A Lesson in Metal

Hello friends and thanks again for reading. Its hard to believe I'm already at 31 entries. Tonight's entry is touch again on the topic of Heavy Metal. This is because of two reasons. The first was this past Thursday, some friends and I attended the second stop of the Metal Masters Tour. The second reason is because several people lately have made some insulting comments about metal, and my taste in it. These people though are, well for a lack of better wording, ignorant, in what metal is and its roots.

Heavy metal is a genre of rock music that came out of the rock and blues movement in the US and UK. Its defined by virtuosic guitar solos and driving beats. It developed out of the progressive psychedelic rock area. Some of the earliest metal bands are Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, and Iron Butterfly. That's right, so if you like Kashmir, Paranoid, Smoke on the Water, or In-na-godda-da- vita, you like some metal. These bands spurred off bands such as AC/DC which drives the blues aspect of metal, Judas Priest who dropped the blues feel and pushed the power chord and epic sound, and Motorhead, who added the element of punk rebellion to metal. Iron Maiden and Judas Priest developed the epic metal and the concept of British Steel. In the 1980's glam-rock was a cover really for metal bands such as Guns n Roses, Motley Crue, Dokken, and countless others. Metal gets a bad rap because of the sometimes dark or rebellious tones of the songs. The problem is that a lot of the imagery used in the darker metal comes straight from the book of revelations in the bible, from famous works of literature( Rime of the Ancient Mariner used by Iron Maiden), or right from society and the history books. At no point have the mainstream metal bands every sung for you to kill yourself, your mother, your dog, your neighbor, or your goldfish. If anyone really wanted to pay attention they would realize that most of the lead singers of the big metal bands are quite educated and are extremely fan oriented. Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden is a trained airline pilot and a historian. Rob Halford of Judas Priest has a three and a half octave vocal range. Ther'es serious skills there and amazing song writing occurring in metal. The only demonic, hate-filled music in metal is being made by the white supremacists or the dark, too serious for their own good thrash metal bands.

With that out of the way, I go into the Metal Masters Tour show last Thursday at the Nissan Pavilion. The line up was Testament (an American Thrash metal band from the 1990's), Motorhead (British metal band, some times referred to as biker metal or punk metal, formed 1975), Heaven and Hell (a reunion of Black Sabbath with Ronnie James Dio), and Judas Priest (British metal group, formed in 1970).

I must say Testament sounded a bit rusty but they started to get themselves going by the time their half hour set was up. I wanted to hear more of them. Not much else I can say about them.

Next up was Motorhead. I've not heard much of Motorhead, but I respect Lemmy (Lead vocals and bass) to no end. Motorhead came out and rocked the house and thats when the first bit of crowd behavior started becoming an issue. Motorhead put a solid hour long set together, featuring their big song, Ace of Spades. This is when things got loud.

The next band was Heaven and Hell. Their staging was quite elaborate with demons in the trees breathing fog and red eyes. Also lots of lighting effect, including turning Dio completely red. Tony Iommi, lead guitar, totally still tears it up after all these years. They chose to call themselves Heaven and Hell for this tour instead of Black Sabbath to not cause any confusion with the fact that Ozzy is doing a solo tour currently (which I attended back in January).

Judas Priest was the headliner and the act I was most interested to see. They have been in existance since 1970. Rob Halford is one of the biggest and most famous lead singers in rock, not just metal. They were smart and did the a song from the new album first, and then went digging into their back catalog. They even had Halford ride out his big motorcycle and sing Hell Bent for Leather from the back of the bike. Way cool. My only gripe was that they did Breakin' The Law early in the set and Halford did not sing the chorus even once. He had the crowd sing it. Sure thats fun, but damn it, I am there primarily for you to sing, not the drunks in earshot. Over all a great show.

On a side note, I must ask what is the appeal of going to these concerts with the purpose to get drunk? You pay good money only to drink and get in a fight, or ruin someone else's experience. I only say this because we had a group next to us that didn't recognize the area we had staked. We were staked at the front edge of the lawn, right before the 70 degree slope down to the sidewalk. The group next to us kept moving over and stood right in front of us, forcing themselves to keep balance on the hill. It almost seemed intentional, and appeared it was when one member of the group got his wish and found himself in a fist fight with one of his own friends, a guy he was hugging 5 minutes prior to the fight. Now I'm not saying there shouldn't be alcohol. Sure, have a drink or two, dance to the music in your own area, but why the violence? The music doesn't call for it, not even inspiring for violence. I guarantee Lemmy would say "Bloody hell, whats this fuckin bullshit mosh pit?" These bands come out and bow after their sets, they hug kids near the front and give out their drumsticks? You think they want you beating the crap out of each other? The true fans go and listen, have fun and appreciate. You look like an asshole, and a good bet is you are an asshole. Notice I don't even care if you smoke your weed or whatever there, none of my business, and I haven't seen a pothead try to punch his best friend for what seems to be for standing within ten feet of his woman. I have seen a drunk do that. Immature and useless.

Well my friends, I wish you good night. To quote Lemmy "We are Motorhead and we playing fucking rock n roll music, good night!"