HEAVY MIDDLE: “Sometimes at festivals we feel like the proverbial turd in the punch bowl,” says Baroness’s John Baizley (second from right), “whether it’s because we’re too metal or not metal enough.”
Let’s cut to the chase — metal is back. And not just as a popular musical style, but as a subculture, freely seeping into the mainstream in a variety of strange ways, from the bullet belts you see on a dance floor to the devil horns being thrown by everybody and your uncle’s band. It’s hard to believe that, not long ago, mainstream America girded itself against the Satanic threat of heavy metal, combing record grooves for backward messages and blaming teenage suicide on innocuous Ozzy lyrics. I guess when the world around us starts to look more and more like a mid-’80s Nuclear Assault album cover, it becomes harder for the Man to crush metal — especially when, in 2010, the Man probably grew up with his parents throwing away his Twisted Sister cassettes.
Scott Lee has a sensible explanation: “People are angrier, and they want angrier music!” Besides being a long-time promoter and booker of (mostly) metal shows in Massachusetts, Lee is also co-founder of the annual New England Metal and Hardcore Festival. Now in its 12th year, the fest takes over the Worcester Palladium this Friday and Saturday for two all-day multi-stage shows. And Lee and company have outdone themselves, bringing in enormous-venue fillers like Mastodon, Cannibal Corpse, Baroness, Municipal Waste, and Holy Grail. “Not only are people angry,” he elaborates, “but the marketing of metal has gone through the roof, and it’s just far more accessible now.”
Part of the key to metal’s accessibility of late (aside from the usual talk of technology and social networking and whatnot) is the way the underground has gradually surfaced. Instead of trying to refine their sound for the mainstream, bands are seeing their respective niche styles attracting flocks of diverse new fans. “A band that we might have booked as an opener seven years ago can now headline,” Lee concurs. “When bands like All That Remains and Killswitch Engage get played on the radio, it opens up a bigger picture for other underground bands. Moreover, metal fans are loyal. They get behind a band the way people get behind the Red Sox.”
With the major-label star system rapidly failing, and access to new music easier than ever, getting into metal for a fan means entering a dizzying barrage of bands and sounds, with new strains and trends constantly hitting their stride. Anyone who complains that there’s nothing new or nothing good going on in metal is not paying attention.
Baroness singer/guitarist John Baizley agrees, though he suspects there might also be something more philosophical at work. “Since the turn of the millennium, there’s been a new movement that has been hesitant to have a strict adherence to metal, because that would limit them to that orthodoxy. These are bands from a punk or hardcore background with a greater open-mindedness in terms of music styles.”
In other words, metal bands are declining to admit they’re metal — in the same way that many grunge and emo stars of prior decades rejected the orthodoxy of their genres. Baroness and Mastodon have shown that an outfit can climb damn near the top of the metal heap without entirely being a metal band: both create dense polyrhythmic soundscapes fitted into intellectually rigorous thematic frameworks rich with crushing riffery and vicious breakdowns. This high-wire act has allowed them to stand out amid the metal masses. “Although sometimes at festivals we feel like the proverbial turd in the punch bowl,” says Baizley, “whether it’s because we’re too metal or not metal enough.”
But if Baroness can seem guilty of overthinking metal, others are taking quite the opposite tack. “There are a lot of know-it-alls in metal, people who try to put us in a corner, in terms of what they think we can or can’t do,” says Tony Foresta, vocalist of thrashmasters Municipal Waste. “It forces us to punch our way out, and in a way, that shit drives us. When people put us down, it makes us more creative. Spite can be a hell of a motivator.”
SPITE MOTIVATES: Municipal Waste lurched away from the drink-and-puke mentality toward something darker and meaner.
Foresta knows whereof he speaks: for nine years, the Waste have been cranking out slab after slab of increasingly taut jams that meld metal, hardcore punk, funny party rock, and dead-serious bummer metal. They hit the big time with their third album, The Art of Partying (Earache), only to lurch away from the drink-and-puke mentality toward something darker and meaner. “We probably would have made a lot more money if we just did songs about beer and whatnot,” Foresta allows, “but if we didn’t progress, we’d end up hating it. We didn’t want to be a band that relies on gimmicks.”
James de la Luna was trying to avoid a career full of gimmicks when he quit his happening retro-metal outfit White Wizzard to form the progressive metal juggernaut that is Holy Grail. “Wizzard was very passionate about a traditional movement,” he points out. “We are into that — we didn’t just like old-school metal. We wanted metal that was broader.”
A comparison between de la Luna’s old and new bands may reveal a shift from British Steel–era Priest metal to, uh, Painkiller–era Priest, but in a world of metal microgenres, Holy Grail’s inclusiveness is refreshing. (So is the jaw-dropping lead-guitar work on their Prosthetic-issued debut EP, Improper Burial, which is meant to tide us over till their full-length debut, Crisis in Utopia, hits in the fall.) The band’s not-so-secret weapon is de la Luna’s pipes, which hit castrato highs that would put Ian Gillan’s Deep Purple glass shattering to shame. “My singing style is not very conventional,” he allows, “and it might not be the popular way to sing right now. But it’s the only way I know how, so I have to go for it. Because, right now, we’re just really in for the kill.”
Trends and styles come and go; what remains timeless in metal is the desire in fans and bands alike to push it to the limit. Give Scott Lee the last word: “Making metal people happy is tough. Ultimately, though, metal fans are hardworking people who want hardworking music. These bands deliver, this festival delivers, and everyone is psyched! When it works, it’s such a beautiful thing.”
NEW ENGLAND METAL AND HARDCORE FESTIVAL | Palladium, 261 Main St, Worcester | April 23-24 | All ages | $40 Friday; $46 Saturday; $80 two-day pass | 800.477.6849 or metalandhardcorefestival.com
