Edumacation

I was recently contacted by Brian Hickam, an academic at the University of Toledo, informing me that there is a large contingent of scholars interested in heavy metal as a topic of research, study, and analysis. These scholars reside all across the globe, and hold several conferences throughout the year to discuss their research and findings. This was exciting to hear. Part of the reason I started my drawing project was to educate the public about heavy metal, and hopefully get more people to take it seriously as a music genre.

It turns out that this community of music scholars is also very interested in my drawing project, and have invited me to attend one of their conferences later this year in Austria. I’m working on getting funding to attend this conference. I’ll keep you posted.

On a related note, I was mentioned in Keith Kahn-Harris’ blog awhile back. Harris is a sociologist and author who’s books include Extreme Metal: Music and Culture on the Edge. Check out his blog.

I was also interviewed recently by SPIN magazine for an article about heavy metal themed artwork (random, right?). The article will appear in the August issue, I’m told. I’ll post a link to the article when I get one.

Since I’m on the topic of education, I thought I’d share this bit: Since I’m not a musician, I often wonder what people are talking about when they refer to specific techniques when playing instruments. For example, in drumming you have blast beats, and guitarists always talk about sweep picking and tremolo. I’m pretty sure I figured out what a blast beat is, and I recently stumbled upon this video explaining sweep picking. So if you’ve always wondered, check it out.

Finally, The Onion’s AV Club has a series of articles that addresses “pop culture for beginners”. In June they covered metal. I think they did a decent job.

Brütal Legend

There’s quite a buzz building around the new video game Brütal Legend by EA Games. I remember reading something in passing about this game awhile back, and I forgot about it until today, when doing some random Google searches on heavy metal. For those unaware, Brütal Legend is a video game built around the story of a roadie who gets transported back into “a mythical Age of Rock to fight evil, liberate an army of headbangers from a life of oppression, find love, and discover his life’s purpose.” The weapons, villains, vehicles, and of course the music are inspired by hard rock and heavy metal music and artwork. Oh, and Jack Black lends he voice to the main character, “Eddie Riggs”. It looks like a lot of fun. The game won’t be released until October, but EA recently released some screen shots from the game. You can also view a couple of trailers for the game on their website.

On a related note, GameSpy, a gaming magazine, does a fair job of identifying some specific heavy metal references used in Brütal Legend.

The Lovecraft Connection

Having read a great deal about the direct influence of H.P. Lovecraft’s fiction on heavy metal, I decided to pick up a couple of his books at the library. I know nothing about H.P. Lovecraft, other than he wrote horror and sci-fi. So far, the book I’m into now has been hit or miss – some stories are more compelling than others. They were all written between 1920 and 1945, and the language is definitely dated. The stories are short, averaging around 10 pages, and the writing tends to follow a formula – a scene is set, usually with strange circumstances, and the reader is kept in suspense until some horrific twist or revelation at the very end. I found my first direct heavy metal reference last night in a story titled The Outsider, which is a cleverly crafted tale of someone escaping from a dark, castle-like structure in search of sunlight. When this someone does escape, he realizes that he’s a horrible creature never meant to see the light of day. You further realize that he’s in Egypt, and he’s a mummy. It’s clever because the story is told from the mummy’s perspective early on, so you empathize with his desire to escape from his lightless tomb, and you feel sorry for him when he scares everyone away. Then, of course, the poor guys looks in the mirror and understands why everyone is terrified of him.

Anyhow, the reference is at the end when the mummy realizes he’s not meant to be seen, and resigns himself to “ride with the mocking and friendly ghouls on the night wind, and play by day Amongst the Catacombs of Nephren-Ka…”

Another Lovecraft-metal connection occurred immediately after picking up the copy of Lovecraft’s The Lurking Fear and Other Stories I’m currently reading. On the back cover was an illustration I immediately recognized:

I recognized the eye illustration from the cover of Obituary’s Cause of Death:

After doing a little research, I found out that this was done by legendary sci-fi/horror illustrator Michael Whelan. He has the original illustration on his website. Appropriately, it is titled Lovecraft’s Nightmare B

Obscura and The Devil’s Blood

I picked up a couple of new albums recently that I’m really excited about. Both are complete opposite ends of the metal spectrum, but excellent in their own ways.

The first album is Cosmogenisis by Obscura. Apparently there is a rule in the world of metal that states if you play technical progressive death metal, then sci-fi/space must be a major subject for the music. I glean this information not from the lyrics themselves (which are mostly unintelligible), but from album artwork, which is usually pretty telling. It actually makes sense, because it allows these artists to explore funky sounding effects, vocoder vocals and the like. In Obscura’s case, the bassist – Jerden Paul Thesseling – coaxes some of the most amazing sounds I’ve ever heard out of his bass guitar. On the whole, the album is reminiscent of later Death (the song Incarnated in particular sounds uncannily like Death’s Secret Face in the beginning), Cynic, and perhaps a little Opeth. Obscura does an excellent job of mixing things up, so much so that the album gets a little too diverse at times. There are very few weak songs, however, and overall it is an outstanding album from an exciting band. Right now, my pick for best album of ‘09.

The next album I picked up a couple of weeks ago is Come, Reap by The Devil’s Blood. If this album can be categorized as metal (which I’m not convinced it can be), it would have to be on the cusp of that 70’s era hard rock and metal (admittedly blurry) fault line. Their Myspace page classifies them as “vintage rock music in the vein of Roky Erickson, Black Widow, Coven, Black Sabbath and a rich plethora of sixties and seventies underground psychedelic rock bands too numerous to mention”. Indeed, The Devil’s Blood sounds like they could have played alongside any of those bands, and held their own. If I didn’t know this album was new, I would have assumed the release date to be sometime in the 70’s. That’s partly because of the band’s music, and partly because of the retro production values. Whatever they’re doing, it’s working. This album is beautifully haunting and catchy, with a spooky and haunting feel to it. It definitely helps that the lyrics are very pseudo-satanic and cultish. It conjures up a very specific memory of listening to King Diamond’s Them in my room as a teenager, and thinking “If satan does exist, this is his messenger”. That’s a good feeling, by the way.

Wait, people still read this thing?

It’s been a long cold winter (actually pretty mild here in KC), and I have awoken from my slumber! Actually, I was reminded that people actually read this blog when I got an email from a high school student asking to use me as a reference for a paper. I did the best I could.

Alas, I was jostled into posting, my first in a few months. I remembered I had some things to say, so here it goes.

I got some awesome metal themed books for Christmas. None was more satisfying than “True Norwegian Black Metal” by Peter Beste. What could be better than receiving a book with a giant photo of a painted, blood-soaked Norwegian holding an inverted cross on the cover – for Christmas. It’s a stunningly gorgeous book full of photos from black metal shows, guys walking through the woods in full corpsepaint, etc.

The other books I received were from the “33 1/3″ series, which are all based on influential albums through music history. The two metal-themed books in the series are based on Slayer’s “Reign in Blood” and Black Sabbath’s “Master of Reality”. The book on Reign in Blood is pretty straightforward, if not disappointing. Interviews with band members, producers and a song by song breakdown by the author. It was good, but lacked imagination, I thought. The book on Master of Reality was brilliant. It was written from the point of view of a teenager locked in a psych ward writing in his journal. It was set in the early 80’s, and this kid was sent there by his parents. He talks about his favorite albums, Master of Reality being his very favorite. Since he’s not allowed to listen to his walkman, he has to relive the songs in his head. It’s incredibly powerful.

Early Man and Iced Earth

I went to see Early Man and Iced Earth on Wednesday at the Beaumont Club here in Kansas City. Accompanying me was my friend Beau Bledsoe, who has become a huge Early Man fan in the past few months. He was quite excited to see them live (Beau took the above picture of Early Man). Beau knows his stuff when it comes to music, and he told me which kind of amps Early Man was using (Orange) when he first heard the album. Sure enough, there were the Orange amps on stage when they went on. In addition, Early Man used quite a few classic guitars which pleased Beau to no end.

All that vintage equipment must be doing them favors, because they sounded great. Raw metal and thrash is what Early Man is all about, and they did not disappoint. Mike Conte (guitar and vocals) and Pete Macy (guitar) can both solo with the best of them, but they also know the value of just riding a good riff. 90% of the crowd was there for Iced Earth (in their I.E. t-shirts), and they responded more to the new material, which was more thrash than the old material. The new material is outstanding, by the way. I was expected to be let down after such an impressive debut album, but it was quite the opposite. They ended their set with “Death is the Answer”, which is now a classic, and they played the shit out of it.

Iced Earth was let down by the sound man for the first half of their set. The rhythm guitars were muddled and overpowering, drowning out everything except the drums. You couldn’t hear the lead guitar, and Matt Barlow was barely audible over the noise. They figured something out halfway through the set, and the levels improved dramatically, salvaging what was left of the show. Matt Barlow is amazing, perhaps the best vocalist in metal right now, and definitely the best singer I’ve ever seen live. He just unleashes on stage, and he sounds incredible. The only knock I have to give to Matt is he seemed like he didn’t know how to approach the songs that Iced Earth wrote with Tim Owens. Tim and Matt have very different singing styles, and Matt’s interpretation of Tim’s songs was off. I.E. played many of my favorites from their catalog, including “Storm Rider”, “The Coming Curse”, and “Pure Evil”. Honestly, “Watching Over Me” had to be my favorite song from the set. I know it’s cheesy, but I love that song, and hearing it live was the highlight of my night.

Beau wasn’t really into Iced Earth, although I can’t really blame him since the sound was so shitty at first. After a few songs he headed to a separate bar outside. He texted me about 15 min. later, saying “Im outside w Early Man!” I met him outside, where he was chatting up the bassist from Early Man, Tim Rammage. Tim was a super nice guy, very down to earth. It was ironic since Beau and I were joking earlier that the bassist has to be the lowest guy on the totem pole in metal bands. They’re necessary, but only in a support role. No one pays attention to the bassist. Anyway, mentioned to Tim that I was impressed that he and his band mates were still rocking the old school tight black jeans. Of course I also had to ask where does one get those jeans? Do they make them themselves? Tim said you can find them in certain stores in NY and LA, and yes, sometimes he has altered jeans himself.

New drawing finished, show opening

I finally finished the latest addition to The History of Metal series of drawings, the Metal Subgenre Popularity Index. It may look familiar, as it is a re-creation of an earlier drawing (see below, a few posts down). I recreated this drawing because the first version was a test run. The earlier one was on crappy paper, and I hadn’t mastered watercolors yet. This version will be included in the Charlotte Street Foundation Awards show at the Nerman Museum at Johnson County Community College. The show opens on Friday, November 21st, 6-8:30pm. There will be a slide talk from each of the artists (there are four of us) at 7pm. The talks won’t be long, I can promise you. After the opening, the show will be up for three months.

Anyway, back to the drawing. I’m much happier with this version – the colors are better, and I made the graphite lines more prominent in order to emphasize the sectionalizing of the subgenres and the fact that they are broken up into units.

Metal Subgenre Popularity Index

detail

detail

detail

The chart itself is a giant timeline, with each half-circle representing a year (from 1970 to 2007). Each year is separated into 100 parts, representing 100% of metal for that year. The individual subgenres (assigned their own color), are then allocated a percentage for each year, and filled in accordingly. Additionally, I’ve attempted to place each subgenre on the chart based on their “extremity level”. The least extreme subgenre (glam) resides on the left-bottom of the chart (pink), and the rest of the subgenres increase in extremity moving clockwise until you reach grindcore at the right-bottom of the chart (grey).

Eventually, I’d like to create another version of this drawing using hard data, such as the number of albums released per year for each subgenre. For this version, I’ve used research from books and magazines, as well as my own perceptions and experiences to determine the percentages.

Danzig, sweaty and old

So I went to see Danzig, who is on the “Blackest of the Black” tour, last Friday (Halloween). It was one of those things…I’ve never seen Danzig live, and had to take advantage of the opportunity. I knew, however, that he would not be in top form, and I would probably be disappointed. But come on, it’s Danzig.

Doors opened at 6, and the show was supposed to start at 7. I went with my friend Jorge, who is also an artist and fellow lover of metal (mostly thrash). We grabbed some food before the show, and probably arrived at the venue a little after 7.  Having been to many shows, I was expecting it to start late. When we got there, the second band was just starting to set up. Of course, we didn’t know it was the second band at the time, but apparently Skeletonwitch had already performed. Which means that for the first time in the history of metal shows, someone actually went on early. And of course it had to be Skeletonwitch, the one band I was looking forward to seeing aside from Danzig. Whatever. Winds of Plague went on second, and they were pretty bad. The sound was crap, and the songs were just not good. Gratuitous breakdowns surrounded by generic death metal. Moonspell was next, and they were better. I won’t be buying any albums of theirs, but it was a welcome improvement.

Dimmu Borgir came on before Danzig, and they were easily the most impressive band of the night. They sounded tight, the sound was outstanding, and they put on a good theatrical show. No makeup for Dimmu Borgir on Halloween though, which was ironic. They said their crew stole their makeup. Honestly, I’ve heard Dimmu Borgir before on XM radio, and the songs never really did anything for me. I should say that I’m not big on the whole synthesizer-laden black metal to begin with. They really blew me away live, though. Totally different band.

And then Danzig. Danzig took his sweet ass time getting on the stage. It must have been a 40 minute wait at least. The crowd was getting antsy, then pissed. When Danzig did finally arrive, he launched into a song I didn’t recognize, then “Twist of Cain”, butchering both. He was singing about half a verse, then pulling the mic away from his face. On top of that, he was rushing the lyrics, as if he was too excited to sing it at the correct pace. The overall effect was not good. Thankfully, Glen’s performance improved as the set went along, and his other material was done well. Danzig is actually looking pretty good for his age these days. He’s pretty muscular, even if he has packed on a few pounds around his waist. His voice is still excellent, and he performed with a lot of passion. He did seem as if he was breathing pretty hard in between songs, and chugging a lot of water. Hey, whatever it takes.

Overall, I can’t complain about the quality of the show. Danzig still knows how to rock, and he seemed sincerely into it. Unfortunately, the songs in this year’s show go in chronological order, from the first Danzig album on. This means that he starts getting into his weaker material about 2/3 of the way through (Anything after Danzig III, in my opinion), so the show starts to drag until you get to the end. Then he does Mother (of course), and the encore (Dirty Black Summer and Snakes of Christ, I think).

Upcoming shows and other news

I’ve had an exciting and stressful couple of months. I got married a couple of weeks ago to the beautiful and charming Sarah Dahl (now Sarah Hill), and the weeks leading up to the wedding were increasingly nerve wracking. Not because I was getting cold feet, but because Sarah and I had pretty much planned every last detail ourselves (down to renting the microphones and putting together welcome kits for guests), and that’s all fine and good when you’re planning, but when it comes down to executing, it all comes together very quickly. It all went off without a hitch for the most part, though. So I guess we planned well enough.

In addition to planning and executing a wedding (no, there was no metal played at the reception), I’ve also been trying to finish one last drawing for the Charlotte Street Awards show in late November. Actually, I’m re-creating the subgenre popularity index drawing seen below. That drawing (shown in an unfinished state in the 8/22 post), was actually a ‘test run’. I’m now re-creating the drawing on better paper and more subtle colors. I’d like to emphasize the graphite a little more in the new version.

I also got booted from my studio residency at the Urban Culture Project downtown (my year was up). So I found a new studio in the West Bottoms here in Kansas City. It’s a post-industrial part of town with lots of abandoned and converted warehouses. I feel very at home down there, as all artists end up flocking to large, cheap spaces. I’m sharing my studio with fellow KC artist Brian Collier, who creates really interesting research-driven work that is largely nature based. You can check out his work at this website, which links to his many project-based web sites: http://www.societyrne.net/html/programs.htm

Now, onto some metal. I have tickets to go see Danzig in October here in KC. I’m pretty excited about this show. I’ve never seen Danzig live, and although I know it will pale in comparison to seeing Danzig in his prime, still…it’s freakin’ Danzig. He’s a living legend. As a bonus, Skeletonwitch will be performing as well. It’s actually a pretty big lineup of bands, but Danzig and Skeletonwitch are the only two I care about.

Perhaps even more exciting is the fact that GWAR will be playing in KC at the end of November. I’ve never seen GWAR either, and we all know how legendary their shows are. I might even be able to convince Sarah to join me. I’ll warn her to wear clothes she doesn’t care about, of course.

Finally, a couple of metal-themed news items.

An interesting article in the Wall Street Journal about the disturbing increase in volume and lack of fidelity in today’s digital music. Apparently, many albums are created in a “…narrow, high-volume range. In addition, music now is often optimized for play on the relatively low-fidelity earbuds for iPods, reducing incentives to offer a broad dynamic range.” The article focuses on the new Metallica album since fans have been complaining about the album’s awful sound quality since its release.

A throwaway blog/article from a british newspaper site talks about the recent lack of catchy metal songs and what makes a classic metal anthem. Well, don’t blame metalcore bands, they’ve been doing their best to make awful whiny sing-song anthems for years.

Researching metal

I’ve received more than one email from someone who is researching metal for a thesis, paper, or some other academic pursuit. Typically, the person who’s sent the email does not know where to start and is looking for help/advice. I’ve decided to address this topic in my post today.

First, let me say that I have no inside connections to the metal world. I was never in a band, or worked for a record label. So I can’t put anyone in contact with anyone on the “inside”. I started from scratch, so that’s all I can talk about.

I’ve read several books on metal, two that I thought were good enough to mention here. First is
“Sound of the Beast: The Complete Headbanging History of Heavy Metal”. It tackles the entire history of the genre, albeit with a an emphasis on some subgenres and less on others. Glam and thrash get a lot of ink, and death and black not as much. On the whole, though, it is an excellent starting point. It has all the basic facts and dates correct as far as I could tell.

The next book I thoroughly enjoyed was “Choosing Death”, a book that chronicles the history of grindcore and death metal. The author, Albert Mudrian, gives a blow-by-blow account of early death metal and gridcore – how bands broke apart, reassembled, and managed to record albums. Keeping all the names straight is difficult at times, but like “Sound of the Beast”, it serves as a valuable reference tool when looking for hard facts.

Now, onto the internet. When I needed to compile an authoritative list of heavy metal bands, I thought I was in for a long and brutal search through hundreds of sites, cross checking sources and digging through extinct band sites for information. Wikipedia turned out to be unreliable, and the well respected Allmusic.com had only the major players. Then I found the glorious Encyclopaedia Metallum. This site offers band information (such as every LP, EP, demo released, current and past members) for every single band that could ever have been called “metal”. I was not surprised that a site like this existed, but I was surprised at the breadth and accuracy of the site. Every cross check was accurate, and no other site I had visited has a fraction of the bands that this site has. The site is managed by a few dedicated metalheads, with a membership of over 100,000. Members can submit band information, contribute album reviews and ratings. The information is carefully screened, and bands deemed unworthy are rejected. After double-checking the information on this site a number of times, I decided that I was going to use Encyclopaedia Metallum exclusively as my source for band info.

That is pretty much all the information I’ve gathered for my research. I did use Allmusic.com and Wikipedia when writing up the subgenre descriptions for my Subgenre Interactive piece, but that’s it. I hope this has been helpful.