Seb Hunter - Hell Bent for Leather - Confessions of a Heavy Metal Addict

One Sunday he was lighting a fire with wet kindling and newspaper, a cigarette in his mouth, and I was playing him Highway to Hell , explaining each track as they came and went. His face was a picture of resigned indifference, but I was determined he’d like it this time. After all, it was my current favourite album, and Bon’s voice was easier than Brian’s, and my father didn’t have his fingers in his ears for once, which was a start. After ‘Shot Down in Flames’ he slowly took the cigarette from his lips and muttered, ‘I quite liked that one.’

Wow! I played it again straight away, fluffing the rewind button in my excitement, but next time when it finished he said, ‘But that one was bloody dreadful.’

‘It was the same one!’

‘Aha.’ Pleased with himself, he turned on the television.

‘Well, did you like it or not?’ I was hopping around, preparing to rewind it again, but he’d turned the TV up so loud he couldn’t hear me.

Heavy Metal is defined by the Cambridge Dictionary as: ‘A style of rock music with a strong beat, played very loudly using electrical instruments’. I reckon they’ve nailed it. The Collins calls it: ‘A type of rock music characterised by high volume, a driving beat, and extended guitar solos, often with violent, nihilistic, and misogynistic lyrics’. It’s hard to disagree. And by Heavy Metal, I mean the real thing – the original full-fat knuckleduster motherfuckers. I’m talking about Metal’s Golden Age, which took place between 1969 (the first Led Zeppelin album), and 1991 (Nirvana’s second album, Nevermind ). This book only takes into account events that took place between those two landmark dates, so if you’re here looking for some Slipknots, or The Limp Biscuits, you should search elsewhere.

Heavy Metal comes from two places: the blues, and a strange kind of bombastic neo-classical. Two famous Metal bands illustrate this well: Motorhead and Van Halen. Motorhead’s seminal (the Metal world adores the word seminal) No Sleep ’til Hammersmith , an album recorded at the genre’s High Temple, Hammersmith Odeon, is a Metal classic. Essentially it’s just a fast and mucky blues album howled out by a handlebar-moustached and wart-ridden speed-freak. In the other camp you’ve got Eddie Van Halen, guitarist in his eponymous group, who created a new style of Wagnerian arpeggio by playing his guitar’s neck two-handed, almost like a piano, using classical scales and phrasing, which went on to influence swathes of bouffant pomposity and Paganini plagiarism. There was no soul in that half – most Metal came straight out of the blues and those hoary old three chords, just played at ear-splitting levels – and in very tight trousers.

Why is the concept of high volume so important to the genre? It’s because otherwise it would be extremely boring. If you think about it, there are no subtle structural dynamics to listen out for – no artistry in construction to be intellectually appreciated and politely applauded – you’re not going to miss anything. The only question to ask during a Metal song is: when is the guitar solo? That’s all you really have to think about, so you’re free to jump up and down and make devil shapes with your hands, headbang if you feel like it, and brazenly punch the air to the battering flood of watts coming at you from all those Marshall amplifiers.

It’s primal, all the way through – stick-of-rock primal. Sound, volume, pummelling. It even hurts the next day. Brilliant!

The loudest musical performance ever recorded (so far), hitting a marauding 129.5 decibels (louder than a jet plane take-off), was achieved by an American band called Manowar during a concert in Germany. Manowar were one of those bands that gave Metal a bad name. They epitomised the clichés we were all so ashamed of. Manowar wore animal hides and fur, had huge biceps and Viking-style handlebar moustaches. They cut themselves with a ceremonial dagger and then signed their record contract in their own blood. They had names like Scott Columbus, Ross the Boss, Death Dealer and Rhino. They believed in True Metal (their own music), and dedicated their entire career to the vanquishment of their nemesis, False Metal (music other than their own).

Manowar set out to wither the competition with decibels and gesticulation. They succeeded up to a point, inspiring their huge and loyal fanbase to write letters into Kerrang! magazine accusing bands like Poison and Motley Crue of peddling False Metal, in terrible spelling. Every album Manowar released was even more epic than its predecessor, more grandiose in its warrior vision. They’re still going today, still topless and wearing loincloths, their moustaches just slightly craggier. False Metal is still out there winding them up, and they remain committed to destroying it. Joey, Manowar’s muscled bass player, sums up their ethos well: ‘The whole purpose of playing live is to blow people’s heads off. That’s what we do; that’s the energy of this band. We’re out there to kick ass. We’re out there to turn our gear on and blast. We’re out there to kill. That’s what Metal is. Anyone saying otherwise is not playing Heavy Metal. We will melt your face!’

Manowar.

Metal’s love of volume is ubiquitous. Here are some song titles celebrating, and, in some cases, frantically urging you to turn the volume up to aid your listening experience:

‘I Love it Loud’ – Kiss. A simple paean to loud music. Gene Simmons, the bat/demon character in the group, wants you to feel it right between the eyes .

‘Blow up your Speakers’ – Manowar. Speaks for itself. They also criticise MTV in this song, for not playing their music, a statement that to this day remains unrequited.

‘All Men Play on 10’ – Manowar again. Ten refers to the volume dial.

‘Blow up your Video’ – AC/DC. Because it’s not loud enough, and the speakers have already been blown up, elsewhere. This is another protest at lack of television airplay. It also makes the point that videos are commercial and unnecessary and somehow False Metal.

Loudness: the self-explanatory name of a Japanese Metal band of the 80s, humorously nicknamed Roudness by the Metal press. They wrote songs called ‘Rock Shock (More and More)’, ‘Burnin’ Eye Balls’, ‘Bloody Doom’, ‘Dogshit’, and my favourite, what-does-it-mean? ‘Hell Bites (from the Edge of Insanity)’.

‘For the Sake of Heaviness’ – Armoured Saint. Almost poetically honest.

‘Too Loud (For the Crowd)’ – Venom. (Metal loves brackets too.)

‘Louder than Hell’ – Motley Crue. Strangely, this song comes from the height of their poodle period, when you’d have thought being louder than hell was the last thing on their minds. This song isn’t loud at all.

(Manowar had a song called ‘Louder than Hell’ too.)

Although lyrics about how loud you play are evergreen, there are several basic lyrical themes which are even more beloved. These are: anything involving or referring to sex or the sexual act; travelling really fast; blowing things up (rebellious violence in the name of rock); and (preferably Norse) mythology. Any combination of these subjects is also completely fine, indeed combinations are essential if you’re going to have enough to write about over the course of a long career.

If a Metal band decides to stray from these well-trodden paths, they will usually end up producing a concept album. The concept album is Heavy Metal’s ultimate High Art statement, its holy grail of spiritual and intellectual achievement. Most Metal musicians will, at some point in their career, be inspired by a film they have seen, an obscure mythological tale they have read, or a social injustice they have stumbled across, and decide to retell that story via one continuous piece of music which often stretches over an entire double album. The result is usually a paper-thin narrative crudely welded on to a set of lyrically clumsy songs that are all still about sex and rebellion and mythology, but with spooky incidental music breaking up the individual tracks. These concept albums often come in expensive and showy packaging; fold-outs with poems and encrypted messages for their fans to unravel. Then, on the subsequent tour, at some point in the show they’ll play through the whole thing from start to finish, using tapes to fill in the linking bits they can’t play themselves, boring everybody in the audience who came to hear the songs which celebrate how loud the band is. Almost every Metal group makes a concept album at some point during their career, even Motorhead; it was about the First World War and it was called 1916 .