No Frills Reviews

I don’t really like metal, it’s always just seemed incredibly dorky to me. I should clarify that when I talk about metal, I’m thinking of the post-thrash style that emerged in the early 80s and beyond – growling vocals, pointy beards, lyrics about death and demons; all of those clichés. I know that the likes of Led Zeppelin or Black Sabbath are sometimes classed as metal, but I’ve always compartmentalised that as hard rock (or perhaps proto-metal), rather than outright metal.

As a teenager in the North-East of England during the 2000’s, metal felt like a relic of the past. It was the domain of the weird goth kids prone to self-harm, who thought they were growing up in an American high school. It was not cool, basically.

As I grew older and my tastes expanded, I still largely ignored metal, considering it an inherently silly genre. I think the vocal style is probably a big part of that. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good scream, but it has to feel meaningful; it’s a raw expression of emotion. If everything is a scream, then nothing is a scream; you have to earn the scream. Plus, it just doesn’t really sound good – still, not cool, basically.

And, the whole aesthetic is a bit crap isn’t it – once again, not cool, basically.

But I do like a lot of the rock that influenced the metal style. Big riffs are always cool and isn’t metal just big riffs all the time. So I thought I’d give metal more of a chance. My idea is to dip my toes in and hopefully desensitise myself to the heaviness of it all, and maybe I start to get it. I’m gonna start with a song per week though because it’s still metal, I don’t want to listen to that much of it.

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Slayer – Raining Blood

We begin with Slayer; one of the originators of the early heavy thrash/speed metal sound so this probably isn’t gonna be one to ease me in. Raining Blood is the semi-title track from their landmark 1984 album, Reign in Blood.

Firstly, that title totally fits my metal preconceptions, and I had a realisation of what metal reminds me of. Having a young child means I’ve been watching a lot of The Grinch (Jim Carrey version) over the Xmas period. There’s a scene where the little girl pays The Grinch an unexpected visit at his mountaintop lair. The Grinch sneaks out of the shadows and unleashes a flurry of crazy faces, gestures and sounds in an attempt to show how evil he is and scare her. But the little girl sees through him and laughs at the ridiculousness of it all. That’s metal for me. It’s so in-your-face and stereotyped in it’s ‘darkness’, that I can’t take it as anything other than ridiculous.

The song intros with thunder and rain sound effects. Again, such a ‘spooky’ cliché that it feels like a parody. But it works to build anticipation as slow drum rolls ease us in before the heaviness begins; the ‘calm before the storm’ (or ‘storm before the storm’ in this case).

Once the heaviness kicks off, it really kicks the fuck off. Huge squealing riffs and machine gun drumming, before teasing that it’ll settle into a (still heavy) steady chug, before psyching you out and kicking the fuck off again; a ludicrous display of speed and power.

The formulaic metal vocal stylings somewhat curb my interest, and the lyrics are the sort of unironic absurdity I was expecting (sample – “Trapped in purgatory, A lifeless object, alive, Awaiting reprisal, Death will be their acquittance”).

Sonically, this goes so hard that I can’t deny that it’s a banger. But everything about the vocals and lyrics bring it down. A banger can be a banger regardless of lyrics, but the straight-up cheesiness of it is an immersion killer and takes me out of it at multiple points.

And that may well summaries my current position on metal; I can get into the actual music (although maybe in small doses), but I’m not sure I’ll ever get on board with the sheer metal-ness of the lyrics and vocals.

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The next edition of Metal Mondays looks at Megadeth: