Word: metallism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Most metal bands still must rely on concerts and word of mouth to sell records. "It's a cultlike audience," says Geoff Mayfield, director of retail research for Billboard. "A record like Metallica can sell without airplay and without MTV. So there is a voracious appetite...
...which features heavy-metal bands every Saturday night on the Headbangers' Ball program, acknowledged metal's ascendancy by inviting Metallica to play on its 1991 video awards show. On that show, the Viewer's Choice Award for Best Video went to Queensryche, another metal band with a broad following. In October the heavy-metal scene will get its own Grammys when the first Concrete Foundations Awards are held in Los Angeles...
Musically, heavy metal has evolved somewhat, from a monotonous barrage of frenetic tempos and slashing guitars toward richer aural textures and even an occasional ballad. Metallica is typical of the metal bands that have renounced their raunchy roots and polished their music, if not their image. Gone are the crude lyrics and blaring wah-wah guitars that marked its sound in the mid-' 80s. Many of the tunes on Metallica could almost be called reflective, like Holier Than Thou: "Gossip is burning on the tip of your tongue/ You lie so much you believe yourself/ Judge not lest...
...Metal musicians play to the alienated fantasies of a mostly white, young and male audience by portraying themselves as disillusioned outsiders who have turned their backs on a corrupt civilization. Dressed like renegade bikers, they sing anthems to the rebellious and the wild, or wild at heart. Outrageous behavior is more than a pose for many of them, notably Skid Row's lead singer, Sebastian Bach (ne Bierk), whose on-the-road antics have included tearing up hotel rooms and striking a concert spectator with a bottle that he hurled into the audience...
...Things have come full circle," says Bach, a Canadian who sang in church choirs before finding his true calling in the Toronto club scene. "In the '70s pop was more hip, and now the energy of punk has come into heavy metal. Punk was a socialist thing, and metal was a capitalism thing." Yet both are sneeringly anti-Establishment. In Slave to the Grind, Skid Row proclaims, "Can't be the king of the world/ If you're slave to the grind/ Tear down the rat racial slime...