Metal is often content–hell, it prefers to remain a mostly-underground music form, but every once in a while it plunges its grotesque, magnificent self into the unprepared spotlight to claim the world’s attention, to grab it by the throat, lift it bodily off the ground, and say, “You WILL listen.” Black Sabbath’s first studio album with Ozzy Osbourne since 1978 is one of those moments.
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I have waited a long time for a band to sound like this.
Merging heavy metal with traditional folk instrumentation of Europe and the Middle East has been done successfully for years. But the folk traditions of the Far East, including instruments like the erhu, have taken longer to catch on. This is surprising to me, because this music, with its ethereal, flowing melodies, calls out mightily to be joined with metal in a fascinating new way.
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“NOOOO!!!!!” I yelled in despair as I saw the website headline: “Ronnie James Dio Passes Away From Stomach Cancer.”
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Dark Tranquillity’s proper worldwide breakthrough album features a blurry red cover with Mikael Stanne doubled over in what appears to be agony. “I’m clearly trying to emote my love for the malt,” the singer jokes in the liner notes to this recently reissued version. It’s a great place to start for new Dark Tranquillity fans, as I did, and on its 10th anniversary it is still highly recommended melodic death metal.
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The first time I heard metal, I had no idea that was what it was.
The 14-year old, future head of metal had just finished watching one of his favorite movies, The Matrix: Reloaded. As the closing credits came on, he became transfixed by the song he heard…
The band was Rage Against the Machine. The song was “Calm Like A Bomb.”
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While the rest of the world was embracing the party-hearty, big-hair image of glam metal, a whole nest of underground styles rose up against it for fans who wanted something different. These were fans who were tired and disaffected by bands like Whitesnake and Poison–in fact, didn’t even consider it real music (shocking to hear such language on the Internet, I know).
In some ways, it was similar to Black Sabbath’s original rejection of the late-60’s flower power movement, only updated for the 1980s. Remember that at this time the Cold War was in full swing, and it was the high-water mark of the Moral Majority and the religious right. The reaction against it went something like this:
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“You ARE walking out of here with that,” my metal friend commanded, nodding towards the copy of this album with a five-dollar price tag in my hand. “You won’t be sorry.”
I had come into the black metal genre rather later than I had gotten into other genres, and although I like it now, it was a bit of an acquired taste for me personally. With such a profusion of bands and very few universally agreed-upon classics, I was looking for a good place to start. Luckily, even the most elitist black metaller would have no issue starting with the legendary Bathory and this incredible classic.
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“I’ll tell you one thing…being on the road with Motley Crue is going to be a hell of a lot safer than being at home with Pamela Anderson.” – Nikki Sixx
As planning commences for Motley Crue’s farewell tour, I felt compelled to revisit this memoir. And just like the first time I read it, I was surprised (no, actually stunned) at the sheer depth and profundity of the emotion in “The Dirt.” You wouldn’t think at first glance that a hair metal memoir with a bottle of whiskey on the cover would have those things, but it does. In spades!
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