Ahhh…metal. A much derided, mocked and generally-laughed-at genre. And with good reason. It’s ludicrous. It’s juvenile. It’s bloody silly. But it’s also, in my opinion, the most fun you can have with music. It’s great. But playing devil’s advocate or celebrating the spandex is another post for another day. Today we shall be looking at the worst things that have happened to metal, the genre, the musicians and the bands. In it’s long history, metal has seen its fair share of stupidity and tragedy. Let’s take a look at the worst things that have happened to metal…
1. Chuck Schuldiner Dies Of Brain Cancer
Quite honestly the best guitarist / vocalist in the history of Death Metal and one of the best in straight up metal – Chuck Schuldiener was the driving force behind one of the founding bands of Death Metal – Death. Beginning as a Death Metal band, Chuck brought in elements of jazz, prog and classic heavy metal to further albums reaching the pinnacle of Death Metal perfection with Symbolic and the Sound of Perseverance He was widely regarded as one of the nicest guys in the genre and not only a great musician but a true fan of metal, putting out the Metal Crusade newsletter with his girlfriend. Tragically Chuck contracted brain cancer in 1999 and eventually died in 2001, leaving a legacy of great music and a great big hole in Death metal that has yet to be filled.
2. Bodycount Release Their First Album
There are worse albums. There are FAR worse albums. In fact I think Ice T is kinda cool. But this is a symbolic choice. This represents the birth of nu-metal, the awful bastard child of metal and hip hop that blends the worst elements of both and became a blight on the musical landscape for over a decade. Bands that took inspiration from this album like Korn, Coal Chamber and Linkin Park somehow managed to take this album as a blueprint and build something far worse.
3. Ozzy Does Reality TV
Ozzy was widely regarded as the prince of darkness, a legend in heavy metal, a member of the band that invented the genre. A dude so frickin METAL he has bitten the heads off two different living creatures and pissed all over the goddamned Alamo. That all changed on March 5th 2002 when he whored himself out to MTV. He instantly went from from revered metal god to shuffling, slurring idiot, cleaning up after a pack of yappy, ugly mutts. (I mean the dogs, not his kids.) It also inflicted Kelly Osbourne – a spoiled, post-accident Veruca Salt – on the world. Along with Jack Osbourne, who amazingly has less redeeming features than his sister.
4. Fred Durst’s Appearance On A Soulfly Album
Max Cavalera – we thought you were cool. Every Sepultura album was awesome. Even Roots, which even managed to get away with having ‘tribal influences’. But the first Soulfly album managed to piss upon everything that made Sepultura great. Bringing in fat, balding frat – that twat Fred Durst from possibly the worst band ever – Limp Bizkit – to provide rap vocals and back up squealing on mediocre track ‘Bleed’ was a serious misstep that caused a thousand face-palms in metal fans everywhere.
5. The Black Metal Murders
The early nineties in Norway was a scary place to be into metal. Suicide and murder was rife. If you believe the press. In actuality there were two murders – Thorns stabbed a dude in a park, and Varg Virkernes stabbed Euronymous. Dead from Mayhem shot himself. Crazy shit. However these stupid acts were turned into a media frenzy, blowing Black Metal into the mainstream and inspiring copycat dumbness the world over. Instead of being a fun little sub genre of metal, Black Metal became a kvlt ov evil with idiots trying to apply the most ornate corpse-paint and have the most monochrome album covers.
6. Metallica – St Anger / Some Kind of Monster
Metallica’s first three album’s are untouchable. Amazing examples of a young band pushing at he boundaries of metal and creating a legacy that would last for years to come. A legacy that got pissed all over by this monstrosity. Even through the 90s, Metallica weren’t that bad. You just had to forget that they were once the coolest band in metal and just imagine them as a cool rock band and – hey – they’re pretty alright. But then – St Anger. Trying to cash in on the re-emergence of metal headed up by Maiden and Priest, they record a ‘raw’ album. Full of unbelievably bad songs, shite lyrics (’I'm madly in anger with you’) and a snare that sounds like someone hitting a bin with a brush. And to add insult to injury, they release ‘Some Kind Of Monster’ – that shows the band, people thought to be the very baddest of badass – in therapy. THERAPY. That’s one wet, piss-smelling legacy right there guys. No wonder Jason left.
7. Lars Ulrich Vs. Napster
Metallica again. They are idiots after all. 2000 started as a pretty cool year for music on the internet. Thanks to Napster you could find and download whatever you wanted. Free. Took a while, but the system was efficient and easy. Thanks to Napster I discovered countless bands and had my eyes opened to entirely new genres. Enter Metallica. Apparently they got wind that shit song ‘I Disappear’ for shittier movie Mission Impossible 2 had been leaked on Napster and instead of thinking ‘hmmm…free publicity’ decided to shut it down. The outlaws of the music industry had become ‘the man’, showing how utterly out of touch they had become. Also, the world got to see how big a cock-end Lars Ulrich really is.
8. Dimebag Darrel Gets Shot On Stage
WTF? That was my reaction. I can sort of deal with metal heroes dying from natural causes, but this was just a major tragedy. Completely random, weird and horrid. On December 8th 2004 a mentally unstable former marine named Nathan Gale stormed the stage in a crappy club in Columbus, Ohio and shot Damageplan, and former Pantera guitarist Dimebag Darrel dead. This robbed the metal world of one of it’s greatest guitarists and according to reports, one of its nicest guys. Although Damageplan was nothing special, Pantera’s back catalogue is nothing short of genius. Riffs, solos, acoustic bits – everything was brilliant. A dark day for metal, and music in general.
That’s eight… are there more?
Get to the comments!
22 Comments
ah, first comment freshness. What about Therapy? Surely they are the worst thing to happen to Metal, if not music in general?
I would think that Celtic Frost doing a hair metal album would have to have been in the running, right?
Jeeeze….I’d forgotten about that! Good call man!
Unfair of you to diss korn – they used to be awesome. And thought you lose points for stupidly mi’splaced apo’strophe’s, otherwise a great article/metallica slagfest XD
I maintain that Korn have always sucked. I have many arguments about that.
Goddamn it. *hunts down misplaced appostrophies*
Korn have always, always, always been absolutely terrible.
“Every Sepultura album was awesome”
Against, with the partial exception of Choke, was pretty much gash. In fact haven’t most Sepultura albums since Max Cavalera left been shocking? In which case I think you could expand 4 to “Max Cavalera leaving Sepultura”.
Also 8 is an unnatural number for a list.
The Station nightclub fire that killed 100 people during a Great White show should top the list. That has to be one of the most tragic events in music history period.
Hey leave Metallica alone! St. Anger was great album. Instead of St. Anger, you should put Nu-metal in general on here!
I would maintain that nu-metal began in the mid 80s with Anthrax and Faith No More and, like many ideas, was a pretty good one to begin with.
I’d say the single worst thing to happen to metal has been the entire last decade, beginning with Motorhead t-shirts on sale in Top Shop, moving through nu-metal, followed by not only the Osbournes but also Rock School and the drummer out of Motley Crue’s shows and The Darkness, thus sealing the fate of the genre as one big ironic joke the whole family can play with.
Gah! Completely forgot about those t shirts turning up in Topshop – that was horrible.
The origins of NuMetal is pretty fluid – but Anthrax /Public Enemy was ace! Yeahhhhh Boiiiii!
Irony in metal is pretty redundant is the whole thing is utterly ridiculous to begn with, but yeah, making it an unfunny psudo-ironic joke was a big shitter.
Anthrax aren’t nu-metal! Faith no more…hmmm..borderline, but more of a post-grunge thing I’d say, otherwise we’d end up lumping Soundgarden and AIC in there too. I’m gonna say that Nu-Metal starts with the first Korn Album, and makes everything absolutely shite for approx 10 years afterwards.
Totally with you on the Top Shop debacle though-I also seem to remember Beckham wearing an Exodus shirt at one point, although I’m guessing he thought it was the Bob Marley album…
I don’t know, I’m fundamentally blind to ridiculousness in metal for some reason. Too much of it as a kid, it’s hard wired. John Darnielle, because he is a far more intelligent man than me, gets it exactly right in this article, worth a read: http://www.popmatters.com/pm/column/into-the-void-john-darnielle-on-sabbath-extreme-metal-and-indie-rock
To be utterly pedantic, I know that nu-metal didn’t start in the mid 80s, but the cross pollination with other genres, particularly hip hop, was well under way by then – ‘We Care A Lot’, Anthrax and loads of stuff. So Korn was a continuation.
Me n Vones is both massive metalheads, so I know what you mean, but I reckon the ridiculous, over-the-topness is what makes it so great, we NEED 16 year olds screaming about Satan to beat back the R n’ B hordes!
Personally I’d say it’s all continuation, sabs leads to priest, leads to rave, leads to metalllica,n so on n so forth, but as a distinctive movement, I think FNM reside slightly outside, certainly more in a ‘2nd wave of grunge/mainstream rock’ category or as a continuation of funk metal acts like mr Bungle etc, I think the first Korn album-awful as it is- is the first torch bearer for those poor, misguided nu-metal fans out there.
good article btw!
Whoda thought the dude from the Mountain Goats was into metal?
one word – Immortal
But…Immortal are ace! Not as good as Emperor obviously, but that’s not really the point is it-alltogether now…”sons of northern daarkness…Waaaaaarrrrrghh!
*cough*
*splutter*
Wha?
Immortal are FAR better than Emperor in all respects. Emperor are all about noodling about, while Immortal are a crushing blackthrash MACHINE!
Plus, better corpsepaint.
MUCH Better corpsepaint. Although I’m going with Gehenna in the Blackthrash stakes. WW is the baddest fucking album EVAR! It’s so cool, it’s almost as good as Occolt’s ‘Elegy for the Weak’!
didn’t read all comments but I think you missed the fact that some scene kids have begun confusing grindcore with death core and rise of the whole mallcore of whiney kids pretending to be br00tal
here’s a number 9 for ya…the use of the word core to subdivide nanogenres to the point of ridiculousness … maybe ppl confuse grindcore(shit music, sometimes funny) with deathcore (longer shit music, terrible lyrics, cookie monster death wails)… my $.02
Fuck deathcore! Immortal kick ass! Emperor’s first album two albums were good but screw the rest. Grindcore rules! Brutal truth, fuck the facts, wormrot, magrudergrind. Yeah none of those band are shit. They will take you out back and rape you till you piss blood.