Heartland

I’m not sure how many Heartlanders like or care about metal, and I’m not sure exactly what a thread devoted to this musical subject should include. I’ve been listening to a whole lot of it lately, mostly going back through 80s and 90s stuff I listened to at a younger age. Extreme music for extreme times, blah blah blah. I’m going to post here about albums that I love and that made a big impression on me. It would be wonderful to read about your favorites/stories/recommendations too. Classic, NWOBHM, thrash, death, doom, black, grindcore, post, industrial, it’s all game.




Mayhem: De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas


The first black metal album I ever heard and probably still the best. It gave me such a WTF reaction at the time, aged 14 or thereabouts, that I had to digest it over the course of a week. As in, play one song, feel dirty, play it again, go outside and smell a flower, wonder where the hell they make creeps like Mayhem, repeat. I won’t go into the circumstances surrounding the first two iterations of the band, except to say they likely explain why DMDS sounds so unbelievably evil after all these years. Yet, for all the blast beats and discordant solos, there are riffs and grooves aplenty on this album. Freezing Moon, Pagan Fears and Life Eternal, yes! These days DMDS is suitable for running, reading the news and driving on any of Los Angeles’ apocalyptic freeways.

Oh yeah, f**k Varg and f**k Mayhem 3.0. Cannot abide by that garbage.

HAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!

Finally after all these years, a METAL THREAD!

Next weekend, on Graspop Metal Meeting, Belgium:

"Mayhem is probably the band with the most turbulent and eventful past ever to play our festival. The lives of these pioneers of Norwegian black metal are inextricably tied up with murder, suicide, substance abuse and violence, but let’s be honest here: black metal is not for tree-hugging softies. Still, if you look past the controversy you’ll discover a band that’s always been able to push back the genre’s boundaries without compromising their identity. A Mayhem show teeters on the edge of structured chaos and leaves no one untouched. Mayhem are celebrating their 30th anniversary this year with a complete rendition of ‘De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas’, their seminal album that set the bar for a whole generation of black metal bands."

For me, my first explorations in rock and metal included (here we go) Europe (it was the year of The Final Countdown), Bon Jovi (Slippery When Wet/New Jersey), Mötley Crüe (Dr. Feelgood) and others. Hair metal so to say.
Then, I accidentally bought this cassette in my local Belgian Free Record SHop:



.... and my whole life changed. I had never heard such a dark and oppressive sound before (apart from my dad having a bad bowel day), and it scared me a bit. Tardy's voice was out of this world, the guitars were growling like a snarling beast and it was SLOW, goddamn... but soo HEAVY.

It took me a lot of listens before I finally fell in love with it. I went back to Free Record Shop (kudos for them having extreme metal cassettes back in the days!) and I discovered this gem in the vinyl section:



That was the day my journey began in earnest....

IZ.

I believe there is some HL interest in a band called Ghost

EmmaPeelWannaBe wrote:I believe there is some HL interest in a band called Ghost

I've heard some great things about their new line-up, especially both guitar players

Husek wrote:

EmmaPeelWannaBe wrote:I believe there is some HL interest in a band called Ghost

I've heard some great things about their new line-up, especially both guitar players

Please. Let's not have this thread vanished too.

EmmaPeelWannaBe wrote:I believe there is some HL interest in a band called Ghost

Ghost is utter wank. It's just Scooby Doo chasing music.

IZ.

Black Metal

My Dad used to listen to the Stones, Bowie and Zeppelin, so it was a natural progression for me to listen to the old Brit heavy rock groups like Free, Bad Co and Lizzy (Brit/Irish I know). I got as far as Motorhead but the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal (copyright Sounds music paper), like Maiden and Saxon and the rest in the late 70's, put me off full blown heavy metal. When caught on the M62 traffic jam I have been known to vent while listening to Metallica, must be a late mid-life crisis. I knew I should have bought that Harley lol.

A question though.... Why do heavy metal bands have such awful album covers?

Izzy HaveMercy wrote:

EmmaPeelWannaBe wrote:I believe there is some HL interest in a band called Ghost

Ghost is utter wank. It's just Scooby Doo chasing music.

IZ.

Metal Pop ... at best ...

Izzy HaveMercy: Fascinating. Going from Bon Jovi to Obituary would scare any young music lover! It took me a while to get into death metal honestly, because Cannibal Corpse was so popular in the states and I thought they were very dumb. I did eventually find some gems though, and Left Hand Path and Cause of Death are two of them. Have fun at Graspop!

RE: Ghost. I am sheepishly late to the party on this band. My, they are popular. Fenriz props? And Grammy awards too? By the looks of them I figured they were going for a Mercyful Fate vibe. But they sound quite pop/rock. And I’m not into the vocals. Then again, not everyone can sing like King Diamond, assuming they’d want to.

Big Si: Lol!

Swinnow: Album covers, good question. You know, going back to Izzy HaveMercy’s story about walking into a record shop and buying a metal album without knowing what the music would be like - I think that most bands picked artwork which would encourage the music buyer to judge the album from the cover. And teenage boys like corny s**t. I also think that’s part of what black metal bands were revolting against with their Xeroxed black and white aesthetic. Anyway, just my two cents. Maybe this thread will turn you on to road rage tunes beyond Metallica. Variety is the spice of, um, traffic?

Whe I started buying my own music, it was the era of PARENTAL ADVISORY stickers, so anything that had that sticker was per definition worth checking out

Some stores even went through the trouble of putting the records/cd's in red covers, so you could spot an interesting new release even from off the street!

So yes, bands used gory, sometimes childish artwork, not only because it sold easier, but also because a lot of this stuff was really low-budget, low-profile DIY. Most of the bands consisted of schoolboys and if one of them could draw a decent skull and some innards he was immediately promoted as Graphic Designer.

UniversalRinging: indeed, from Jon Bongiovi to John Tardy, if that would have scared me off, my life might have looked a LOT duller maybe tho I think I would have given in anyway later in life...

IZ.

Yay, a metal thread! Fun fun fun!

When I was a wee lad and music started taking over my life, metal was not my world. Yeah, as an even younger boy I was mad in love with Europe & I liked ac/dc when they got played on radio, but it didn’t go much further that that. It was all punk and wave and electro and industrial and shoegaze for me. And techno, dub, psychedelia, funk etc followed soon. Not that much metal though. But one day in the late nineties I was at Dour festival, the kind of festival with a gazillion stages and music from all styles and variations. My friend took me to see Slayer. 1 song in their set and I was hooked! I fell for that sound & Araya was such a cool dude. Great vibe! After that we checked another tent where Napalm Death were doing their thing. BAM, another penny dropped. That Barney fella was clearly intelligent and funny as hell! The sound clicked with my industrial and noise loving ears and I became fan for life. Over the years I started to dig more & more of that metal thing...



My Dying Bride. That might very well be the first metal band that I embraced big time. Early nineties, a goth kid (Sisters, Fields, Bauhaus & Joy Division were my big 4) and my brother’s girlfriend’s brother (hehe, that sounds like a ToN title gone horribly wrong) put Turn Loose The Swans into my hands. Listen to this he said, it’s like poetry he said. Well intrigued by the artwork & songtitles I pressed play… that piano, that violin & that voice. BAM! Loved them ever since, not buying everything obsessively like with some other bands, but the handful of MDB albums I have are all very high in my fave’ albums of all time list!

So can we all agree that every metalheid here started his first steps towards metaldom with listening to boys wearing lipgloss and spandex?

IZ.

still do

@UniversalRinging, friends on the Wirral know Bill Steer (Carcass and Napalm Death) pretty well and have tried to steer me in a more extreme direction over the years by passing me some of his stuff.

Swinnow: Lucky you! Now that's a marvelous endorsement!

Radiojamaica: Lovely stories. My tastes started out similar to yours when I was first getting very into music. Sounds like your initiation into metal couldn't have begun better, what a jolt it must have been to see those two bands straight off the bat.

Izzy HaveMercy: Ha! The Great Parental Advisory Sticker Backfire. They certainly became a kind of advertisement.

Aight! Preparations for GRASPOP are done, half a work day and I'm off to Belgians' Biggest Metalfest

I hope the party tonight won't be too heavy, because in the morning (OK, actually noon, but it will FEEL like morning) it's the Belgian thrashers of EVIL INVADERS!

Check out their new videoclip here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZLEH9uSJlI

IZ.

Izzy HaveMercy wrote:So can we all agree that every metalheid here started his first steps towards metaldom with listening to boys wearing lipgloss and spandex?

IZ.

KISS 1979

First music I really got into; Bon Scott era AC/DC, Rainbow, Judas Priest and Dianno era Maiden etc. Sadly Im just too young to have seen Bon Scott and more so RJD Rainbow though I saw RJD Sabbath (I Like it) and Dio but one of the bands I would love to have seen is that era of Rainbow. Don't think Im the only one here with a love of Dio's voice to me he is the perfect metal vocalist. Never really got in to a lot of the thrash type genres though, did not mind some Anthrax though.
As a side note I always felt that VT is an excellent hard rock/metal album, does anyone else feel the same?

Second proper band I ever saw was Bon Scott era AC/DC in the late 70's at the Empire in Liverpool, great venue, shame that bands don't seem to play there anymore. I agree that Vision Thing is a good hard rock album, don't think it crosses the line into heavy metal though.

stefan moermans wrote:KISS 1979

For my sins I also saw Kiss at Deeside Leisure Centre, near Chester, in the early 80's (I think), awful venue, wasn't quite Kiss Alive II standard

first band 81 motorhead limburghall Genk. was 14y old

stefan moermans wrote:first band 81 motorhead limburghall Genk. was 14y old

Hell yeah!!!





Oh yeah, Ghost is utter crap

Recently I've been massively intrigued by a Swiss band called Schammasch. A friend pointed me towards their Triangle album, a triple treat (3 cd's!) and just a trip into the deep. There's black, there's dark wave, there's good frakkin' sh*t! On Roadburn festival in April they played the album in its entirety in a converted church. It was 2 in the afternoon and it was a blast


https://schammasch.bandcamp.com/album/triangle