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.

Damn you Olympic games

If you asked me a year ago if I planned on watching much of the Olympics, I probably would have said “Eh, maybe a few events.” Little did I know I would turn into a super sports nerd overnight. I think part of the problem is that it only comes around every four years. So you forget about them, forget how intense they are. Then, when they arrive, you’re completely unprepared. And your world gets rocked.

In addition to the Olympics, I’ve been planning my wedding with my lovely fiancee, Sarah. Like the Olympics, you have no idea how much it will dominate your life until it happens. It’s been fun, though, and it’s amazing how generous people are.

All right, enough with the off-topic stuff. Let’s talk some metal. I picked up the new Decrepit Birth, finally, and it did not disappoint. It’s brutal and technical and progressive, as if they listened to nothing but late Death and early Gorguts before recording this album. One of my new favorite bands.

Another album I downloaded recently was the Pat Boone album of metal covers: “In A Metal Mood”. If you are a fan of metal, I highly recommend this album. It is one of the most bizarre things I’ve ever heard. The best way I can describe it is lounge versions of metal songs. He does some good ones, too: Holy Diver, Enter Sandman, Crazy Train. Yeah, try and imagine a lounge version of Crazy Train. It happened.

In my studio, I started on a new drawing after finishing the Subgenre Interactive. This new drawing (not titled yet), is a representation of which subgenres dominated the metal scene throughout the years. Unfortunately, this is another study, because the data I need to put this drawing together has not been gathered and filtered yet. So I used my best judgement and knowledge of metal history to put together what I thought this drawing would look like with the appropriate data. The data I’ll end up using is the number of albums released in a given year for each subgenre. The number of albums will then be broken down in to percentages for that year (for example, thrash probably represented 45% of the albums released in 1988). The subgenres are color coded yet again (with watercolor), and I used the half-circle timeline device. Here is an image of the drawing in process:

You can see how glam metal (colored pink) reached it’s peak (and dominated the metal scene) in the mid 80’s, then quickly fell off and represented a very small segment of heavy metal from then on.

Metal, the harmless curiosity

Metal has its share of snobs, and the SF Chronicle did a nice write up of one of their locals. A record store owner gives his opinion on several new releases. Funny how the subject of whether a band is metal or not is always a hot topic among metalheads.

Is the tide of public opinion on metal finally turning to the positive? Seems over the past few years I’ve noticed more articles about journalists wondering “Hey, metal has been around for 30+ years, maybe there’s something to it.” This topic is fresh on my mind, as I’ve been reading a couple of books on metal lately, and both address the tendency of mainstream America (politicians, media, and general public) to vilify violent forms of culture when something bad happens. School shootings, suicides, etc., prompt people to point the finger at something superficial that influences children, instead of poor parenting or psychological instability in the individuals involved. Now that metal has remained underground for the past ten years, no one feels threatened by it anymore. Metal has turned into a harmless curiosity. I guess that’s a good thing. Anyway, here are two CNN articles taking a fresh look at metal:

Heavy metal and violence, more than a myth?

From the article: “So while upside-down crucifixes, homicidal zombies and lashings of blood might continue to fuel our preconceptions about heavy metal music, it’s worth remembering, appearances and reality can be very different beasts indeed”

My heavy metal makeover - A middle aged reporter talks about metal as if it (or she) came from Mars.

Finally, a random article about the history of German thrash. Why not?

Subgenre Interactive is now live!

Click here to launch the Subgenre Interactive!

I’m still ironing out some quirks in the online version. For example, I’ll probably end up making the individual mp3s much smaller (poorer quality) so they’ll load faster. Right now certain songs are delayed for a few seconds when first loaded. I needed to keep the mp3s separate to keep the main flash file size down, though.

Check it out, and let me know if you have any problems with the program.

Interactive “Metal for Dummies”

Yeah, Yeah, it’s been a while. I’ve been busy! With metal stuff, of course.

My latest project is an interactive “metal for dummies” program that is meant for a touchscreen. Since I’m creating it in Flash, it will also work on the web. The main screen features 14 buttons that correspond to a metal subgenre. Clicking on a button will take you to that subgenre’s page. On that page is a brief description of the subgenre, an image of a representative band, and three buttons that will play one minute clips of songs typical of that subgenre. I’ve done most of the grunt work for this program already, and I’m currently in the process of putting it all together. It will be posted on my website when it is finished (and I’ll let you know on the blog when it’s up). In the meantime, here are some images of the interface:

Not much going on in metal news that I’ve found. I have, however, been listening to a lot of new bands lately.

Here’s a few:

The Cast Pattern - A metalcore/mathcore band out of Lawrence, KS. Often compared to The Dillinger Escape Plan. I saw these guys at the Black Dahlia Murder show in Lawrence a while back (although I couldn’t remember their name at the time). Very tight and very heavy. They have a new album due out in May. I was duly impressed with their live show. I’ll definitely be picking up their album.

Origin - Another Kansas band. They’ve been around for awhile, but I just got hip to them recently. Super heavy and technical death metal. Something like Necrophagist meets Hate Eternal. They have a new album out as well, called Antithesis.

Cephalic Carnage - Yeah, I finally jumped on the C.C. bandwagon. For those who aren’t familiar, Cephalic Carnage is a grindcore/technical death outfit. The earlier stuff is more grindcore, later is more technical death. All of it is outstanding and tight as hell.

Locate | Navigate reviews, etc.

The group show that I’m in- Locate | Navigate - has finally been written up in the local papers. Follow these links to read ‘em:

KC Star

Pitch Weekly

Locate | Navigate part 2 at La Esquina (1000 West 25th Street) will also be having a 2nd opening on Friday, March 7th from 7 - 10 as part of First Friday. The opening will include a performance by the Los Angeles based collective (VxPxC). I’ll be there for the performance, stop by if you’re in the area.

In metal news, I found some interesting bits this week that I’d like to share.

First, I read about this book “True Norwegian Black Metal” in Decibel magazine recently, and I came across this article about the book, which includes a video interview with the author, Peter Beste. The interview piece is from a Norwegian news/entertainment channel, so the only parts that are in English are the author himself talking about the book, which is really all that matters. It sounds like this is a book of mostly photography, with a few essays. The author became fascinated with black metal, and spent eight years with black metal luminaries, photographing and talking with them. I’m pretty excited about this book, just from the interview you can tell that Peter Beste has a sincere interest in representing black metal and its subculture in the correct way. The book comes out on May 15th and is published by Vice Books.

In the “keep on rockin’ in the free world” category, this article about heavy metal in Morocco makes me happy to live in a place where I can’t get arrested for listening to metal.

Finally, the popularity of metal is producing some odd marriages of music, art, and industry. First, Slayer has lent their slaytanic imagery to a helmet manufacturer. And not to be outdone, Iron Maiden is touring in a custom painted Boeing 757, and Bruce Dickinson is the pilot.

Locate | Navigate

Lots going on lately, I’ll start with the oldest news and work my way forward.

First, I was recently honored with a 2008 Charlotte Street Award, which is an award given to Kansas City area artists for artistic excellence. This is a great honor, which helps to raise my profile in the artistic community, and gives more exposure to The History of Metal project. It also comes with a monetary award, which will be used in part to implement the next part of T.H.O.M., which is discussed in detail below. The Charlotte Street Foundation, and the Urban Culture Project (part of Charlotte Street) have been supportive of my artwork ever since I moved to KC from NY four years ago. They’ve given me shows, studio space, professional development skills, and now this. I’m very grateful for their generosity and faith in my work.

Second, the group show I’m currently a part of - locate | navigate part II - had its opening a couple of weeks ago. It was a huge success, and I received lots of good feedback on my drawings (map and timeline study). Thanks to everyone who came. The show itself is impressive - many excellent examples of artists who use different systems to translate information into art. If you’re in the area and haven’t seen it yet, the gallery is open on Saturdays. There will be a couple of reviews from local press coming down the line soon, I’ll link to those as soon as I find them.

I came up with a new idea for The History of Metal project, based on the feedback from the locate | navigate show. People who checked out the Timeline Study were fascinated by the many different subgenres within heavy metal. Most people told me they had no idea that so many different types of metal existed, and they wanted to know what they sounded like. This gave birth to the idea that I would create a series of drawings (horizontally oriented, probably around 3 x 1.5′ or so) that gave detailed descriptions of each metal subgenre - including history, images, bands included in that subgenre, etc.). Also, I’m going to create an interactive display where a viewer can navigate through and hear song clips that are typical examples of each metal subgenre. I’ll need to purchase a touchscreen LCD monitor and develop a flash piece that will serve as the interface program for this concept.

Last week I was in Vieques, a small island off of Puerto Rico. My fiancee Sarah and I had this trip planned for a while, and we had a great time. The day before we left I managed to catch The Black Dahlia Murder, who played in Lawrence, KS. Originally, it was supposed to be B.D.M., 3 Inches of Blood, Hate Eternal, and Decrepit Birth, which is a pretty amazing lineup. Unfortunately, 3 Inches of Blood and Decrepit Birth didn’t show up. They were replaced by two local bands, who’s names I can’t recall. They opened up, obviously. The first band was from Wichita, and they were downright awful. They had no idea what kind of music they wanted to play. Some songs were metalcore, some death, some just a mess of noise. They were getting booed throughout the set. Now, rarely do I condone booing a band, and I don’t in this case. But the lead singer kept egging on the crowd, telling everyone to mosh and “fuck shit up”. Dude, if you’re an opening act that no one came to see, shut up and play your set. Plus, he had a haircut that made him look like he fell off the My Chemical Romance tour bus. Not good.

The second band was much, much, better. Very tight, very heavy. A few too many breakdowns, but they were no-nonsense enough that I was just happy that they weren’t the previous band.

Hate Eternal was, as I expected, technical and brutal. I’ve never seen a brutal/technical death metal band live before, and I was not disappointed. I don’t think Erik Rutan said two words to the crowd between songs. He was only interested in delivering the most punishing metal possible. Brutal/technical isn’t really my cup of tea, I like some melody sprinkled into my metal, but it’s impossible not to appreciate the skill of musicians such as Erik Rutan and the rest of his band. Impressive.

Finally, The Black Dahlia Murder were the perfect foil to Hate Eternal. Where Hate Eternal was unmoving, driving, and serious to the point of scary, B.D.M. was dynamic, fun, and catchy. Just as talented and locked in, though. B.D.M. has the feeling of a thrash band gone death. They’re young, they like to party, and they’re having fun. They run around the stage, interacting with the fans, and headbang in unison when playing their power-metal (or, as some would say, At The Gates) inspired melodies. At the same time, B.D.M. is relentless and flawless in their playing. I was really impressed with how clean and tight their live performance was. I’ve been into B.D.M. for about four years now, but I’ve been listening to so many new bands lately that I forgot how good they were. I was happy to be reminded.

Timeline study finished

My timeline study is finished. The study is a drawing meant to explain and show how I intend to structure my metal timeline. I only used a handful of bands and concentrated on the beginning section, showing the initial birth and growth of metal in the 70’s and 80’s.

The Math

After putting it off for as long as possible, I finally did the math. That is, I figured out exactly how big I’d need to make my timeline drawing with all the bands I’ve come across. With roughly 50,000 bands placed 1/4″ apart from each other on a half-circle timeline , I’d have a drawing that was two football fields wide. I’m thinking I might have a tough time finding a place to work on (let alone display) that size of a drawing, so I’ll need to alter my plan. One idea I’ve come up with is to separate the genres, and place them on the same timeline, but on different (transparent) sheets. In that scenario, a viewer would be able to separate the sheets and view each genre separately, or see them all together.

Also, I anticipate that I’ll be shaving off quite a few bands from the list since I’m not allowing bands with only demo recordings to be represented.  Not enough to make a huge difference, but perhaps a couple thousand.

It’s been an interesting couple of weeks for metal in the news. First, I found this article about video game creator Tim Schafer. Mr. Schafer is working on a metal-themed video game that sounds pretty awesome. He’s got Ronnie James Dio, Rob Halford, and Lemmy on board doing character voices, and the game is set in a fantasy world inspired by power metal. It’ll probably have a pretty sick soundtrack, too.

I also found this interview with Lamb of God drummer Chris Adler. It’s nice and long, and Chris seems like a smart guy.

Finally, a legendary metal record store in Long Island is closing its doors. There’s a nice little documentary video on this page. The intro is a little long, but the interview with the owner is great. Actually, it’s not anything special, but the owner is so mellow it makes for compelling viewing. And it made me nostalgic for the little record store across from the mall that I used to go to when I was a teenager. Beat the hell out of Sam Goody.

Timeline images

I’m doing some studies of the timeline piece for an upcoming show. I’m testing out my concepts to see how they look, and attempting to get a better idea of how to organize the bands. Each concentric half-circle is a year, starting with 1970. Each successive year emanates out from the center like a soundwave (I know, how clever). Honestly, this scheme makes the most sense in terms of keeping the size of the timeline down. Each band will have a line that extends the length of their career, starting with their debut album or EP (demos will not be noted). The colors of the lines represent each metal subgenre (power, death, thrash, etc.). I think that in future version of the timeline, I’ll spread out the genres a little more in order to accommodate the amount of bands that will follow. Also, the amount of bands that I’m working with for this study is a fraction of the actual amount.

Here is a detail of the timeline structure. Each album is plotted on a year (represented by the concentric half-circles), and the name of the album is noted.