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 5^th 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?

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