Live 4 Metal - Metal Myth Busting

You’ve heard it as many times as I have – you’ll be sat there, in your front rooms, vegged out on the sofa full of Indian takeaway and canned beer watching some bollocks “Heavy Metal” VH-1 special, when some rent-a-twat (probably Scott Ian or that fister from Twisted Sister) will exclaim “but when Nirvana came, man, they just swept metal away. It was that powerful”. This has become a modern fact. The only problem with this “fact” is that when placed under the powerful spotlight of metal truth, it turns a peculiar shade of bollocks.

The actual facts of the matter are that this myth is correlative, not causational. Metal is not immune to the fads and trends that other genres have. The explosion of grunge occurred, for the purposes of this discussion, between 1990 and 1993, epitomised by the hugely over rated Nirvana, the bafflingly popular Pearl Jam, the amusingly banal Stone Temple Pilots and the barely tolerable Alice In Chains. At this time, the mainstream perception of heavy metal was more based around the likes of Def Leppard and Motley Crue than Slayer or even, arguably, the likes of Iron Maiden or Judas Priest. That some of these bands were swept away by the tide of be-flanneled wasters is undeniable – the so-called glam metal or hair metal bands. The truth is that these were never really metal bands in the first place, owing more to the glitz and glamour of the 70’s rock era than to any working class grounded urban music that true metal came to represent. Many of the other bands were having a nadir in their career at the same time, though this was probably less to do with the runaway success of Kobain and his band of unhappy men and more to do with the natural cycles of bands. Removing metal bands from the television and radio playlists created it’s own validation – here is proof that grunge killed metal, as it wasn’t covered as extensively as it had been in 1980’s heyday.

Outside of the mainstream though, metal was doing just fine, thank you very much. The huge explosion of death metal bands during this period, for instance, has been widely reported and to a large extent co-existed alongside the more alternative rock and grunge music of the time. Thrash metal was also by no means a spent force, and classic albums from the white hi-top era continued to be produced long after the appearance of Nevermind. 1990 saw Rust in Peace, Seasons in the Abyss and Left Hand Path. 1991 saw Arise, Blessed are the Sick and Blind. 1992 saw Vulgar Display of Power, As the Flower Withers and The Ritual. 1993 witnessed Focus, Covenant and Bloody Kisses. These lists go on and on throughout the 1990’s – the very same period when the nay sayers say that metal was “dead”. In fact, metal found that it didn’t need the mainstream media in order to sustain it – the newly emergent internet had provided a convenient way for Death Angel T-shirt clad geeks the world over to obsess and argue over their beloved music. Motley Crue might have found that their horribly clichéd misogyny and contrived party-boy lyrics were out of sync with the holier-than-though attitudes of the Seattle generation, but for the rest of the hard-working, insular metal generation, it was business as usual. From the so-called death of metal to the “The Death Of The Resurrection Of The Death Of Metal” (to quote Zimmers Hole), our sacred faith has gone from strength to strength, consistently improving sales and a resilient underground movement that has burgeoned and expanded.

But what of the metal-killers? Well, Kobain (tortured genius or tedious twat, dependant on view point) was ironically killed by metal. Pearl Jam are now some Neil Young tribute act (only without the tunes), Soundgarden imploded and then melded with the remnants of Rage Against The Machine to produce a hybrid the likes of which have not been seen since my last trip through a remote Norfolk village. Alice in Chains have weathered the storm with some dignity, while the junkie from Stone Temple Pilots shacked up with the washed up sad and desperate from Guns n Roses to form exactly the kind of band that his generation were going to supplant. They came to kill metal? Where are they now?