they did “You Keep Me Hangin On.” Is that more hard rock though?


DW- There’s no supreme court of metal. I had to explain to the guy who first used the term heavy metal in print that he was the first guy to use it in print. All the idiot writers say it was Lester and I went through all of Lester Bangs’ material and no, it wasn’t him. It was a guy named Mike Saunders. When I asked Mike years later where he got the term from, he said from Lester. But of course Lester and he and the batch of guys from Creem Magazine were all living together so Lester may have mentioned it in terms of discussion, but Mike was the first to use it in print. You pays your money, you take your chances.

But there were things like Montrose’s first album with Sammy Hagar singing that had lots of the elements, but if you look at Judas Priest’s Sad Wings it has not only all the sounds but also all the various themes and also the visual iconography.

JB- Why is Lemmy God?

DW-Number one because he came into music at a time when artists could do anything, before all genres became specialized. I mean when he was with Hawkwind, there was jazz going on there as well as hard rock and psychedelia going on in the same band. From about ‘68-‘73 in Britain and the United States, the audience for rock music wasn’t broken into tribes. And then in about ‘74 or so it started breaking down into tribes. He already did want he wanted to do he was sort of spoiled by the times and then when he was thrown out of Hawkwind, he just and he did what he wanted with his music, which in some real sense is not metal at all as he always claimed. It was really hard rock ‘n’ roll. Think of how unique AC/DC is-- who he admires greatly and always did.

He was there before metal became metal and he did things his way and the other thing he happens to be really well-read. I will put him up against any history professor on World War II and he’s pretty good on World War I also. He taught himself German and I’ve had discussions with him on Nietzsche. In some zine one time I wrote a piece on Nietzsche’s Favorite Metal Songs and Orgasmatron was number one. Lemmy’s smart and willful and there’s a lot going on there.

JB-Who are some of your other favorite metal personalities?

You know that’s the problem. One of the things I’ve found horrible about meeting people is that the quality of the music and the quality of the person are almost arbitrarily related. Some of the grandest music is made by biggest schmucks in the universe, and some of the sweetest people make some of the worst music. For years I just had to really get over that.

JB-You really have to separate the person and the music. They can be totally opposite.

DW-Name a band you like.

JB-The Ramones

The Ramones and Motorhead went on tour together. When you look at Ramones and Motorhead, they had elements of metal but neither one was really punk or metal.
(Joey and Johnny) I wouldn’t wanna know either of them and DeeDee (was) even worse, but the music was magnificent. So that’s an example. Who else do you like?

JB-Guns ‘N’ Roses-at least the first album.

The first album did nothing for me. But I love Slash’s guitar playing. I’m a guitar wonk. I could talk guitars endlessly. I must admit that I thought Axl was one of the world’s greatest frontman.

JB- Of course, Axl was a big question mark as a person.

DW-There is no doubt. Nobody in that band was a functional human being. The very, very drunken Slash was probably the most together guy in the band.

JB-One of my rock critic friends once said, “If I only listened to music by people I like or people who are nice, I’d never listen to anything!”

DW-He’s got a point there.

* DW's Comments About Some Other Metal Bands*

Slipknot/Macabre

I met the guitarist for Slipknot. They came out of death metal bands. They’re great musicians, but they’re also huge fans of music. There’s a wonderful death metal band that I love dearly called Macabre. They only do songs on serial killers. They had a whole album on Jefferey Dahmer. They’re genius musicians, and they’re hysterical. Corporate Death, the singer-guitarist, is verbally magnificent. The guy from Slipknot drove in an ice storm from Des Moines to Chicago just to catch their show.

Metallica

Kill ‘Em All was their best album and it went downhill from there. 80s Metallica vs 90s Metallica. I saw the Garage Days Revisited tour. Lars, after 4 songs, he can finally drum. The vocals in the '90s annoy me. Cliff kept Metallica’s vision in the same way Johnny kept the Ramones’ vision. He died, they changed.

JB- Even after all these years, heavy metal music gets a bad rap in the mainstream media.

I think its good, actually. It gives them an unwimpy rep. They kinda like that. So let the mainstream think whatever they want.

A book just came out called Bad Music. I did a chapter on why the critics need heavy metal. They sort of needed it til the last four or five years as their whipping boy for "what is bad music."

JB-I recently interviewed an English writer and was amazed at how seriously they take rock music there.

DW-In England (metal fans) radically live and breath subcultures that can’t exist in the U.S. for a series of reasons. You can’t be into it because we don’t have the same class system they have or the same lack of geographic mobility. When they get married so many of the metal guys hide their music because they’re supposed to be friends with their wives. I can’t understand the idea of marrying someone who does not like the same music you do. I just cannot understand that, but so many of them do it.