4 posts tagged “metal”
Over the summer, I spent a lot of time going through old boxes of papers and cassettes, some of which hadn't seen the light of day (or at least daylight unfiltered by dirty garage windows) since the eighties. Part of the impetus for doing this was because I had an increasing awareness of a major life change coming up, and I wanted to jettison all of the nonessential garbage I'd been hauling around for years. Granted, most of it had been quite stationary in my mom's garage for most of this time, but I felt like I was still emotionally hauling it around, if that makes any sense.
I filled the recycling bin, and the garbage, many times over the summer. Then, earlier this month I split up with my wife of six years and moved out. Of course, the emotional impact of this particular move can't be neatly tossed into a recycling bin. In a way, I think I've been spending so much time looking into the past to try and figure out more about myself, and fix the bits I don't like. It would be nice to be able to discard objectionable character traits in the same way one discards old metal 'zines, but it doesn't work that way. That said, I think everything will work out all right in the end. I'm speaking from the depths of the Trench of Transition at the moment, so I can only see a little slice of clear, blue sky. It's a good thing that I've always been interested in darkness, I guess...
Anyway, just for a laugh, here's me in high school. Look how damn arrogant I look! I've gotta watch that arrogance.
My high school recently had a big 50 year anniversary party of some kind. I didn't go. The past doesn't really hold any answers for me, I'm afraid. It has been fun revisiting this stuff though, and it has been a relief to discard things. I feel like I've shaken off some old chains, and now I can concentrate more fully on the future. Or the present. Or whatever.
Back in 1983, I was 15. I listened almost exclusively to heavy metal. Heavy metal itself was going through growing pains, becoming heavier and faster with the advent of bands like Metallica and Venom, and slightly later on, Slayer, taking it in new directions. Maybe "new" isn't quite the right word - it was more like a natural progression of ideas: a tweaking of a formula. For instance, Metallica seemed to me like a combination of Motorhead and Diamond Head - they just headed in a slightly different direction, creating their own style by hybridizing elements of their favorite bands.
I was there to witness this evolution. At that point I had seen a handful of auditorium concerts, but hadn't yet seen any small-venue shows. That changed in the middle of the year when I saw Motorhead at the now defunct Stone in San Francisco. It was no longer the classic line-up, with Fast Eddie Clarke gone, replaced by Brian Robertson. They had recently released "Another Perfect Day", which at the time I found to be a bit of a disappointment. Still, it was Motorhead, and I was thrilled to get to see them. I remember Lemmy walking up the street as we stood in line, and being surprised that he wasn't actually 7 feet tall. Later, he chuckled at my Mercyful Fate shirt. I don't remember too much about their actual set now, although I seem to recall some punk kid, with skateboard and all, trying to push his way towards the front and getting pulped by an angry biker dude who didn't like getting pushed. It's funny what sticks in your mind.
A mere month or two later, I got to see Raven headline over Metallica on the same stage. Before the show, there was an instore appearance at local legendary record store, The Record Vault, with both bands hanging out and signing records. The atmosphere was festive, with all the local maniacs showing up in their metal costumes. We almost all wore denim jackets festooned with band patches. I remember I had a silkscreened Metallica patch I'd made in high school, and that I got Metallica to sign it. We also got Lars Ulrich to break a Men At Work album over a parking meter outside because, as we all knew at the time, if it wasn't metal, it needed to be snapped into little pieces. The first time Lars hit the meter, the record popped out of the sleeve and went rolling down the street. On the second try, he managed to break it. I still have a portion of the sleeve, autographed by members of Metallica and Raven. Somebody in one of the bands (I can't remember who now) altered the name to read "Menace at Work."
Later, We all crowded into the Stone and were treated to great sets by both bands. Again, details are hazy, at best. I remember members of Metallica coming out on stage during Raven's set and dousing everything with water. It's a wonder nobody got electrocuted.
25 years later:
We're all grownups now. Some of the people who attended that concert have renounced their past. Some, like our old friend Mike Sammon, are dead. None of us really hang out together like we used to. In some cases, years go by without contact. But, since we're all geeks at heart, the internet has brought us all back into contact. In some cases, the web has expanded this circle of friends to include people who were at all the same shows back then, but didn't know each other. A case in point would be Ray, who is in my Vox neighborhood, is a contact on my Flickr page, and elsewhere as well, I think. I met him in person for the first time on Friday at Raven. Umlaut was there too, although he got sleepy and left halfway through. I went up with Wayne, and it was probably the first time in about twenty years that we went to a show together (not counting the My Brightest Diamond/Noe Venable show a few months back when we unexpectedly ran into each other at the venue).
Anyway, it's taking me a long time to get to the point here. The point being, of course, Raven. Of course, it took a long time for them to hit the stage too. First, we had to sit through Hellhunter. I have to give them props for wearing cool NWOBHM shirts, and for the fact that while getting ready to play, the guitarist played riffs from Holocaust's "Death or Glory" and Black Sabbath's "Symptom of the Universe." Unfortunately, the vocals were delivered in a rather pedestrian angry shrieking style and sounded like a bad metal cliche - the kind of thing that might have worked for Paul Baloff. The lyrical content, which admittedly I'm basing on the song titles, was supposed to be "shocking", and might have appealed to me when I was 15, but now that I'm 40, not so much. Of course, most of the audience was also hovering around the four decade mark, but some people seemed to be into it. Wayne and I went and got coffee.
Stone Vengeance were next, and were quite a bit better. They've been around since the eighties, never seeming to rise above supporting act status, but not seeming to mind at all. In fact, their guitarist said at one point that they were just playing so they could see Raven for free. Back in the eighties, I always felt that their vocals weren't aggressive enough for the type of music they played. At the time, thrash metal and death metal were in their infancies, and most singers were growling or shrieking. Stone Vengeance's vocals were, and are, relatively "clean" sounding. Now, I realize it sets them apart somewhat. The guitarist is quite good too. They also included a couple of covers in their set: Venom's "Black Metal" (which here has a double meaning, because all the members of Stone Vengeance are African American) and Ozzy Osbourne's "I Want More" (with fellow old metalhead Harald O jumping on stage and contributing some vocals. I think they were fun to watch because they so obviously enjoyed themselves. The singer kept cracking jokes about the relative age of the audience, calling us "vintage people" and bemoaning the fact that he had a hard time squeezing into his bell bottoms. Ha ha.
And indeed the audience were quite old, with heads of gray hair speckling the lawn of denim and leather. The denim jackets and shirts, in a lot of cases, looked relatively new. It was strange to see all of the fresh shirts and patches for bands who, in some cases, haven't existed for a couple of decades.
John Gallagher, bassist/vocalist for Raven, doubled as merch salesman, so Umlaut and I went and got a photo with him, in the interest of recreating the photo taken back at the Record Vault in '83. Compare the difference.
Afterwards, despite the fact that I don't need any more band shirts, I bought a shirt. They need our money.
After some technical difficulties, they finally hit the stage. Their old drummer, Rob "Wacko" Hunter has been replaced by Hasselvander (of Pentagram fame), but both John and Mark Gallagher are still there, looking a little larger and older, to be sure, but as we soon discovered, still very much as energetic as always. John Gallagher even used a wireless mic so he could jump around like a lunatic while singing.
They hit the ground running with "Take Control" from their third album, All for One, and kept up the energy through a slew of classics, including "Live at the Inferno", "All for One", "Mind Over Metal", "Rock Until You Drop", "Faster Than the Speed of Light", "Inquisitor", and "For the Future". They also played a couple of songs from their forthcoming album, Walk Through Fire. The song title I caught was "Breaking You Down." There were a couple of other songs from other recent albums too, but I haven't bought any Raven albums since the eighties (they went through a major label period where their output suffered) so I didn't recognize them. The songs were all good though, making me think I have a few cds to buy. The old songs were still best, probably because of that unbeatable combination of quality and nostalgia, especially "For the Future", which has always been a favorite of mine. Keeping in mind that they have to be nearly 50, it was amazing to watch them exude so much energy, jumping around, playing their guitars with their heads, screaming and sweating like 20 year olds. The years seemed to melt away as they played. Even the obligatory guitar and bass solos were fun.
At the end of the set, they left the stage and came back for a semi-encore of "Break the Chain", which was cut short by the P.A. having been turned off. It was two in the morning. Closing time.
I hope they don't wait another 25 years before coming back again. They'll be in their seventies then.
I've never moved more than 20 miles away from the house I grew up in. If I had, by now I probably would have experienced the bittersweet sensation of revisiting my old, nearly forgotten childhood haunts - the creeks I caught toads in, the dirt paths I crashed my bike on, and the long gone fields where I used as short cuts on the way to school. Of course, living close by, I can visit my mom or drive by my old stomping grounds anytime I want. There's no real sense of nostalgia there. Anyway, most of the open spaces of my childhood have been eradicated by that ever advancing wall of condominiums which seems to be botoxing the face of our state like nobody's business.
Anyway, that seems to be a very weird intro to a post entitled "free heavy metal", but for me, going to a free thrash metal/punk festival is sort of like revisiting old childhood haunts, especially since two of the bands, Exodus and Attitude Adjustment, were favorites of mine once upon a time. It was interesting to note that while I moved on from those days, at least some of the people I used to see at shows during the eighties have not. In fact, some of them seemed not to have aged either physically or mentally.
The festival in question was Tidalwave II, which took place at McLaren Park in San Francisco, in the very inappropriately named (for this event, anyway) Jerry Garcia Amphitheater. I only attended day one, arriving late and leaving early, so if you want a more complete review of this two-day festival, you'll have to look elsewhere.
The park itself was on a hill near the armpit of highways 280 and 101, and overlooked the little depression of land where the Cow Palace lurks. It is covered in Eucalyptus trees, which hide the amphitheater from the road. Of course, the loud heavy metal echoing through the hills served as a sonic beacon for late arrivals. I was hoping that the loud heavy metal was emanating from Zombie Holocaust, since I wanted to catch Detente's entire set. Unfortunately, it was Detente. I'm not sure how many songs we missed - probably only one or two, since we arrived no more than five or ten minutes after their start time. As we wandered into the amphitheater, they were just finishing up Russian Roulette, which is off their one and only album, "Recognize No Authority." The album came out in 1986, and featured vocalist Dawn Crosby, who went on to sing for Fear of God, and then died of some alcohol related complications. She always sounded so tortured and angry when she sang, except when she sounded profoundly sad, so I guess it's not to much of a surprise that something like alcohol would eventually do her in. She packed more real emotion into her vocals than any ten other heavy metal vocalists, so I was curious to see if this new incarnation of Detente, featuring Ann Boleyn from eighties band Hellion on vocals, would measure up.
The crowd at this point was still pretty thin, but there were somewhere between ten and twenty people down by the stage, with many others in the seats or on the lawn above, clustering in the shady spots. Ann Boleyn was doing a fine job on stage, although sometimes the high notes seemed a little thin. In retrospect, it may have been because we were standing between the P.A. speakers, or because she held the mic further away from her mouth when she screamed, but it's a minor quibble really. The band had been whittled down to a four piece too, with guitarist Ross Robinson (who is now apparently a well-known producer) no longer in the fold. The other three members, Dennis Butler on drums, Caleb Quinn on guitars, and Steve Hochheiser on bass ("he looks like a shop teacher," my friend Justin observed) were still present. The band ripped through most of the songs from their album, including, if I remember correctly, It's Your Fate, Holy War, Blood I Bleed, Vultures in the Sky, Shattered Illusions (I think), and maybe one or two more. The songs themselves were fine examples of early eighties thrash metal, back when the genre was still struggling to be born. I have to say that Ann Boleyn did a fine job with the songs, but I still prefer Dawn Crosby's vocals. That said, I never managed to see the first version of Detente live, so it's hard to compare the two. I never really heard much of Ann Boleyn's band, Hellion, but maybe I'll have to go check them out now. Ann herself, when she's not singing heavy metal, is now an attorney. Check out her myspace page. It was also interesting to note that Detente and headliners Exodus had both suffered through the deaths of their singers.
The next two bands, Havoc and Psychosomatic, really did nothing for me. They played their instruments competently enough, but they didn't really add anything new to a genre already oversaturated with similar bands. We sat up on the lawn and ate barbequed portabello mushroom burgers, courtesy of Cat's Head barbeque. We also amused ourselves by following the exploits of Metal Dog - a small dog dressed in a classic metal denim vest, which included, among other things, an Angelwitch patch. Yay! That said, I saw people with dogs, and even a ferret, not to mention small children who didn't appear to be wearing ear plugs, down near the stage. For me, that constitutes animal/child cruelty. Get you goddamn pets and kids away from the decibels, you assholes!
Attitude Adjustment, on the other hand, really got the nostalgia wagon rolling. I must have seen them at least twenty times during the eighties, although most of those shows featured a line-up that had no members in common with the one on stage at Tidalwave. This new Attitude Adjustment featured original singer Kevin, and original guitarist Eric, with some new (to me) guys filling in on bass, second guitar, and drums. They started with the classic Dead Serious, and proved to be good at riling up the crowd between songs as well. In fact, most of the songs they played were from a couple of decades ago. Let's see... Dope Fiend, Johnny, DSFA (dedicated to second singer Andy, who was in the crowd somewhere, although I never ran across him), In the Center, American Paranoia, and more that I'm forgetting, I'm sure. Come to think of it, I'm not sure if they did any songs that I didn't recognize. The sounded tight and powerful too, with the guitars really crunching along, and Kevin spitting out the vocals with conviction as people stage-dived into the audience. The stage diving was kind of stupid really, since the ground was hard, gravelly concrete. Kids will be kids though, and I suppose I did my share of stupid stage diving when I was their age. It was really great to hear these songs again, and I found myself really getting into their set. It was almost as if 20 years hadn't passed, and I could very clearly remember what I liked about this band - a sort of catchy, "fuck you" aggression that drives the songs relentlessly forward and leaves you breathless at the end. Okay, maybe that's overdoing it a bit, but you get the idea.
Hirax were up next, and I wasn't sure what to expect. Hirax was another band that I'd owned (and sold) records by back in the eighties. I'd seen them live, as well as singer Katon W. DePena's other band, Phantasm (featuring original Metallica bassist Ron McGovney). I'd never been too impressed with Katon's voice, although it was the selling point of the band(s). The music was always aggressive thrash metal, with Katon's voice being high and clean sounding, which was (and still is) a departure for thrash metal vocalists. For me, the voice never seemed to fit the music, and I preferred the gravel-throated singers. I was pleasantly surprised when Hirax started their set though. Katon's voice was powerful, and has developed a bit of a rough edge since I'd last heard them. I know they've put out some releases recently, but I haven't been paying attention since I don't really listen to so-called thrash metal anymore - not often anyway. Katon is also a hell of a showman, and it was fun just to watch his face as he sung. He dedicated just about every song to somebody or other, including the old school Bay Area metalheads, which I suppose includes me. Lots more stage diving ensued, including old school Ruthie's Inn veteran Toby Rage doing his signature jump off the towering P.A. into the crowd. That in itself was enough to transport me back a couple of
decades, especially since he doesn't seem to have changed in any way - the ghost of metal past.
Exodus was up last, and they started strongly with Bonded by Blood, a classic from their Ruthie's Inn days. They also did And Then There Were None (dedicated to deceased singer Paul Baloff) and Piranha. Unfortunately, new singer Rob Dukes doesn't have the charm and charisma of Paul Baloff. He's a competent singer, but in a paint-by-numbers sort of way. Add to that some really stupid between song banter, and you have a recipe for disaster. Exodus always set themselves apart from other thrash bands by having lyrics about violence, which as a teenager I thought was cool. But now, as a forty year old, I find them, well... stupid and pointless. Apparently
Exodus never left their childhood haunts. They haven't really grown in any way since the eighties.
With Attitude Adjustment, this didn't seem to matter, but then again their lyrics were intelligent to begin with. Exodus, on the other hand, are still singing about things that fifteen year old metal kids think are cool. I'm a forty year old metal kid. Sometimes you just can't go back home again. We left after they played Piranha because the nostalgia started to stink like rotten fish.
Paganfest USA, at the Avalon Ballroom (of all places), Santa Clara, CA, 5/9/08
Although I've been listening to heavy metal of one kind or another for over thirty years now, I've become a little more particular about what kind of metal I put in my ears these days. I went through a period of always trying to find the band that played faster than everybody else, or the band that was more disgusting or upsetting than everybody else, and through a period of attempting to locate the absolute slowest bands. Once both of these extemes had been reached, I went and listened (and still listen to) lots of very non-metal music as well. My job at Tower (books, but next to the record store) broke my narrow world clean open in a lot of ways, including introducing me to "world" music (I put it in quotes because it's really a meaningless term, since most "world" music is more rooted to a single geographical location than other types of music - it's not global at all, it's local!). I developed an immediate love for Scandinavian folk music, starting with the likes of Agnes Buen Garnas and Ale Moller/Lena Willemark's great Nordan project, and moving on from there. It was only a matter of time before metal reached out its long, cold fingers and co-opted all of this epic Scandinavian misery, which leads me to the review below.
Paganfest rolled into town last night. The town in question is Santa Clara, California, a dull suburb not known for its metal shows (or any other type of show, come to think of it). The venue, the Avalon, turned out to be walking distance from my mom's house in nearby Cupertino (of course, anything is walking distance as long as there isn't a body of water between you and your destination, but that's another story). I arrived at the club to find a long line of metalheads outside, decked out in the traditional metal costume of black, black, black. I joined the line and we inched forward. The sound of a band playing boomed dully through the walls - Germany's SuidAkrA had started their set, uncharacteristically (for any kind of live music) on time. We turned the corner and saw that, Disney-style, there was at least as long a line once you entered the doors. Plastered on the walls in several places, next to a sign advising that moshing and crowd surfing wasn't cool, was this sign:
Needless to say, I didn't actually see any disappointed attendees dragging their viking regalia back to their cars.
Once inside, I discovered that it was a pretty posh club, with acres of little round tables, a couple of video screens, brick facades, mood lighting, and more. SuidAkrA was in the middle of the set of loud, raspy-throated metal. Occasionally, a sung chorus or melodic break would rise above the din, reminding me a bit of the melodies found on mid-period Bathory albums (Hammerheart, Twilight of the Gods, etc.). This would be a recurring theme throughout the night. Historical note: Bathory was among the first of the so-called "viking metal" bands, but that was only after they'd passed through their "sound like Venom" stage. Fellow Swedes, Heavy Load, did this even earlier and much more melodically, but I digress... SuidAkrA weren't as good as either of the aforementioned bands, but they were enjoyable, even if the sound seemed a little hollow somehow. It's a shame they started playing while most of the crowd was still in line outside.
In very short order their set ended. I scanned the crowd for familiar faces, but found none. The crowd seemed mostly composed of teenagers and twenty-somethings, with only a handful of older people present. I probably only saw four or five people obviously older than me, and at least a few people who looked like they were still in elementary school.
The bands were playing on shared equipment, so there wasn't a big wait while the amps and drumsets were dragged back and forth. Eluveitie (from Switzerland) soundchecked a number of instruments before starting their set, including (to my excitement) a hurdy gurdy and a violin. When they finally started, it was with 8 band members. In addition to the aforementioned instruments and the more traditional metal ones, they also featured an array of tin whistles and gaida (an eastern european version of the bagpipes. The main vocalist (at times, everybody sang) played a mandola as well. This marks the first time I've seen an extreme metal band use a hurdy gurdy, and the first time I've seen someone headbanging while playing a tin whistle. They were definitely a sight to behold, with all of the tattoos, flying hair, and unexpected instruments. The crowd, who weren't allowed to dance, and kept under close watch by eager security, resorted to the time-tested heavy metal standbys of fist pumping and headbanging. Oh, and let's not forget the gratuitous use of the devil horn sign (which got George Bush in trouble in Norway once, but that's another story). I liked them enough to immediately buy their newest cd, Slania, and I'll definitely go see them again if they tour in the future. Strange that a Swiss band would sound so Scottish.
After another short break, during which I did an Umlaut-style audit of the merch table (if you bought one of everything, you'd spend $660, just $6 short of the most heavy metal of numbers - I must also add at this point that the club's address is 777, a most un-heavy metal number, unless you happen to be Trouble, or Stryper, or something...)
Tyr, from the Faroe Islands, marched on stage with little fanfare and immediately broke into a pair of songs from their upcoming album, Land. Using only traditional heavy metal instrumentation, they managed to sound both more "viking" and more "folk" than all of the other bands combined. The effortlessly pulled off a (tragically short) set of songs that sounded like they could have been written 5 or 6 hundred years ago and sung in longhouses somewhere along the coast of Greenland. Otyg is the only band I can think of who sounds anything like them. They were also the only band of the evening who I'd heard previous to this tour. I'm not sure why they played such a short set, but looking at the festival's MySpace page comments, this wasn't the only gig where this happened. Did they draw the short straw? Amongst the crowd, there was a lot of disappointment at the brevity of their set. Some even seemed outraged. Too bad - I would have loved to hear them to play for another hour or two.
Turisas were next, and the fans were already shouting for them before they hit the stage. To me it sounded for all the world that people were loudly chanting, "curry sauce! CURRY SAUCE!" When they finally arrived on stage, they did so in makeup and costume. The costumes were a sort of fur and armor plate thing, and the makeup made it look like they'd been mauled by bears. I can't fault their music though. They had a violinist and an accordian player to round out the standard instrumentation, and the singer was quite a character, often stopping to joke with the audience. He, being Finnish (the alcohol capital of the EU?), lamented the lack of good beer in the U.S., and the fact that some clubs wouldn't let the band drink on stage, leading them to resort to lifting pints of.... water... during their drinking song. The music was lively, growly, and melodic, sometimes with a folk tinge, and sometimes sounding epically Bathory-esque (geez, how many times can I mention Bathory in one review?). They also played a version of a 70's disco song (which I didn't recognize) complete with a disco ball brought out on stage by the singer. Great live band!
Finally, headliners Ensiferum hit the stage, and proved to be a bunch of shirtless, kilt-wearing young Finns. It was a bit of a letdown to see keyboards instead of the by-now-expected array of folk instruments. When they started playing, it was with studied ferocity, with the vocalist effortlessly emitting a most pleasing raspy roar. Occasionally, soaring choruses would float through the savagery, lending an epic feeling to the proceedings, but by this time I was starting to fade due to the fact that I'd been up for 20 hours on only five hours of sleep. Towards the end of their set, they launched into and instrumental version of Iron Maiden's The Trooper, and the crowd, with no prompting from the band, started singing the verses. It was so metal! It was strange, though, that a Finnish band would look so Scottish.
On the way out, some enterprising young black metal people handed me a free cdr by (presumably their band) Nihlotep. It's pretty good too! Epic local black metal? Why didn't this sort of thing happen when I was in high school? Dammit! Kids these days have all the luck.
