Travel back in time with me…

The year was 1990, and I was fourteen years old, living in a small town in Central Wisconsin. I had been learning how to play drums for two years and had just joined my first band. So in short: an adolescent boy and all that entails, mixed with middle-of-nowhere Wisconsin. Got all that? Elsewhere, Metallica had recently released their …And Justice for All album, along with their first ever video for MTV. Dave Mustaine’s Megadeth had just released their masterwork Rust in Peace, and – almost simultaneously – Anthrax put out the brilliant Persistence of Time and Slayer released their seminal Seasons in the Abyss.

You still following? Okay, let’s put all this together…

Impressionable-teen-wannabe-musician + the culmination of thrash metal. Yeah, my life was changed.

There’s something about the genre that speaks to my most primal and base instincts. Twenty years have passed, and I’m now an “adult”, father of two. Yet every time I hear Charlie Benante pound out the thunderous opening of “Time”, the fourteen year-old inside of me can’t help but raise the devil horns to the sky and whisper, “Aw, fuck yes!”

Metal is a curious genre, always lurking just below the thick crust of popular music and rarely ever poking through. In fact, the years of 1990 – 1993 are the closest it ever got to mass acceptance, what with Metallica’s “Black” album, Megadeth’s Countdown to Extinction, and Anthrax’s Sound of White Noise. Each of those albums featured shorter, simpler songs, which seemed designed to appeal to a wider audience. But even then, it only lasted a short while. Megadeth and Anthrax wandered aimlessly for the next decade, while Metallica went on to greater fame and fortune through their newfound “metal-lite” formula, only recently remembering what it was that made them great. And, it seems, along with that revelation, also came the realization that, “Hey! People still love that music!” And it’s true: though never really seeing any success on the charts, each of these bands enjoys huge popularity throughout the world, selling out clubs, theaters, and even arenas wherever they go.

Thus: The Big Four of Thrash tour.

The story goes like this: Last year, Metallica was inducted into the Hall of Fame. For the celebration, they flew out all their friends who helped them get to where they are, including members of the other “Big Four” bands. Apparently, all the nostalgia got to Lars Ulrich (Metallica’s drummer), and he floated the idea of doing a full-blown tour with the Big Four. It took some doing, but nearly a year later, the idea finally came to fruition with some dates in Europe and Australia.

But what about the States, where this movement was born? Apparently, they’re still working on that. But, in the meantime, they found a way to show the Sofia, Bulgaria concert in movie theaters all around the country through Fathom Events. The first showing was on Tuesday, with an encore presentation on Thursday, which I was able to attend. The footage was (mostly) uncut, featuring – in order – Anthrax, Megadeth, Slayer, and Metallica, with short behind-the-scenes footage in between. Let’s break it down…
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The first band I was in began in junior high. A couple of friends and I had been kicking around the idea of starting a band, but we never had the impetus to really get going until we met a twelve year-old kid named Nathan Annis. While Nate was only twelve, at his early age he embodied everything about the rock and metal scene of the time. He had a mane of long red hair, was as thin as a rail, lived in a trailer in the middle of nowhere, and played guitar like a motherfucker. Seriously, for a self-taught kid out out of the sticks, this guy was impressive. He had an Arbor guitar shaped like a Gibson Explorer and could do all the neat-o wank-rock stuff that impressed the die hard rock fans of the day. And the first time I met him, as he stood in our make-shift practice space puffing on a GPC cigarette and ripping through Metallica’s Seek and Destroy, I knew we had found our guy.

It was this imagery that ran through my head last Sunday night just after The Sword took the stage at the Wells Fargo Arena as the opening act for Metallica. The band sauntered on the stage wearing beat up jeans, old t-shirts and tennis shoes, grabbed their instruments and rocked the roof off the place. I looked at each of them and thought, “These guys look like they drive Cameros, smoke GPCs, and live in a trailer in Irma, Wisconsin. This is a band Nate would have been in!”

Despite their appearance, The Sword is not from Central Wisconsin, rather hailing from Austin, Texas, which is apparently the home to more kick ass bands than any other city in the United States. Who knew? Their sound bearing more than a passing resemblance to old Black Sabbath (Ozzy era), the band fits neatly in that sub-sub-genre of “retro metal”, which, as far as I can tell, means they sound like Sabbath. They’re a tight four-piece outfit consisting of singer/guitarist (and main songwriter) John D. Cronise, guitarist Kyle Shutt, bass player Bryan Richie, and drummer Trivett Wingo. That’s right: Trivett Wingo. I can’t decide if the name sounds more like a hobbit moniker or the name of a member of the Palin family, but either way that’s one of the greatest names I’ve ever heard in my life.
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Des Moines, Iowa. The metal capitol of the United States. When it comes to metal, Iowa is like our own version of Norway. It’s bleak, depressing, cold as hell, and the scary kids come out of the fields with scythes wearing black shirts and eye makeup. The ride from Minneapolis to Des Moines gets progressively more frightening the further you travel down I35. The trees disappear, the wind picks up, and there’s corn as far as the eye can see. Corn husks blow around in the wind, and at first glance it looks as though the sky is full of giant bats. It’s the perfect place for a metal show.

The last time I saw Metallica was during their “we’re not a great metal band, we’re a mediocre hard rock band” faze in the late 90s. A friend of mine had an extra ticket and suckered me into going along. But Metallica’s listless performance that night wasn’t the only indignity I had to suffer; I also had to sit through Kid Rock as the opening act. That’s right: Kid-fucking-Rock. During that hideous set I swore I was transported out of the Target Center and into some trailer park jamboree. It was perhaps the most absurd, idiotic hour of “musical performance” I had ever witnessed. And then Metallica came out and sleep-walked through their set, looking and sounding as bored and complacent as a twenty-year-old rock outfit could be.

So needless to say, despite the quality of their latest album, Death Magnetic, I wasn’t expecting much from the concert. In fact, I agreed to attend more as a way to hang out with my friend Craig, a huge Metallica fan and a guy with whom I used to make concert road trips with frequently in high school. So after our drive down the holy highway into the hell’s waiting room of Iowa, we checked into our hotel across the street from the venue, walked over to the Wells Fargo Arena, sat down, and prepared ourselves for the worst. Fortunately for me, I was pleasantly surprised. (more…)

Inspired by the new Metallica album, we talk about METAL!!!!!

Well, John and special guest Jon Yeske talk about Metal. And Moe adds in a few jabs and derailing comments as usual. I’m not sure what I was doing in this episode other than pining for the new Ben Folds album. So..yeah…not a good fit on this one.

After Hours 12: Metal!!

That’s right folks, today marks the release of a Metallica album that does not suck and so to celebrate what myself and John have decided should be named “Metallica Day” I decided to pick up the guitar and learn one of the new songs.

There are frankly a lot of very cool songs on the album but the one that instantly resonated with me was The Day That Never Comes, and so I set to work late at night transcribing like crazy. And whilst I don’t have all of the song down (I’m still working on the main solo) I wanted to get something out on this glorious day. So please feel free to watch this video of me late at night, wearing sunglasses when I clearly shouldn’t be and making what I hope is a half-decent first try of this awesome song.

Because I’m me, I’ve taken a few creative liberties in some areas so this isn’t an exact transcription…

Love

Philthy

I haven’t been a Metallica fan for a while; fifteen years, in fact. I was a sophmore in high school when the “Black” album was released, and while I stayed loyal during those years – attending a few concerts, buying some live albums – I was out by the time Load hit. [Heh...more like "Load of Crap", amirite?] And as their music became more watered down and radio-friendly, I came to loathe the band that I had loved in my adolescent years.

Nevertheless, something continues to draw me to the band. Perhaps it’s nostalgia for sitting in trailers smoking GPC cigarettes, or perhaps its my unhealthy adoration for Master of Puppets, but when St. Anger was released I picked up a copy hoping for the return of the Kings of Metal. And boy was I disappointed. Only hints of greatness peeked from behind the layers of shitty production and even shittier songwriting. That was it; I was done.

I’ve known my friend Craig for twenty years. When I was banging my prepubescent head to …And Justice for All, he was right there with me. We wound up graduating high school together, going to college together, working together, and standing up in eachother’s weddings. There was one major difference: he stayed a fierce Metallica fan while I wrote them off as sell-out has-beens. So a couple years ago, when he asked me to attend a screening of Metallica’s movie Some Kind of Monster with him I unenthusiastically relented. Long story short: I loved the movie. So much, in fact, that I immediately snatched it up when it was released on DVD and watched all the special features in an afternoon. Some Kind of Monster was raw, ugly, uncomfortable, yet somehow fascinating to watch. Here were the guys that were legends in my youth pouring out their imperfect and sometimes embarrasing selves on camera, and I was fucking riveted. Sure, I wasn’t a fan of the music they were making, but when I saw how much shit they had to deal with I was more than willing to give them another chance.

Enter Death Magnetic.

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