More on Metal
Aunt B. is with me. She offers a guideline:
Say a Preacher is throwing a record burning or CD smashing. If, when he holds up an album by that group, you and your friends would have laughed and laughed and laughed that anyone could have thought that music was Satanic, it’s probably hard rock.
I dunno. Perhaps she should check out Demon Hunter, a Christian metalcore band. Here’s a tune. Kinda the opposite of Satanic but probably would cause convulsions in your average preacher.
Update: The outrage seems to be universal.
June 20th, 2008 at 10:27 am
I just dropped my opposition to the death penalty:
http://blogs.knoxnews.com/knx/silence/archives/2008/06/blasphemy_aeros.shtml
June 20th, 2008 at 10:53 am
Really remarkable. That person completely missed the first true voice of American heavy metal: Blue Öyster Cult.
There is definitely a lot of notable twitness going on in that article.
June 20th, 2008 at 11:00 am
Dammit, Mr. Beck. I just ordered the BOC greatest hit compilation from Amazon. Joan Crawford has indeed risen from the grave.
June 20th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
“Joan Crawford” is a great BÖC piece that didn’t really get its due because of everything else on that record (“Fire Of Unknown Origin” — 1981). I thought that “Veteran Of The Psychic Wars” was very worthwhile, too, but right there are two songs that got buried by “Burnin’ For You” in the radio sweepstakes.
For over thirty years, now, I’ve maintained that all the really essential action from BÖC is in the first three albums: “Blue Öyster Cult” (1972), “Tyranny And Mutation” (1973), and “Secret Treaties” (1974). Those are all certifiably great records — certainly to my mind — and they represent the rise to a peak (“Treaties”) that the band never matched again. They had their moments now & then afterward, but it never got better than “Treaties”, and the curve up to that one is brilliant. That first album was shocking to me, back in the day (my junior year in high school). I had never heard anything like it before.
I count Donald “Buck Dharma” Roeser in a small handful of the finest rock guitarists this country ever produced. He was utterly reckless, like a motorcyclist playing with a death-defying cliff-edged mountain road, and he never fell off. “The Red And The Black” (off “Tyranny”) is in the top-ten of my All-Time favorite rock songs, and where else — in 1973 — were you going to get a line with hair-raising insinuations like this:
“I know they wanna make it
With my big black dog
But they just don’t know how to ask”
(“Baby Ice Dog”)
BÖC is a big deal. Those guys were pioneers.
(BTW — “Billy” will do just fine. “Mr. Beck” was my father.)
June 20th, 2008 at 1:00 pm
When i was younger and starting to listen to metal (touch of Maiden here, a dash of Ozzy there) and I heard “Reign in Blood” – I can’t even describe it well, cause my mind was blown. Pretty sure my mouth was agape. Even the Metallica started to look a little tame (even tho they were at their best). The guy who did this is a fool. I would barely classify BOC as metal, much less the stuff there.
June 20th, 2008 at 2:20 pm
“I would barely classify BOC as metal,…”
That’s because you have no historical perspective. If you weren’t there when they first appeared, then you’re naturally going to be dazzled by something like Maiden or Slayer.
Kids should be careful about who they call a “fool”.
June 20th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
i think he was calling the writer of the article a fool and not you.
June 20th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
That occurred to me, but the reference to BÖC makes the whole context questionable at least.
June 20th, 2008 at 5:10 pm
I always liked Six Feet Deep myself — Christian death metal. Really.
June 20th, 2008 at 5:12 pm
That was a pretty stupid list from the other day. How is Jimi Hendrix metal? And no Varg Vikernes? He’s certainly more popular in metal, specifically black, than Meshuggah; if they were going for nobodies.
At least more ‘trendier’ bands like dimmu borgir or cannibal corspe should of been included; since its obvious they are not sticking to metal. Not like it would be a big problem to go to other metals genres. And why panterible? WHY!
June 21st, 2008 at 6:43 am
Did you know Alice Cooper is the son of a priest?
In between “It’s much too late” and “Brutal planet”, I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a deeply religious person so willing to criticise religious organs as “badly” as he does …
Brutal planet, live with intro
This version is tamer than the album version, I might add.
Reverence for al things religious, as well as humanity iself can only stem from the willingness to be critical of what you learn … hard rock, shock rock, trash metal … those are the exact genres based on those very principles!
June 21st, 2008 at 11:10 am
Simplest way to know if a ‘greatest metal list’ is way off: If Metallica is out of the top 5, the writer has no clue.
Seriously, Alice in Chains at 23, Pantera at 21, and Slayer at 11?
And what more can one say about someone who considers Hendrix metal, and leaves out Blue Öyster Cult?